Spring on Symi and a Walk in Rhodes

Yialos at half past eight this morning.  The calm after yesterday's storm.  We had very strong winds on Sunday and there was a shipping ban.  The flags are up because Saturday was the investiture of the new Metropolitan (bishop).

The many priests and officials who came over for the investiture ceremony and celebrations on Saturday were unable to get off the island on Sunday because of the wind.  I spotted this group waiting for the Dodecanese Seaways catamaran this morning.  People came from all over the Dodecanese for the event.

Meanwhile, in the Pedi valley, Nature is staging her own celebrations.

Who would think that the barren dust of summer would hide such potential abundance?  Just add water for a wonderful wild garden.  This is along the roadside in Lieni, Chorio.

Mother and child, out for a morning stroll in the Pedi valley.

The olive trees are smothered in millions of tiny pale green flowers.

I had to go to Rhodes on Friday for various appointments.  Inevitably I had several hours to kill between finishing my business and taking the Blue Star back to Symi.  It seemed a waste to spend them reading in a corner of the Plaza Hotel so I took my camera for a walk.  If you chose to walk from Akandia, the commerical ferry port, into town, you will pass this attractive kiosk (periptero) near the old town walls.  An ideal pit stop for an ice cream.  

Rhodes is full of ruins spanning millenia of continuous occupation.  Invaders came and went and everyone left their mark. Somewhere along the line the end wall of a Byzantine church became the wall of a house, with windows overlooking what would once have been the nave.

This is the altar of the same church.  You can take a short cut through the open area into a park on the right of the photograph that takes you eventually to a gate in the old town walls that opens out over the moat, near the kiosk above.  There is a more direct  route out onto the waterfront on the left, through another gate.

Rhodes old town closes down during the winter months and all the tourist tat disappears, leaving the underlying architecture exposed to view.  A great opportunity to see the buildings as they really are.

Spring flowers are everywhere, even on the old town walls.

A gargoyle leaping from the roof of the old library.

There are many Ottoman drinking water fountains dotted around Rhodes. This one is near Kolonna.

The Rhodes municipality has provided an information system that enables you to download an app on your smartphone.

The old shopping area behind Mandraki.  Bits of it have been restored like this section. Others are still falling down.  Many of the old speciality shops have disappeared, replaced by trendy cafes, bars and eateries.

The spring equinox is only days away and the weather is very unsettled.  Calm hazy days alternate with strong winds and shipping bans.  The major weather fronts generally pass to the north of us in March and April after causing disruption in the Ionian and on the Greek mainland.  Saharan dust is a familiar sight, turning the sky pink and leaving a film of red on everything when it rains. Temperatures are in the low to mid twenties.  It is still chilly in the shade, particularly in places still damp from the winter rains.  Distant snow is visible on the Turkish mountains but it is disappearing fast.

The weather this week remains unsettled with gale force winds forecast for Thursday and the possibility of thunderstorms over the weekend.

Rhodes was still very quiet on Friday with little sign of activity yet for the forthcoming tourist season.  With the main focus these days on all inclusive package holidays in the resort areas, Rhodes town is a lot quieter than it used to be.  It was quite sad really, walking around, to see so many small hotels and businesses closed up, not just for the winter but probably for a year or more judging by the hoardings and piles of dusty post visible on empty shop floors.  When you book a package holiday with a big holiday company, very little of your money actually finds its way into the local community and eventually the community withers and dies.  When you travel independently, dealing with Greek businesses and eating in family tavernas, you are putting money directly into the local economy, keeping small businesses and communities alive and growing.  Food for thought.

Have a good week.

Regards,
Adriana

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Spring Cleaning for Easter

The butterflies are back!

Eyes closed against the sun.

Down in the valley.

Free range feasting.

In the frame.  The water taxis and excursion boats are still out in the boatyard.  They won't be back until May.

Getting ready for the season.

The International at the back of Yialos is one of the very few tavernas that still stays open all year round.  

Nature adds her own embellishments.

March is galloping past and Easter will soon be upon us.  The skies are blue and bright.  There are few rain clouds looming on the long range forecast. Temperatures are creeping into the mid twenties and people who brought duvets in to the Sunflower for washing don't seem to be in much of a hurry to reclaim them.

Business owners are wrestling open doors swollen from winter rains and drawing up job lists.  There is the hum of electric sanders in the air and the hardware stores are busy.  Winter woollies are making way for paint-spattered overalls.  The tourist season proper does not start until the end of May these days but there is plenty to be done for Greek Easter.  People often come back to their families in the islands for the holidays as Greek Easter is traditionally celebrated as a family holiday.

The supermarkets are laying in supplies of flour, cheese, oil, yeast, sugar and dye for the traditional Easter baking marathon.  There's a bit of a price war going on in the flour department as Italian 00 flour has made an appearance on Symi at very reasonable prices.  The dye is, of course, for the hard-boiled eggs that are shared on Easter Sunday.  While Britain is awash with hot cross buns and chocolate bunnies - they were already appearing in the shops when I left in early January - here in Greece, particularly in the islands, everything is appropriate to its season. 

Elaborately decorated processional candles, traditional foods and the ingredients to prepare them only start to appear in the shops during Lent.  The air of anticipation is palpable because it really is something to look forward to.  The culture of treat yourself everyday hasn't filtered through here yet so there is always something joyful on the horizon.  If you are fed up with the commercialisation of Easter and other religious holidays, come and celebrate in Greece instead.  You will really feel that there is something special happening.

Have a good week.

Regards,
Adriana

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Season's Greetings and See You on Symi in 2018

It doesn't take much to make the Stanni patisserie next door to the Symi Visitor Accommodation office look festive.

A festive glimpse through the door of the butchery.

The Symi Flower shop is always a cheerful sight.

This is how fuel arrives for the petrol station in Yialos. Tankers roll off and drive round to the fuel station to fill the bunkers.

Oranges and lemons for sale in the square in Yialos.  Most Symiots have lemon trees somewhere but Symi oranges tend to be extremely bitter and are only suitable for marmalade or glykos.  Oranges for squeezing or eating come from Rhodes or Kalymnos.

Fresh fish for sale, straight from the boat. The cats are optimistic.

Down in the Pedi Valley.  The  bare brown bits are where water washed through in the storm.

This will be my last blog for 2017 as I am going to England to visit family and friends for the festive season.  Leaving Symi is often a fraught business in the winter. This time I will be missing a 24 hour shipping strike by a mere 24 nail-biting hours!  The 5.50 a.m. departure on the Blue Star is not an attractive prospect either!  In the winter the Blue Star serving Symi fits in a quick trip down to Karpathos and back on a Wednesday so instead of the extremely civilised 8.15 departure from Symi that we enjoy in the summer, in the winter we have to be down in the harbour in the dark at 5.30 a.m.  Fortunately the weather forecast is good so there are no gales to worry about and it won't be raining.

Christmas is only a fortnight away and a few more decorations are putting in an appearance. There still isn't much in the shops - the main holiday supplies will arrive on the big boat on the Friday before Christmas.  Anyone with premature Christmas cravings has to take the Blue Star to Rhodes on Wednesday or Friday to buy goodies at Lidl!  No Aldi in Greece - they pulled out early in the economic crisis - but Lidl and Praktiker are stalwarts, particularly in these times of austerity. The other great source of Christmas bling is Jumbo, a huge jolly junk Greek chain store out in the middle of the island and thus only accessible by car or taxi.

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year.

See you in January!

Regards,
Adriana

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Cats and the Kastro

Please sir, may we have some more? Foraging in bins is a way of life for the Symi cats and even those that have homes tend to go exploring to see if pickings are more interesting down at the skip.  Symi Animal Welfare also puts out dried food and containers of water at selected locations around the community.

Symi's golden citadel - or rather, what is left of it! The area around the Kastro is slowly being rebuilt, largely by foreigners who have bought ruins on Symi to fix up as holiday homes and summer houses.

The castle itself was already largely in ruins by the time the Germans decided to use it as a munitions store during the Second World War.  The churches within the fortifications have been rebuilt and sections of the walls survived the explosion.

Crocuses share space with a Virginia creeper in a planter in Chorio.

The canary is well out of reach, even if Ginger felt so inclined.  He does so well on deli counter scraps he seldom ventures further than the supermarket store room!

We don't have much by way of tides in this part of the world but the water level does reflect changes in barometric pressure. The abnormally warm mild weather we are experiencing on Symi at the moment is caused by a high pressure system over the Southern Aegean, hence the current low water level in the harbour.

Shoals of small fish sometimes gather at the head of the harbour, by the bridge. This harbour cat is keeping an eye open for an unsuspecting pawful.

Symi really seems to glow at this time of the year.  Autumnal sunshine on old stone and ochre-tinted lime wash are a delightful combination.

The summer tourist season is drawing to a close.  No Dodecanese Seaways boats today - only the Sea Dream and the Nikolaos X excursion boats.  Blue Star ferries have put up their schedules for November to January with a seriously early start on Wednesday mornings as the Paros has to fit in a day return to the distant island of Karpathos, between Rhodes and Crete, once a week.  5 a.m. in the dark chill of  a Greek winter's morning is not an attractive prospect, whichever way one looks at it!  As the Paros has far fewer cabins than the Patmos, anyone planning an overnight trip to Athens will have to book very far ahead to be sure of getting a bunk. The Wednesday schedule remains as is, leaving Symi at 7.45 a.m. and leaving Rhodes at 7 p.m. (give or take half an hour or so as the boat does a trip to Kastellorizon in between).

The weather is marvellous. Sunny and mild with little wind.  If the long range forecast is to be believed, this is all set to change on Tuesday next week when we can expect three days of rain, wind and thunderstorms.  About time really as the ground is too hard to plough at the moment and those first deep rains are crucial for softening the crust, as well as washing the dust off the rooftops.  As Symi does not have a natural water supply, harvesting winter rains off the roof into big cisterns is an important part of the island's infrastructure. The first rains clean the roof and then when the flow is clear, the pipes are diverted to the cisterns. 

Symi's lack of easily accessible water is one of the factors that has saved the island from mass tourism and the culture of 'villa holiday with pool' that puts pressure on the infrastructure of Rhodes and many other places in Greece. Symi's steep and mountainous terrain has also kept the developers at bay.  It would literally take a seismic event for Symi to ever have a golf course or airport!  People visit Symi for a totally authentic Greek island experience, staying in quirky old neo-classical houses accessed by dozens of steep steps and swimming in the warm waters of the Aegean.  It is a place where time literally seems to stand still.

I am off to Rhodes for the day tomorrow - the first time off the island since May so the list of errands and shopping is long!

Have a good weekend.

Regards,

Adriana

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July Postcards from Symi

Looking across the Pedi valley towards the windmills on the ridge of hill that divides Pedi from Yialos. That is the top of the island of Nimos in the background.

Boats lying off Harani earlier this week.

A glimpse of the harbour between the buildings on the Kali Strata.

When a hen goes 'off piste' there is no knowing where she will decide to nest. This biddy was spotted near the bottom of the Kali Strata, just up from the Old Markets hotel.

Kokkimides, one of the oldest churches on the island. Built on the second highest peak on the island during the Byzantine era, the monastery was rebuilt in 1760.  In recent years an access road has been built up to the monastery and it is no longer necessary to climb up.  There is usually someone there and I have never known it to be closed. The church is through the small entrance on the right and has many Byzantine frescoes.

One of the oldest trees on the island, up on the top of Kokkimides.  It is propped up with stones to prevent it from collapsing.

Sunset over Panormitis monastery bay, looking down from the view point at the top, before one starts the steep descent of hairpin bends down to sea level.  There is a mini bus service connecting Yialos and Chorio with Panormitis 2-3 times a day and also excursion buses.

Looking beyond Panormitis to the island of Sesklia.

The interior of Symi is rugged rocks and conifer forests with occasional small fertile valleys and ancient terraces planted with olives, figs and vines.  

Toli Bay on the west side of the island, is a beautiful place to watch the sun set and enjoy a delicious meal at the Dafnes beach taverna, so named after all the oleanders that grow wild nearby. 

If I stay very still, maybe no one will notice me.

A Greek Orthodox priest popping into the clinic in Chorio. Unlike many parts of Britain where several parishes often have to share one priest, Greece has no such pastoral problems and Symi's priests are always in evidence to lend a hand and provide support when needed.

The view from the Symi Visitor Accommodation office this morning.

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