Category: Island-hopping

Suddenly It’s Christmas!

Well no, not really, but we were astonished when we were in Rhodes last week to see the Christmas decorations going up in My Way, a department store on the road to Faliraki that sells everything from power tools and solar water heaters to baby’s nappies and bread bins. Not even a token Halloween cobweb for old time’s sake.

Lidl, the German discount supermarket which has two branches on Rhodes is already selling chocolate Santas and frozen festive geese. What makes all this unusual and worthy of note is that it is most unGreek to be packing out the Christmas tat before the last summer charter flight has even left these shores. One of the joys of Greek holidays is their very lack of commercial pressure. There is no danger of being jingle-belled into submission by the first week of October in Greece. At least, that is how it used to be, so it was surprising to see the staff of My Way wrangling plastic trees on 13 October.

Perhaps last year’s lockdown Christmas has altered perspectives. Or perhaps the grid-locked container ships clogging ports around the world are forcing shop keepers to sell whatever is hanging about unsold from the lockdown days and it was a toss up between the Nutcracker and the Easter Bunny.

It has been a strange summer in a time of strange summers. Symi was exceptionally busy once the starting gates opened. Some businesses in the harbour even reported their best August in years. Certainly in terms of personal observation I got the impression that people were holidaying closer to home. Young people who might previously gone off to Thailand or Bali opted for parental summer homes on Greek islands and found it was more fun than they had expected. The fourth week of August, which is often a sort of no-mansland as the Athenians, French and Italians leave and the northern Europeans only arrive in the first week of September, was really busy as people extended their holidays and last minute AirBnB bookings filled gaps.

September also turned out to be a bumper month. Once it became (relatively) easier for British tourists to travel abroad there was no stopping Symi’s regular September visitors, plus many of those whose usual June plans had been scuppered by Uncle Boris’ traffic light system. There was a real celebratory hum around the island as happy reunions took place in favourite watering holes and those who were last here in 2019 revelled in the September sunshine.

This cheerful vibe has continued into October but it doesn’t look as though we will have many last lingering visitors into November as happened last year when those who were home-schooling and working on line decided they might as well do it on Symi as anywhere else and it was only the implementation of the sudden drastic second lockdown on 7 November that brought the island to a sudden grinding halt.

The winter rains have come early this year, with the first heavy rains reaching Symi on 12 October. This was the first named storm of the season, Storm Athena. This was followed by Storm Ballos a couple of days later which brought more heavy rain to Corfu, Cefalonia, fire-damaged Evia and, most noticably of all, Athens, where footage of children making bridges out of their desks to climb out of a flooded classroom and bus passengers forming a human chain to escape a flooded bus in an Athens underpass made the international news. Symi is turning green again after an incredibly long hot summer drought and temperatures have dropped into the low 20s.

The carpet sellers have arrived and the cats are enjoying last season’s throw outs in the skips of Chorio.

Symi Summer Update

This post is more local news than photos. Once again I have dithered over writing because the situation keeps changing and it is difficult to stay up to date. This blog post is not definitive. By the time you read it things may have changed again.

First of all, PCR tests. I keep being asked about these. At the moment it is not possible to have them done on Symi. This is not because the authorities do not realise the need for this service, as some may think. The authorities on all the small islands are struggling with the same issue. The minimalist nature of medical services in the islands and sheer lack of funding is the problem. Normally tourists are unaware of the fact that the small islands have inadequate medical facilities. This is something we all have to live with all year round and is a constant source of frustration for residents. The list of helpful websites to contact to book testing appointments is here. The facilities have been extending their hours and so far the appointment system seems to be working.

Someone did recently manage to return to the UK with a prepaid antigen test which they brought with them from a UK vendor and self-administered under supervision via a smart device. Whether this is viable by the time you travel or acceptable for the country you return to is unknowable. A very useful link to check is this one on Aegean Air’s website. It is lists all the countries to which they fly and the entry requirements as well as the requirements for internal flights and they update as the information changes. Even if you are not flying with Aegean it is a good starting point for information. Just remember that they too cannot prophecise what the situation will be in a fortnight/month/September.

Secondly, ferries. We have lots of these this year. Symi has never had so many connections. The ANES passenger vessel Sebeco is running at least twice daily through the summer. The layout of the schedule is a bit confusing so read it carefully to make sure you are in the right part of the year and that you are looking at the time it is leaving rather than arriving. Blue Star ferries have just announced a fourth Symi route for the summer. This will be using the Blue Star 2 and comes through on Tuesday at wonderful times for Symiots – We hope it continues to leave Symi at 8 and leave Rhodes at 5 as those times are too good to be true!

The SAOS car ferry Stavros continues to come through Symi going north on Mondays and Thursdays and south on Tuesdays and Fridays. This connects us with Kos, Halki, Tilos and Nissyros. Heavily subsidised by the state, they are running special free passenger travel between certain islands during the shoulder periods so this is a very good deal. Dodecanese Seaways is also operating. Their days are a bit ad hoc and the weekend schedules change weekly at the moment so keep checking. As they are not subsidised, they can only afford to run routes that are profitable and they take charters, particularly on Sundays, which is why their weekend schedules tend to be erratic.

Another bit of ferry news worth noting is that Seajets have announced a new route three times a week connecting Rhodes with Crete via Halki and Karpathos. This will leave Rhodes at midday so you can leave Symi on the early Blue Star or Sebeco and arrive in Rhodes with enough time to make the Seajet Paros to Crete and be in Sitia, Crete by half past six in the evening. At the moment this route is not showing on their official website but their ticket office has already been set up inside the coffee shop in Akandia and this schedule below is circulating on social media.

No photo description available.

The news that the EU is still out of bounds for British travellers is a serious blow for Greek tourism. June is traditionally a ‘British month’ for Greece. Here on Symi there have been a lot of cancellations and the only British travellers around are those who are flexible about their return dates or are not likely to be affected by the need to self-isolate for 10 days on their return, whenever that may be.

At time of writing only 25 of the 650 seasonal hotels on Rhodes have actually opened since Greece officially opened to international tourism on 14 May. Many who were intending to open in the course of June are now delaying until July which means more seasonal workers still don’t know if they have jobs or not. Those that are open are running on skeleton staff because they don’t have enough guests to cover their costs. Something to remember is that many holiday companies only pay the hotels long after the season has ended, which causes serious cash flow problems at the best of times.

A limited number of Russians are allowed to travel to Greece each week, as long as they have the correct vaccination information or a negative PCR test. The Greek media are full of the story of a Russian tourist who arrived with a negative PCR test and wound up on a respirator in ICU in northern Greece within a day of arrival. It would seem that his test paper was fraudulent as his family back home in Russia were all ill with Covid-19 so the chances of his test result being accurate are small.

Israelis have been able to travel freely to Greece since April, as long as they are vaccinated, but the current unrest in the region is discouraging people from travelling. There have been strong tourism links between Rhodes and Israel in recent years, particularly package holidays connected with the casino which is now feeling the pinch.

And so it goes on.

The hotels on Symi are slowly opening but once again until they are sure that they have guests there is no rush. There are some hopes of a surge in domestic tourism as the weekend of 20 June is the Greek Orthodox Pentecost long weekend. More restaurants and cafes are opening up gradually. We are seeing a few day-trippers from Rhodes now, coming in on either the Sebeco or the Zeus. 50-100 people tops so not really enough to warrant opening up all the waterfront shops in the hope that they will stop to buy something and they are mostly part of guided groups.

Once again it is a ‘wait and see’ sort of summer.

Lockdown Lifts with Limitations

Today is the day Greece seriously starts to emerge from a lockdown that started on 7 November 2020, nearly 7 long months ago. From today we no longer have to send SMSes or carry permits every time we leave the house. We don’t have to make appointments to go shopping. We can even stay out until midnight! The curfew remains but it is now from half past midnight until 5 a.m.

There are still restrictions on movement however. In order to travel between regions, particularly between the mainland and the islands and within the islands, one must either have a vaccination certificate, a negative PCR test or a rapid test. The airlines and ferry companies have been charged with controlling this and this applies to Greek residents and foreign tourists alike. The reason for this is that up to now the islands have remained relatively unscathed – and the islands have minimal medical facilities, particularly in terms of Covid-19 ICU wards and respirators. Kalymnos is an example of what happens when the virus gets a grip on a small community.

Although many islanders have been vaccinated the government is playing it safe for the foreseeable future as it will take a while for full immunity. Many travellers will have some form of vaccination pass by the summer. For those who don’t, the testing requirements certainly complicate island-hopping holidays and it makes sense to spend holiday time on only one or two islands to minimise the number of tests required to move between destinations.

Masks are still mandatory, both indoors and outside, and social distancing is still a requirement. There are still limits to how many people at a taverna or cafe table (6 at time of writing) and only outdoor seating is permitted (no hardship now that temperatures are in the 30s). The ban on all music in venues of all kinds remains at least until the end of May.

Here on Symi, speaking to random business owners, there is no rush to get started. The summer season on Symi has started late in recent years, even before the pandemic, and places like beach tavernas normally only aim to start operation in June anyway. Most of the taxi boats are back in the water now but the operator I spoke to said he would only start operations at the end of the month. Basically, until Rhodes starts to fill up with tourists and the day excursion boats begin, there is little traffic in the harbour to warrant opening up tourist shops and lunch-time dining. Hotels likewise are looking at June to open their doors.

No one really knows what is happening in terms of tourist arrivals on Symi. Many of the island’s usual visitors at this time of the year come from the UK. Unfortunately Greece, and most of the EU, is on the Amber list on for British tourism.

While Greece is open to receive tourists from most countries, the countries of origin are making it complicated – and expensive in terms of mandatory testing – for their nationals to travel abroad for their holidays. This is stalling advance bookings and also makes international holidays prohibitive for many families and couples. Germany, one of Greece’s main markets, has only just lifted the requirement for returnees to go into quarantine. TUI is optimistic but it will take a while for this to translate into bodies on sunbeds in seaside resorts and, in the case of Symi, day-trippers from Rhodes.

We shall see what this evening’s further government announcements bring.

Lockdown Rhodes 19 April 2021

I thought long and hard about writing this post as there are bound to be those who will accuse me of being ‘negative’ or ‘not looking on the bright’ side and variations on the theme. This post is an account of our personal experience in Rhodes on Monday 19 April 2021 and is what we observed on the ground. As the lockdown situation in Greece changes on a daily basis your own experience may well be different. The photos are not the usually scenes of beauty and inspiration but reflect the Zeitgeist in the part of Rhodes I saw.

As anyone who read an earlier posting will be aware, I went to Rhodes on 22 March 2021 for the first appointment involved in applying for my new biometric residence permit. As I had not yet had my second Pfizer jab then and everything was firmly closed at that point, I spent that day holed up at the Plaza apart from the period of my appointment and did not see very much. This time, when I went for my fingerprint appointment, the situation was very different. I also had an appointment with an opthamologist whose rooms are near the Casino, an area usually buzzing at this time of the year as it has always been popular with Scandinavian tourists who normally start to arrive at the end of March when the charter flights commence.

  • The building on the left was a branch of the Ethniki bank.
  • This hotel has been boarded up since the austerity years.
  • Leaves, litter and rain-soaked bills.
  • Boarded up shops.
  • A derelict hotel
  • When I downloaded the photos I noticed this cat sneaking along the railing.
  • It isn’t clear which year this job was abandoned but the dust around the coffee cup suggests it has been a while.
Walking around Rhodes near the Casino.

I won’t bore you with the various permits and bits of paper that are required to go from Symi to Rhodes and back on the Blue Star ferry these days, even though both are within the same regional administrative area. Suffice to say they are numerous and even so the officious policeman who grilled us for 10 minutes when we were waiting to board the Blue Star to return still wanted random items I had not thought to bring, like a copy of my marriage certificate (why?!) Interestingly I have heard that people travelling to Symi through Kolonna on Dodecanese Seaways the same week were not subject to the same police checks on boarding.

As we arrived in Rhodes at half past six in the morning, long before anywhere we needed to be was open, we drove down to the sea to eat the breakfast I had packed. The hotels along the road towards Kallithea and Faliraki did not look as though they were likely to be opening anytime soon and several looked as though they had not opened last year either.

  • Sunbed, umbrella and stand padlocked to the railings

Limited retail has been allowed to open in Greece since my previous trip a month ago, working mostly on a Click Inside or Click Away basis. Different stores have different ways of implementing these. Praktiker and Public both have an online appointment booking system and one books ones half hour shopping slot in advance, receiving a confirmation SMS on ones phone which one shows at the door. At Praktiker the security officer at the door just looked at the SMS and let us in. At Public the appointment code on the SMS was actually logged on a computer at the entrance before we were allowed in. Marks and Spencer, on the other hand, work on a telephone appointment basis. Smaller shops have signs on their doors saying how many shoppers are allowed inside at any time, based on their floor space. People were queuing outside the larger supermarkets, butchers, bakeries and greengrocers, being counted out and in by security staff – scenes reminiscent of photos of food queues in the dying days of the Soviet Union.

Only takeaway food and drink is available. As far as I could see, only a few places in Rhodes town were open and offering this service and apart from the Greek chain Gregoris they tended to be the smaller places that could be run cheaply by only one person. There were chalkboard deals offering a take away Greek coffee or frappe, small bottle of water and a pastry of some sort or basic toasted sandwich for 2.50 to 3 euros. Cheap offers attractive to people who have not had work for months.

The number of boarded up shops, premises to let, derelict hotels and abandoned bars was depressing. The pandemic came straight after a decade of austerity and financial hardship in Greece and walking around Rhodes New Town this really shows as you can see from the gallery above. We can only hope for better days ahead but for many businesses it is too late.

In the last couple of days there have been press reports regarding a ‘roadmap’ for opening Greece up to tourism after Greek Easter. As soon as meaningful information becomes available in the next couple of days I will put up another post with links to any useful sites.

Feels Like Autumn

It is the first of October and the edge has gone off the heat. Overnight temperatures have dropped to the pleasant low twenties and the breeze is refreshingly cool rather than akin to the blast from an open oven door. The air has cleared and visibility is infinite. Walking to St Nicholas, some of the thyme bushes have started to flower again and the sage bushes are greening over. The stones on the quay are wet in the morning, slick with the mist that settles on them overnight. The second spring is on its way.

In the fields the new agricultural year has begun. Potatoes, cauliflowers and lettuces are being planted in anticipation of the first rains. The pomegranates are ripening and the first quinces have already appeared in the shops – an ephemeral and delicious fruit if you know what to do with it.

There are a few cruising yachts swinging to anchor in Pedi – all with EU flags as the border with Turkey is still closed to yachtsmen. German, French, Dutch and British flags are the dominant ones at the moment, driven eastwards by the storms over the Ionian and in the Cyclades in recent weeks. The Dodecanese is the turning point, the end of the line unless one is over-wintering in Cyprus. Wintering in cheap marinas in Turkey is not an option these days so decisions are no doubt being made as to whether to head north to Kos or south to Rhodes.

It is very dark in the mornings now. This was the scene at 5 a.m. yesterday morning, 30 September, as people waited to board the Blue Star to Rhodes.

By now you may have heard of the appeal to raise funds for Symi’s music school which is struggling to survive in the present economic climate. If you haven’t, I could not put it better than James Collins does in his Symi Dream blog. Just because children live on a small Greek island on the edge of Europe does not mean that they should be deprived of the opportunities to develop their talents. A team of dedicated music teachers comes over from Rhodes every Saturday to teach guitar, piano, violin and other instruments as this is not provided for in the school system but this needs funding. Usually parents are able to contribute to support this but with many of them out of work or struggling due to the virus and limited tourist season this year, these lessons are in jeopardy. Please go to the two links above to find out more about this worthwhile project and how you can help.

Summer, but not as we know it.

“It is like winter, only with better weather,”  a recently-arrived friend observed to me a few days ago.  The days are long and hot and there isn’t much happening.  Anyone visiting Symi for the first time probably won’t notice much difference as Symi has reverted to the sleepy charm of the 1970s and 80s.  The gulets and yachts that normally fill the harbour in the summer months are conspicuous by their absence and apart from a few Greek flagged sailing boats visiting from Rhodes and Kos, the anchorages are empty.   Until the sea borders can safely open up with testing procedures in place at a greater number of ports, this is unlikely to change.  The sea border between Greece and Turkey is still firmly closed so there are no ferry connections between the two countries either.

Most of the cafes and bars in the harbour are now open, as are the two pizzerias, the gyros and grill houses and several restaurants and tavernas.  We were invited to dinner at Tholos in Harani on Saturday night.  The number of tables has been reduced by about a third so that they are more widely spaced. The staff all wear masks.  Sanitiser is brought to the table so you can clean your hands, particularly after handling the menu.  As this was the only restaurant open in the Harani area they were full, mainly with Greek tourists.  The food was excellent, as always, and they have not succumbed to the temptation to make up the shortfall in income by hiking prices.

Water taxis have resumed operation on a limited scale along the lines of one trip out in the morning and another back in the afternoon.  The Poseidon goes out 4 times a week. The Maria is also advertising day trips.  The ferry schedules are still a bit skimpy.  Dodecanese Seaways is not operating the Panagia Skiadeni and their official on line schedule shows no service to Symi on Sundays.  Sunday is actually marketed as a Facebook ‘event’ for a day excursion from Rhodes to Panormitis and once they know they have a good expression of interest, then it goes live.  The Sea Dreams website is advertising the King Saron for a daily route to Symi, starting from tomorrow, 15 July, and they are selling one way tickets.  Although this shows as running every day, this will be subject to demand but they have made their booking conditions very flexible.  As only 80 of the 450 hotels on Rhodes are actually open at the moment, and they are by no means full, it will be a while before there are enough tourists to fill day boats on a regular basis.  The Blue Star comes through 3 times a week.  There is still no evening boat from Rhodes to Symi apart from the Blue Star on Wednesdays at 18.30 (Mondays and Fridays, the Blue Star currently leaves Rhodes at 16.00). The Stavros seems to be more reliable than initially anticipated.

Direct flights from the UK commence from tomorrow, 15 July.  Direct flights from Sweden from 22 July and there is the possibility of direct flights being allowed from certain parts of the USA at the end of the month, depending on infection rates and so on.  Everyone has to fill in a PLF on line 24 hours before travelling and they are then issued with a QR code on their smart phones which they must show in order to travel.  This code determines whether one will have a mandatory Covid-19 check or a random one and the contact details provided are so that you can be notified of your test results and also, should anyone you have travelled with and been in close contact with, test positive, you can be informed.  Stricter controls are now being implemented at the land borders due to a recent increase in the number of people arrived from the Balkans who have tested positive.  You can find all the information you need about travelling to Greece on a new government website.

This is all as up-to-date as it can be, but it could all be totally different tomorrow!

 

A Winter Weekend in Patmos (Part 6)

Early on Sunday morning Nicholas set off for another run, this time in the fields along the north side of the island that we had driven past the previous day.  The pictures above tell their own story.

After breakfast at the hotel we set off to visit the Church of the Apocalypse, the place where St John wrote his Divine Revelations around 95 AD.  He lived in a cave which was turned into a church around 1000 years later and a monastery sprang up around it. We weren’t allowed to take photographs inside unfortunately.  The church was quite small and about a third of the space was actually the rock formation of the ‘cave’.  It must be merry hell in summer with the coach parties as I doubt there is space for more than 20 people at any given time, assuming that they are all standing up and facing the same way.  Considering all the talk about climate change and the end of the world etcetera, I am surprised that the place isn’t heaving all year round but perhaps people have forgotten that everything to do with the concept of the Apocalypse started in a small cave on a remote Greek island nearly 2 000 years ago.

This time we were accompanied by the janitor who was busy vacuuming, polishing and mopping which rather detracted from the spirituality of the place.  Not so much the odour of sanctity as the floral abundance of Fabuloso.  He asked us where we were from.  We told him we were from Symi and commented on the different way in which windows and shutters are handled between the two islands – on Symi shutters are outside and windows open inwards so the shutters have to be kept closed in the rain as otherwise they leak.  (Shums notice stuff like that.) In Patmos it is the other way round.  It turns out that the buildings in Patmos are so old that glass windows were added later – you only had shutters to keep out potential invaders or open spaces – which is why glass windows were added later, usually on the outside of the shutters which opened inwards, as in the photograph below.  When we mentioned the limitations of the archaeologia, the state body that controls what people do to buildings in places like Symi, Patmos and Rhodes Old Town, he rolled his eyes and said, “We also have UNESCO!”

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

After our chat with the janitor, who was careful to lock up after us so no sneaking back inside to take unauthorised pictures, we headed back up the hill to Chora for a final walk around.  Once again, we saw more companions with four legs than two.  This time we were taking on a guided walk by a small, friendly but independent-minded dog (no excessive demonstrations of affection, thank you).

We are not quite finished yet. There are still some more good photos left to share with you so watch out for the next instalment.

A Winter Weekend in Patmos (Part 5)

After visiting the Christodoulou monastery in Chora we hit the road in our hire car, heading north this time.  We had heard that there was a traditional wooden boat yard at the top of the island and boat yards are like catnip to us so off we went.  When we eventually reached the site of supposed boatyard it actually turned out to have been turned into a shooting range and all that was left was a large winch. For some reason, going back through our cameras, it seems that neither of us thought the place sufficiently photogenic to be worthy of immortalisation, unlike the goats who had taken over that end of the island.  They seemed to be fairly feral and we saw no signs of ear-tagging or other forms of flock marking.

Patmos has a lot of arable land in comparison to Symi, with generously sized terraced fields, threshing floors, wells and meadows.  Although there is quite a lot of tourist development it seems to be mainly low-rise and unintrusive, unlike the hotel complexes fringing Rhodes and Kos.  The island has a large reservoir, out of bounds to tourists, as well as two large – and functioning – wind turbines.

The third village on Patmos after the port of Skala and the old town, Chora, is called Kampos.  We stopped there for lunch on our way back.  The only taverna open was a real time capsule. The walls were lined with old black and white family photographs, venerable patriarchs and matrons and, somewhat surprisingly, a black and white cat, all looking straight ahead in the formal poses of the day.  The radiators were welcome against the chill.  We would have sat outside at a table in the sun but that was the smoking zone and already occupied by a young Greek couple, wreathed in clouds of roll-up tobacco.  The proprietor was busy loading massive skewers of whole chickens onto rotisseries over a bed of coals in the back kitchen for an event in the evening but he was happy to have a couple of lunch guests if we didn’t mind having something already prepared.  We had braised lamb shanks cooked with roasted red peppers and apricots and a stifado.  Both were delicious and we felt no need for a substantial meal in the evening.

By the time we got back to the hotel Skala was waking up from the brief winter siesta and we went for a stroll around the shops.  As the museum shop at the monastery was closed we went to see what the town had to offer by way of mementos.  One extremely dusty book shop yielded a copy of Cavafy to add to our collection but the souvenirs on offer were a bizarre mix of oriental bric a brac, discontinued Staffordshire pottery in a design that goes with nothing we already own, last year’s unsold Easter eggs and some very expensive icons.  We moved on to investigate the other two bookshops we had noticed the previous evening as well as the bio food shop and the newspaper shop.  In the newspaper shop we ran into the Croatian woman who was earnestly helping the young South Korean to select the best out of a bad collection of Patmos fridge magnets having resisted her exhortations to add an ungainly coffee mug to his suitcase.  The woman behind the counter was familiar – she had served us in Jumbo the previous evening (we bought a deliciously chintzy kitschy kitchen clock for a friend on Symi).  Even Patmos has job-sharing, it seems.

Supper that evening was a picnic in our room of hummous, pita and other bits and pieces from the AB supermarket down the road from the hotel while perusing the glossy picture books of Patmian icons and museum artefacts that the hotel keeps for the use of guests.

Sunday morning, before our departure, was set aside for a trip to the Church of the Apocalypse, the cave where St John the Divine had his famous revelations.  Of which more tomorrow.

shop 1
Hanging about hopefully outside one of several fishmongers

shop 2
Traditional supermarket. The window display is accessed by opening the windows from the street.

shop 3
Municipal buildings at the port.

shop 4
The Alpha Bank

A Winter Weekend in Patmos (Part 4)

 

The windmills at Chora on Patmos have been restored, initially by private initiative but now with some kind of grant.  One of them is fully functional and is, apparently, used to mill wheat in the summer.

The furthest one has a bronze Russian double-eagle over the door.  At first glance it looks like the Byzantine eagle used by the Greek Orthodox church in the Dodecanese but it differs in that it has a small crown above it, making it the emblem for the Russian royal family.  Interesting.

Apart from the Korean and Croatian tourists mentioned previously we did not see a soul on our walk from the monastery across to the windmills and back to the car park.  We did, however, see quite a few cats, of which more later.

Patmian architecture is very different to Symi’s.  The houses are flat-roofed stone structures with small windows and quirky doors within doors.  There are many tunnels across the lanes, supported by strong reeds and wooden beams to support the stone above.  The flat roofs are also made of reeds, wood and plaster which may be covered with gravel as insulation. Walls are painted white and woodwork is in muted shades of grey, eau de nil and verdigris. Very elegant.  I took more photographs on the Sunday morning so you still have those to look forward to.

After our morning explorations we then drove to the northern part of the island in search of a traditional wooden boat yard mentioned in a guidebook and met a lot of goats, but that is tomorrow’s instalment.

A Winter Weekend in Patmos (Part 3)

At first light on the Saturday morning Nicholas set off on an exploratory run, up the kalderimi (traditional stone-paved donkey path) through the trees to Chora on the hill top.  The path was well-maintained, although slippery with moss and weeds in places.  There is a policy in place to replace the fire-prone alien eucalyptus trees with indigenous conifers and in between the scorched trunks of eucalyptus there were new saplings, protected by mesh and connected to an irrigation network.  Once again, absolutely no litter, not even in the water courses.

After breakfast at the hotel we went up to Chora together.  The monastery gates open at 8.30 and we got there about an hour later.  There was not a soul to be seen but the door was open so we went in.  As we stood in the main courtyard, looking round, a chap of about 40 came up to us inquisitively.  It subsequently transpired that his name was Andoni, that he has learning difficulties of some sort and that he was in sole charge that day.  He was not expecting to see tourists and it was just as well that Nicholas speaks good Greek as he was slightly intimidating.  Eventually he left us alone to explore, only occasionally popping up from a random doorway or tunnel to check that we weren’t committing sacrilege.  One drawback of visiting in the winter is that the museum, treasury and museum shop are closed, although this is not mentioned in any of the guide books and the locals, when we asked later down in the harbour, seemed surprised.  A phone call from our hotelier established that these days there are so few tourists in the off season that it is no longer worth paying staff to open up these facilities between October and April.  Hence Andoni, no doubt.

An advantage, on the other hand, was that we could wander about and soak up the atmosphere without too many obvious 21st century intrusions.  Speaking of 21st century intrusions, the public toilets were open and immaculate, not just in the monastery but also the municipal facilities.  Symi, take note!

As you can see the views from the rooftops are fantastic.  In my next instalment I will share with you some photographs of the windmills as well as the lanes we walked through to reach them.

By the way, we weren’t the only foreign visitors on the island that weekend.  There was also a young man from South Korea and a middle-aged woman from Croatia.  More about them later!