Island Hopping in the Winter - Part Two - Kalymnos

The waterfront in Kalymnos has many fine late 19th century buildings.  Like Symi it had an economic boom from the 1890s to the 1920s and many fortunes were made in the sponge industry.

The Alpha Bank is an amazing example of dressed stone work.  Our cameras really could  not do it justice.

An Italianate church on the waterfront  in Kalymnos harbour.

One of us is very energetic and went for a morning run up the kalderimi behind our hotel to the top of the ridge of hills that divides Kalymnos harbour and chora from the parallel valley and bay of Vathy.

Kalymnos has far more examples of these old footpaths than Symi and they are, by and large, seemingly in better condition.

Kalymnos has a population of around 18 000 inhabitants so is significantly larger than Symi.  

The Villa Melina,, a restored mansion that has been converted into a boutique hotel, was where we stayed for the night.  It is open all year round and the owners live on the premises.

Tourism on the island  is away from the main town, in small complexes of studios, apartments and low rise hotels along the coastal road. Rock climbing is one of the activities  on offer to tourists.

The view from the side balcony of our hotel room.  The archaeologia is not as  much  in evidence in Kalymnos as it is in Rhodes so there is a combination of old mansions and 1960s concrete all over the town.

Waiting for Dodecanese Seaways to whisk us away to Rhodes via Kos, Nissyros, Tilos and Halki.

We weren't the only ones waiting for the boat.  These men are from various fishing boats, waiting to load polystyrene boxes of fresh chilled fish onto the catamaran to send to Rhodes.

It is has been a wet and stormy week on Symi and the weather is not expected to clear until late on Sunday afternoon. All the rain we didn't have last winter seems to have fallen this week and we logged 60 mm in our rainwater gauge over 3 days.  We were very lucky with the weather for our mini-break, even if the photos are a bit grey as it was overcast.

We didn't have as much daylight in Kalymnos as we arrived there at half past 3 in the afternoon and then left again at midday the following day.  Once again we arranged to be met by the car hire on the quay and had pre-booked our accommodation to save time.  We arrived at the tail end of the Clean Monday festivities so there was quite a lot of traffic as we drove around the island, mainly of groups of people standing in the road, flying kites.  We drove through fields of cabbages and orchards of citrus trees. It seems that the hawkers we see at the back of Yialos are actually from Kalymnos, not Tilos as legend has it.

Although Kalymnos has a much bigger population than Symi, eating out options in the winter seemed to be just as limited as they are here and the only place we found open on the waterfront that was doing food was a pizzeria. Nicholas had an excellent rigatoni marinara and I had a small Garibaldi pizza which turned out to be big enough for 4 people.  We took half of it with us to eat cold on the ferry to Rhodes the next day!

Kalymnos port has an old fashioned 1960s vibe reminiscent of the Piraeus of Melina Mercouri's 'Never on Sunday'.  The side streets are full of small independent shops and we didn't see any of the big franchises and designer names that are characteristic of Rhodes.  Everyone seemed to be pottering along quite comfortably and we weren't aware of any 'for sale' or ' to let ' signs which have become part of the landscape on Symi and Rhodes in recent years. Perhaps the fact that the island has a diverse economy which includes sustainable fishing and agriculture makes it less dependent on tourism and they don't seem to have any huge high rise all inclusive holiday complexes to worry about.

We spent the morning before the ferry in the new archaeological museum near our hotel.  They would not allow photographs so I can't share that experience with you but it was one of the best museums we have been to - and we 'do' museums a lot!  Well laid out, well curated and well illuminated, it was a pleasure to visit.  There have been several significant archaeological finds, both on land and pulled out of the sea by fishermen, in recent years so there was plenty to look at including a group of well-preserved marble kouroi (young men) and a huge larger-than-life size bronze statue of Hera. A reminder that not everything in Greece has been discovered yet and many treasures still lie on the seabed or buried under terraces and old churches.

Well, we were very lucky with the weather for our trip.  If it has been like this week, it would have been dismal indeed. This is a risk one has to take when travelling in Greece at this time of the year.

Have a good weekend.  I'll be back to writing about Symi on Monday!

Regards,
Adriana

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February Postcards from the Mainland

Inside the tomb of Atreus at Mykenae.  The good part about travelling in winter is that one has most of the archaeological sites to oneself.  The bad part is the weather!

Mykenae in the rain.  I am the red dot in the middle!  That is a coach park glistening in the wet in the middle distance.

We only had about 10 minutes in the museum at Mycanae as they close at 3 in the winter so this is just a quick sample. We'll have to go back!

Nafplio in the rain. This coastal town was the first capital of modern Greece so like Symi it boasts some lovely neo-classical architecture.  Unlike Symi, however, the Archaeologia (Ministry of Culture) did not intervene fast enough and there are some real eyesores.  The modern hotel on the left of this picture is quite innocuous in comparison to some of the places we saw!

The pension where we stayed for 2 nights.  It made a good base for our travels as it meant we did not have to look for somewhere down in Monemavasia, a much more expensive town even in the winter.  We dined at two different tavernas and they were both good value and very friendly. There were a few out of season tourists around and a handful of shops open but the locals are mainly in the more modern town on the other side of the harbour.

As Nafplio predates Symi the roofs have Roman tiles rather than Marseilles ones. Sensibly they also have overhanging eaves so the rain does not run down the walls of the buildings as happens on Symi. The Symiots had to adopt a different style of roof in order to harvest the winter rains and channel the water into cisterns in the houses, causing a lot of damp problems in the winter.  Nafplio has a far higher rainfall and abundant water from the nearby mountains.  The plains are covered in orange orchards and olive groves and this is good agricultural terrain.

A seriously wonky example of Nafplion architecture. The walls are much thinner than those in Symi and are often a mixture of wood, small stones and plaster, rather than the big dressed stones we are used to here.

Looking down on the old town of Nafplion from the Venetian fortress of Palamidi. That large oblong structure on the rocky outcrop to the left is an abandoned hotel, covered in graffiti and never a thing of beauty, right next to the castle of Akronafplio.  There are similar abandoned relics of  60s and 70s concrete dotted around the place.  Horrible.  Some of the mountains in the distance were covered with snow.

The fortress of Palamidi, guarding the port of Nafplio.  It was started by the Venetians, added to by the Turks and conquered by the Greeks.  It was used as a prison until 1920.

Down south in the Peloponnese, this is the causeway linking the mainland to Monemavasia, the Gibraltar of Greece.

The rooftops of Monemavasia.  Look at that swell rolling in.

This was a Byzantine town, abandoned eventually in the 19th century and redeveloped in the 20th.  Symi is often compared to it as it is also a heritage site of architectural importance. There is, however, minimal population as the locals actually live in the modern town on the main land and the houses on the island are used as chic summer homes by wealthy Athenians. As the town was abandoned long before the advent of electricity, when it was rebuilt it was possible to hide all the electricity and telephone cables below ground so there is isn't the raffle of cables that are a feature of Symi's skyline.

We had a good light lunch at this little taverna - homemade spinach pie, gigantes and the famous local wine for a very reasonable 15 euros for the 2 of us.  Note the size of the cats looking in through the window. The lady proprietor made a great show of chasing the cats away but they did not achieve that size on a diet of mice and dustbin scavengings!

On our way from Nafplio to Athens we stopped off in Epidavros to visit the famous amphitheatre.  I am the small red dot sitting in the front row!  Once again we had the place pretty much to ourselves.  There was a party of Italian teenagers with their teacher and that was all.  The location was idyllic, with bird song, wild flowers and bubbling streams - it is easy to understand why it was a centre of healing in ancient times.

The view from our cabin on the Blue Star Diagoras as we waited to leave Piraeus.  We had the same cabin in both directions. It was spotlessly clean and very comfortable. The crew are very friendly and helpful. The a la carte and self service restaurants on board are both excellent with very reasonable prices and attentive service.

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