Tag: Greece

Symi Summertime Blues

Well, here we are in July. The days are long, the sun is hot, the sea is warm. Normally this is high season and the bay is full of yachts swinging at anchor and Yialos full of gulets and gleaming megayachts. This year both are empty.  There are still restrictions in place regarding yachting movements, many cruising yachtsmen are in the vulnerable over 70s demographic so reluctant to travel, flights have to be booked, anti-fouling applied, boats launched – it will take a while for the summer time parade of visiting yachts and gulets to appear, if it ever does this year.  At the moment, due to Covid-19 testing protocols, Symi is not a port of entry for non-Greek yachts so even if sailing between Greece and Turkey were to resume, it would have to be through Rhodes.

Katsaras in Pedi has been open for a while, as you will have gathered from previous blog posts, and the sunbeds are also out at St Nicholas, even though the water taxi is not running as yet.  Apostoli’s is now making the transition from boatyard to waterfront taverna.  The last of the caiques is in the water and the bobcat is landscaping the beach.  The chairs and tables are getting a lick of paint and the sunbeds are ready to roll.

The Pedi Beach hotel is still pretty much deserted although I saw a pink bathing costume hanging out to dry from one of the umbrellas (sorry, no photo, my batteries were flat).

The general trend at the moment is that the old people head for the sea early – 7 a.m. or thereabouts – and time their walk back up the hill before the heat nails them to the tarmac.  From about 4 p.m. on wards the younger locals make for the water – parents with small children, groups of teenagers, local teachers and so on.  In the middle of the day it is just far too hot at the moment for anyone to move.  Temperatures are in the 40s and only the cicadas are busy.

There is some anxiety on the island at the moment.  In the usual state of Covid-induced paranoia, the news that two Greek-Americans who managed to get to Karpathos in June became ill with Covid-19 after their arrival, infected several relatives before they themselves were isolated in hospital in Crete and resulted in an entire village being put into lockdown has not gone down well.  This was followed a few days later by the news that of the 9 new cases of Covid-19 announced yesterday, 7 of them were tourist arrivals from abroad, and the land border with Serbia has been closed due to an increase of cases there.

Meanwhile, as I write this, my laptop has just pinged a notification that will bring joy to the hearts of any readers from the UK who have flights booked for this month.

Good luck!  Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Greece Welcomes the World?

blog 16 June 2020 a
The water taxis are ready and waiting.

blog 16 June 2020 bblog 16 June 2020 c

blog 16 June 2020 d
Boatyard chick.
blog 16 June 2020 e
Not quite ready for lunch customers just yet.
blog 16 June 2020 f
A work in progress – all the boats are back in the water and it is time to transform the littoral into a beach.
blog 16 June 2020 g
High water levels in Pedi as the solstice approaches.

With much fanfare and a Santorini sunset TV op, Greece’s prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared the 2020 tourist season open.  As is the norm this year, confusion prevails regarding who can travel and what is happening regarding Covid-19 testing and quarantine.  With regulations changing daily and the difficulties the media are having in keeping up to date with the ever-changing landscape, the most reliable source of information on who can travel and what should be happening on arrival is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website.  This, of course, does not mean that the Ministry of Tourism and the Ministry of Health might not have other ideas but it is a good starting point.

The current measures and lists only really apply to the situation from now to 30 June.  1 July is supposed to see a major opening up to broader international travel but this is highly dependent on how things go in Greece in the next two weeks and also what happens in countries like the USA and the UK where the disease figures are still high.  Greece is treading a fine line between the tourist revenue it desperately needs and destroying brand Greece’s reputation as a safe destination if the virus starts to arrive in significant numbers from abroad.

Tourists themselves are also faced with an ethical dilemma – do I travel because I want to have my holiday and I put my own pleasure first or do I wait until next year in order to protect the health of my hosts?  Many of Symi’s regular visitors, as well as property owners, are discussing this at some length on social media and the general feeling is to stay away until it really is safe to travel, not just because some bureaucrat says so.

Seasonal resort hotels, museums and brothels opened their doors from yesterday.  Gyms have also been allowed to reopen.  Once again, all sorts of new rules, regulations and protocols apply.  The Pedi Beach Hotel has all its umbrellas set up at the new spacings. They had a few Greek guests over the weekend but I didn’t see anyone on my walk this morning, just a lone painter on an extension ladder.

Once again ‘wait and see’ is the motto of the day.

And in other news, temperatures on Symi are now around 30 degrees at midday, dropping to about 20 at night.  After a few exceptionally clear days the heat haze is building up and Saharan sand is drifting up over Crete and the mainland, bringing high temperatures with it.

Keep safe everyone.

 

 

Socially Distant Symi

Carnival, Clean Monday Easter and May Day came and went discreetly during the Covid-19 lock down. The same cannot be said for Greek Pentecost which was celebrated with great enthusiasm last weekend. The first holiday since Epiphany in January that could be celebrated in any way, Greece saw its first real surge of domestic tourism.

In Mykonos, the famous party island, Athenians flocked to the beach bars that had opened for that weekend.  The inevitable happened and at least one was fined 20 000 euros and closed for 60 days for violating the social distancing regulations.  Symi, on the other hand, was a place of pilgrimage and Dodecanese Seaways brought people over from Rhodes to go to Panormitis monastery.  Rather more sedate and the photographs emerging on social media were nothing like the jam-packed throngs we usually associate with events like the Panormitis festival or even Sunday church-goers from Rhodes.  Those tavernas and cafes in Yialos that have opened finally had some customers and there was a bit of an ambient hum to the island that has been absent since last summer.

Katsaras in Pedi is one of the few organised beaches that is open at the moment.  As you can see from the photographs, the umbrellas and sunbeds are widely spaced.  The beach has been extended slightly seaward with more sand so that the front row of sunbeds is further out that usual.  The taverna is now open.  Apostoli’s on the other side of Pedi bay is still in boat-yard mode although most of the boats have now been launched.  Locals go along and help themselves from the pile of sunbeds in the corner.

Although the water taxis are being launched none of them is in operation as they don’t have their 2020 licenses as yet and in any case there isn’t really anywhere for them to go until the beach tavernas open and there are enough tourists to justify the service.  The beach and taverna over at Toli bay on the west coast of the island opened for Pentecost but that is accessible by road.

At time of writing, the Nireus, Aliki and Pedi Beach hotels are still closed.  Of these, the Pedi Beach looks the most promising as work is continuing on upgrading the rooms and there are staff around, doing things, even if the hotel is not actually open.

No word about what is or isn’t happening at Agia Marina.  No signs of any activity at Petalo.  NOS beach, the town beach, is not open yet but there is activity going on.

Technically the 2020 international tourist season starts from 15 June which is next Monday and travellers arriving from the approved list will not be subject to quarantine measures, only random spot checks.  All international flights will still be going through Athens.  Local airports like Rhodes will only start receiving international flights from 1 July.  Travel between Greece and Italy is supposed to start opening up from next week, although some Italian airports are still on the high risk list.  Main arrivals are likely to be on the big Super Fast ferries coming from Ancona.   All ferry travel, both domestic and international, requires the completion of a special form before departure, answering various questions regarding health as well as providing contact details and addresses so that in the event of anyone having the virus, all likely contacts can be traced and notified as quickly as possible.  Speaking of ferries, Symi won’t have daily ferries until the Panagia Skiadeni comes on line on 30 June to fill some of the gaps.  This is dependent on there being enough tourists in Rhodes to justify day excursions from Rhodes to Symi so there is a strong element of wait and see there.  The word in the harbour is that we won’t be seeing the ANES Sebeco shuttle this year.  Apparently it is most likely going to serve a potentially more lucrative route off the the mainland.  Of course as this is the year where no one really knows what is happening from one day to the next this may well change.

No one knows for sure yet what countries will be allowed in without any kind of quarantine requirements after 1 July as so much depends on epidemiological profiles elsewhere and these change daily.  There is also concern at all levels because there has been an increase in the number of new cases of Covid-19 in the last 10 days or so, many of them associated with arrivals from abroad (Greeks returning rather than tourist travellers).  The daily government briefings on TV have been reinstated and the situation is being monitored closely.  Specific areas may be isolated or locked down if there is any danger of them escalating into hot spots.  Qatar airlines is only allowed to resume flights into Athens after 15 June as a flight from Doha on 1 June had 12 positive cases out of 91 passengers.  Emirates only resumes on 15 July.  Other airlines are cancelling or rescheduling flights as they go, depending on changing regulations and reduced demand.  I have been receiving emails from mainly British regular visitors to Symi, telling me that their holidays have been cancelled or that they have been rescheduled.  With the UK now implementing a 14 day quarantine period for travellers returning from abroad, it is not surprising that the UK package holiday companies are cancelling June and July holidays on a rolling basis.

Once again, all we can do is wait and see – and do our bit to maintain social distancing to keep ourselves and others safe and well.

 

 

Symi Spring in a time of Covid-19

Symi in particular and Greece in general has changed a lot in the last week or so.  On Tuesday afternoon I was at an elegant tea party in Chorio, nibbling crustless smoked salmon sandwiches and eyeing the dishes of whipped cream and strawberries when suddenly various phones around the table went ‘ping’.  All the mothers of school-age children discovered that the schools were closing down for a fortnight with immediate effect. That was the start.

The next day, when the WHO declared the pandemic, the messages on phones and in social media gained momentum.  Schools and universities closed, as well as clubs, indoor play grounds, kindergartens, art galleries, museums, archaeological sites, cafes, bars, restaurants, tavernas, department stores, shopping malls and, eventually also tourist hotels (shut until 30 April) and finally, last night, the borders with Albania and North Macedonia and the sea border with Italy.  Cruise ships, which had been using Rhodes as a kind of bolt hole after being turned away from Limassol in Cyprus and Haifa in Israel are now barred from stopping in Greece. The directive also includes sailing yachts so anyone who over winters their boat in the cheap marinas of nearby Turkey may have a problem if their paperwork expires before the ban is lifted.

We are all supposed to be self-isolating as much as possible, something which the state has been having difficulty in implementing, hence the increasingly draconian shut downs.  For example, Saturday was an unseasonably sunny spring day so all the bored Athenians who could not while away the time in their usual fashion, in cafes, galleries and the like, headed for the beach.  Understandable but when several thousand people head for the beach they are not exactly following the principles of isolation that were intended by the closures.  Hasty legislation followed, shutting down organised beaches as well as ski resorts.

The police are actively going round, ensuring that businesses that should be closed are doing so.  Only supermarkets, pharmacies, bakeries, take aways and banks are allowed to be open at the moment and that is within certain parameters.  The number of people inside at any one time is limited and safe spacing must be maintained.  This morning legislation kicks in, limiting the number of people in supermarkets at any one time to 1 per every 10 square metres and they should maintain a distance of at least 2 meters apart in the check out queue.

Symi is very quiet.  The cafes and bars in Chorio and Yialos that are normally open all year round are sealed up with their chairs stacked on their tables.  Scena in Chorio and the International Taverna in Yialos which had been open through the winter are offering take away food and I have noticed on the Rhodian newsfeeds that many Rhodian restaurants are also announcing that they will be keeping their kitchens open for take aways and deliveries.  With the law coming through at such short notice they have perishable stock that needs using up and there is no knowing how long these closures will last. The fact that late Saturday night it was announced that tourist hotels and holiday accommodation were to remain closed until at least 30 April means that there won’t be much trade apart from locals.

I must get on now with sorting tins and bottles and making a shopping list in case we have to stay at home completely.  More tomorrow!