Same Day to Sizzling Symi?

The wild oregano has faded to dusty beige and the St John's Wort is one of the few wild flowers left to add interest to an increasingly arid landscape.

Pedi bay was very busy during the Eid al-Fitr celebrations.

The new stone house at the end of my road is taking shape.  It is a very labour intensive method of construction as the local stone has to be 'dressed' before it can be used.  Many man hours go into chipping rock into symmetrical shapes and useful sizes.  All new buildings in Greece, no matter whether brick or stone, also have to meet strict building standards for earthquakes and have to have a reinforced concrete earthquake proof framework.

Watch the birdie!

Looking down the Kali Strata from about a quarter of the way down.

At first glance there may only seem to be 2 boats in this picture but if you look carefully, there are also two big power yachts on this side of the harbour with only their bows visible.

One of the two butcher's shops in the harbour.  There is also now a proper fresh fish monger which opened this week.  I 'll have a photograph of that for you on Monday.

The view from the Symi Visitor this morning.  The fuel station sends a mini -tanker round to bunker the water taxis.  This service is also available for yachts if they don't want to go over to the bunkering jetty.

When the sea looks like this at 8 in the morning, the rest of the day is sure to be very hot.

Yachts lying off Harani on Monday.

It has been very hot this week with little wind to speak of apart from local catabatic winds coming off the mountain in the early evening. Everything seems to be shimmering in the heat.

Monday morning in Yialos.  There were similar scenes of tangled anchors for several hours on Monday as boats that had come over for Bayram tried to leave in a different order to that in which they had arrived.  It is much more sensible to anchor in Pedi than Yialos during peak periods.

There was also an Israeli flotilla in town.

There is no formal ferry service to Datca in Turkey as there just isn't enough demand.  It is possible, however, to arrange to go over on one of these boats for the Saturday market.  The contact details are advertised on the boats.

What was I saying about tangled anchors?

And so June draws to a sizzling close in what is being regarded as one of the hottest heatwaves to roll out of Africa in decades. The heat is only expected to break later next week but on Symi that doesn't make a huge amount of difference as once the rock as heated up, it stays hot until September.   Temperatures are in the forties during the day and the thirties at night.

Anyone who does not have to work is at the beach, enjoying cooling swims and frosted glasses that tinkle with ice cubes.  The rest of us find excuses to linger in the bank, the supermarket and anywhere else where the air conditioning is reasonably efficient.

The Symi Sea Dream is now back in service although the rumoured evening program from Rhodes to Symi has so far failed to materialise.  A new development on the ferry front is that the Blue Star Patmos has been replaced by the smaller Paros and has managed to fit in another Symi route.  She passes through Symi at about 2 a.m. on Sunday mornings en route to Rhodes (yes, I know!) and then leaves Rhodes again at 4 p.m. on Monday afternoon, getting to Symi about an hour and a half later, en route to Pireaus.  For more information, please see our travel blog as well as the Blue Star website.

Our travel blog also shows some flight possibilities that connect up with ferries to Symi so that you don't have to overnight in Rhodes.  You could yet get to Symi this summer!

Have a good weekend.

Regards,
Adriana

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Celebrating Eid in Safety on Symi

7.30 a.m. Tuesday morning and Pedi bay was pretty busy.

Symi is a very steep island with more steps than roads.  This view is from the top of the Kali Strata, just below the village square with its tavernas and traditional bars. Chorio is where the main permanent community lives and has its own shops, cafes, tavernas, bakeries and supermarkets.  If you look carefully at the hills behind the houses you can just make out the scar that is the big sweep the motor road makes to get from Yialos to Chorio.

Looking down at Yialos and Harani on Tuesday morning, even the harbour and outlying anchorages were full. Most of the yachts you can see in this picture are Turkish, even if they may be carrying US or other flags of convenience.

One of the alternative pedestrian routes to town, there is a broad turn off to the right about halfway down the Kali Strata, on the lower side of the high school, which zigzags down to the harbour and pops out near the bus stop.  Various lanes and contour paths branch off this, leading to other tiers of houses.

Yialos early on Wednesday morning.

Thursday morning and a most welcome sight - the water ship!  As Symi has no natural water it is dependent on a small desalination plant on the Pedi road and water boats that come in from Rhodes and even further afield. This is why swimming pools and water features are not a part of Symi's landscape and you won't find many bath tubs either!  Mind you, Symi's sheltered beaches with their spectacular surroundings offer an attractive alternative to swimming pools.

The waterfront in Yialos is lined with pretty cafes, bars and tavernas.  With so much maritime activity in the summer there is always something to watch.  Most of these venues offer free wifi to patrons these days, for those who prefer to spend their time in one of the world's prettiest harbours looking at cat memes on their devices.

Who needs cat memes when there are local cats of character to observe? This one belongs to one of the supermarkets in Yialos and is, as you can see, quite polite and very well fed.  He has appeared on this blog before over the years.  Many harbour businesses keep a cat or two as working cats to keep pests under control.

Up in Chorio this small supermarket is keeping the flag flying.

The most photographed sunflower on Symi just keeps on going.

Symi benefited vastly from the Eid holidays this year as hundreds of Turks, mostly on boats of various shapes and sizes, elected to celebrate the end of Ramadan on a peaceful Greek island with no security concerns.  Symi is the perfect get away from the cares of the world and those with access to visas and boats made the most of an opportunity to visit a safe EU destination on their doorstep.

The landmark Lemonitissa church is having a fresh coat of paint.

A concession to our many Turkish visitors - an ouzerie near our office, advertising mezzes and live Greek music in Turkish.

Have a good weekend.

Regards,

Adriana

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The Summer Drought has Broken

Tuesday brought torrential rain until well into the evening. Rhodes had heavy weather and sustained damage to the runway which caused flight disruptions over 2 days.  Fortunately none of us sustained the kind of damage inflicted upon the island Skopelos, the Peloponnese and  the nearby Turkish coastal town of Bodrum.  It is unusual for us to get such heavy and sustained stormy weather so early as this is more common in October. 

The morning after the rain - drifts of leaves all the way down the road and a everything washed bright and clean in the September light.

No, this isn't a 'nodding dog' on the parcel shelf. This young ginger cat took advantage of an open window to shelter from the rain overnight - and the greenhouse effect the next morning was pretty cosy too!

Pine needles and random petals, caught in the storm water grating half way down the Kali Strata.  

The whitewashed monastery on Nimos, gleaming in the early morning sun.

A lizard drying out on the roof of the Sunflower laundry's shed.

I never know what I am going to see when I look out of the office window.

The view from the Symi Visitor Accommodation balcony on Wednesday - a boutique cruise ship alongside, the Panagia Skiadeni stern to and a Turkish power boat in the middle.

The trees look so green after their recent wash.

The crew of the Sea Dreams Symi doing a spot of maintenance around the bow.

Pedi and Yialos are really full at the  moment, mainly with Turkish boats coming across for the Eid al Adha holiday.

This big cruise ship came into Nimborio bay early this morning. Too big to come into the harbour, it is anchored off and the passengers have been shuttling in and out of Yialos on bright orange lighters

Harani at 7.30 this morning, waiting for the Blue Star.

A quarter of an hour later and the Blue Star docked at the clock tower.

If it has an American flag, the chances are good it has come from Turkey.  Many rich Turks register their yachts and motor boats in America for tax reasons so if you notice dozens of Stars and Stripes around the harbour, it doesn't mean that Symi is the number one cruising destination for American yachtsmen.

One of the bright orange lighters from the cruise ship.  The passengers are brought ashore at the customs house by the bridge.

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Simply Beautiful

Pedi Bay 7 a.m.

The view from Symi Visitor Accommodation - 8 a.m.

Yialos 7.15 a.m.

Who are you looking at?

In need of some tender loving care. While the ground floor of this building in Yialos houses the Lotto Shop, upstairs has been boarded up and neglected for many years.

A building with many numbers.  Apart from its date of construction, the various other numbers were attempts by various administrations - probably Italian and British rather than Ottoman Turks - to work out who owned what and register the buildings on Symi.  More recent endeavours with the land registry are responsible for the spray painted names and phone numbers to be seen on many ruins and seemingly abandoned properties in Chorio.

Early morning shadow play on the Kali Strata.  

This really is wrought iron work - heated in a forge and beaten into shape and then assembled with rivets.

Steps to the upper storey of a neglected building on the Kali Strata. Symiot houses are not large and stair cases take up a lot of space. This solid stone stair case is very steep to minimise loss of space and is really just a stone version of the open tread wooden ladder staircases that are used in many houses to connect the various levels.  The other option is to take the stairs up the outside of the house.

There are lots of Turkish boats and gulets in Symi at the moment as it is Eid al Fitr, the holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan and Symi is popular destination.   As you can see from the photographs, the anchorage at Pedi Bay and the harbour, Yialos, are very crowded and untangling fouled anchors is part and parcel of sailing life at this time of the year.

Symi is a very beautiful Greek island with its natural amphitheatre harbour, sheer cliffs running down to the sea and pretty pastel coloured neo classical houses rising from the water's edge up to the Kastro and sprawling up the lower reaches of the Vigla, the 700 metre peak that also provides a home to Symi's communications antennae.  It is not, however, a luxury destination and never will be.  A heritage site, Symi's architecture is protected and all development and restoration is closely monitored. The precipitous landscape, combined with the island's shortage of natural water, means that there are no swimming pools or resort hotels.  The architecture is lovely but it is also idiosyncratic and defies many Western concepts of health, safety and bourgeois comfort with ladder staircases, steep steps and other quirks.  The Symiots are a hardy people, shaped by centuries of living in what are naturally very inhospitable conditions.  Building these beautiful houses was an incredible feat in a landscape where nothing is flat and everything had to be carried by people and donkeys up and down cliffs and hillsides.  Even now very few places have convenient or close vehicle access and the motor road has to zigzag up the slopes and wind round mountain sides to connect Yialos, Chorio, Pedi, Xisos and Panormitis.  If you are looking for a plush resort with swimming pools and landscaped lawns, Symi is not for you.  If you appreciate something that is simply beautiful and authentic, you may find yourself joining the hundreds of people who have been visiting Symi every year for decades.

Have a good week.

Regards,

Adriana

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