You never know what you are going to spot, walking around Symi. Anyone who knows where these are, please comment on this blog 🙂Back in the 80s and 90s this was a tourist shop at the bottom of the Pedi road. Now you have to go to Yialos to buy sunhats, sarongs and beach towels.It may still be hot and the first rains are still about 6 weeks away but this local works on his garden every day. I have noticed a big increase in agricultural activities on Symi in recent years. The only way to survive on an austerity income is by living off the land as far as possible.Tyres perish in the hot Symi sun. It is not unusual to see various protective improvisations like this one.If I had not heard the bleat I would never have noticed this nanny goat. She looks almost as weather-beaten as her surroundings.Beehives. Symi honey is prized for its delicate herbal flavours from wild mountain thyme, sage and rigani. You can find it for sale in limited quantities at several of the supermarkets, grocers and tourist shops.August is definitely over. There are very few yachts in Pedi now and they are of more modest proportions. The rich and famous have gone to play somewhere else or are back in their counting houses, counting out their money.The so-called marina in Pedi. As you can see, it is far too narrow to be a marina. Only very small local boats can squeeze inside. Apparently the plans did not take into account the widening of the waterfront between the time the original survey was done and construction actually started so the enclosed area is 4 metres narrower than originally intended. No comments please! Visiting yachts can tie up on the outside. Unfortunately there are no actual amenities available so don’t expect shore power, laundry, wifi or hot showers. It is, however, conveniently solid to tie up to if you are tired of rowing an inflatable full of shopping across the bay in a brisk catabatic.Fishermen’s cottages on the northern Pedi waterfront, as seen from the head of the marina.And finally, spotted in the Chorio car park… Cats don’t have the monopoly on cuteness around here.
August is over. The crowds have gone. The children are preparing for another school year. Next week the ferry schedules change as Blue Star reverts to smaller boats on the Symi route. Good bye, Nissos Chios, Welcome Back, Patmos!
There is also far less traffic on the roads. British tourists tend to be apprehensive about hiring cars and driving on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. The holidaymakers from other parts of Greece and further afield who arrive with their cars on the Blue Star have also gone home again. If you do visit Symi in September it is well worth hiring a car for a day or so to explore the interior of the island and visit Kokkimides monastery, Roukoniotis monastery and Toli Bay. While there are organised mini-bus excursions if there are enough of you, having your own wheels gives you more freedom to stop and take photographs as well as linger at places that take your fancy. On a clear day you can see as far as Kos on one side and Rhodes on the other with the islands of Halki, Tilos and Nissyros also visible.
As the continent of Europe starts to cool to the north of us, so has the breeze that blows down the Aegean, bringing welcome relief from the searing temperatures of the Symi summer. It is still around 30 degrees at midday but after days in the forties, 30 seems quite mild. Nights are cooling off too. We plugged our boiler in for hot water yesterday for the first time since May. Not quite time to dig out the duvet and woolly jumpers just yet though. That doesn’t happen until early November!
The view from the top. Pedi bay has been very full for the past couple of weeks. Symi has always been a popular destination for Turkish yachtsmen and the recent Eid holiday brought lots of maritime visitors, despite the plunging value of the Turkish lira.This opulent creeper caught my eye in Pedi recently.The jetty in Pedi is not just for pleasure boats and water taxis. Pedi is the port for the fuel tanker for the power station, water ships, small freighters and all sorts of random commercial traffic destined for the yards and warehouses that line the Pedi road.A few of the houses along the seafront in Pedi have managed to hang onto some sort of water frontage and outdoor living space, unlike the ones along the north side who lost their frontage to a sea of concrete when the ill-thought out ‘marina’ was built.The million dollar question is why the cat in the previous photograph is snoozing on a pallet when he would be so much more comfortable on the neighbours’ cushions.Cockerels roosting in a tree in the valley. Chickens are actually by nature woodland fowl and when they go feral this becomes quite obvious. The hens may nest and lay eggs in shrubby places at ground level when they go broody but the rest of the time everyone prefers to roost as high up as they can get.Some more Pedi seating. That looks a bit like an old bench off the Symi I ferry.The method of hauling boats out of the water hasn’t changed much since Homeric times. ‘Greased ways’ are still used. The local wooden boat designs haven’t changed their underwater profiles much since Homeric times either which is why these wooden skids still work. An advantage is they can be infinitely modified by whacking on extra bits of wood as required to keep the caique stable.Something else that probably hasn’t changed much over the centuries either.A recent view from Villa Jasmine in Pedi.The view from my ironing board. These days I spend much of my time down in Pedi, washing and ironing the sheets and towels for the houses I look after. From where I stand I can look out of two windows and all sorts of interesting things happen if one looks carefully enough. I saw vague movement on the hillside and the zoom lens of my camera revealed a local beekeeper, checking his hives.The view from the front window alternates between very busy with the bus and taxis rattling past to very peaceful, depending on where we are in the hourly bus schedule and the harbour ferry movements. About 15 minutes after a ferry comes into Yialos, a cavalcade of taxis and mini buses roars past, tooting on the blind bend. Then it is all over for another half an hour or so.Garden furniture for sale. The gypsy hawkers are an important part of island life, selling all sorts of items according to the season. Right now it is garden furniture, clay pots, potting soil and the hardier drought resistant plants. Next month they will be selling hunting clothes and carpets. If you are patient, everything comes to you eventually on Symi, whether it be day old chicks, artisanal cheese, Chinese power tools, designer knock-offs or shag-pile carpets. This is how people on the smaller islands got their necessities before on line shopping, car ferries to Rhodes, IKEA deliveries and other modern conveniences. There’s still some excitement in seeing just what trundles off the car ferries and there are bargains to be had if you aren’t too picky about designs and colour schemes.We have an elegant new bus stop at the fork in the road in Pedi. The local carpenter who made it specialises in ecclesiastical furniture for the island’s numerous chapels and churches, hence the delicate roof. Whether it will survive the rigours of a Symi winter remains to be seen. It had only been up a couple of days when I took this photograph. A far cry from the robust corrugated iron bus stops immortalised in Will Travis’ famous book about Symi in the 1970s called ‘Bus Stop Symi. What made bus stops note worthy on Symi in the 60s and 70s was that the island had neither roads nor buses at the time!
These days I so seldom go down into the harbour, when I do it feels like a different island altogether. They may be baling hay in the Pedi Valley but in Yialos they are selling sunhats to pink-faced tourists and cold beers go down like iced water in the desert. The thermometer nudged forty degrees last week and rows of thunder storms are marching through Greece, from the Ionian, across the Aegean to Turkey and beyond. The Mediterranean never really cooled down last winter and the rising temperatures are spawning lots of storm activity. It is not usual for the Greek met office to be issuing severe weather warnings in June.
A chance seed scattering is turning into a jungle of morning glory. As the island turns gold under the summer sun, puddles of green provide welcome relief to dazzled eyes.Plumbago finds support in an olive tree.Down on the Pedi road, the draught beer is ready to head out to bars and tavernas around the island.Some things have changed – the old Symi Visitor office is now cherry red and a new Symi laundry has opened up in place of Wendy’s Sunflower laundry. Other things will never change – like the town hall’s futile attempts to prevent people from parking along the front in the summer. The big red plastic bollards filled with water that were reasonably successful last summer have been deployed elsewhere, preventing motorists from going over various bits of road undercut or washed away in the November storm.Yes, he is talking on a mobile phone and yes, that is a lavatory seat in the single-use blue plastic bag (I wonder if he was charged the obligatory 4 cents?).The yachts are getting bigger and the harbour busier.
These days I so seldom go down into the harbour, when I do it feels like a different island altogether. They may be baling hay in the Pedi Valley but in Yialos they are selling sunhats to pink-faced tourists and cold beers go down like iced water in the desert. The thermometer nudged forty degrees last week and rows of thunder storms are marching through Greece, from the Ionian, across the Aegean to Turkey and beyond. The Mediterranean never really cooled down last winter and the rising temperatures are spawning lots of storm activity. It is not usual for the Greek met office to be issuing severe weather warnings in June.
As Sean Damer once observed, in his notorious Ethnography on Tourism on Symi, when we aren’t talking about the weather, we are talking about the ferries. Well, if you live on a small island without an airport and heavily dependent on tourism for survival, everything depends on both. The Attica Group who own Superfast Ferries and Blue Star Ferries have now bought Hellenic Seaways. This has had some significant implications for Symi for the summer. The Patmos has been moved to a different route and the Nissos Chios is now doing the Wednesday and Friday routes, with rather drastic changes in arrival and departure times. For more information, please go to Andy’s excellent travel blog. The other change is the return of the ANES Symi II to Symi waters. This is to replace the Sea Dreams Symi which is now running the Skopelos route. The Symi II does not have a ferry license and is only running excursions from Rhodes. There are also photographs circulating on social media of a new shuttle boat built for ANES that is supposed to be serving the Rhodes Symi route on a passenger only basis. As this is still to complete sea trials and licensing procedures, there is no real information about when it will actually come into service and what the actual schedule will be. As usual the only more or less consistent player in the field is Dodecanese Seaways.
Meanwhile, my new property management business now has a logo and business cards which should be ready next week. My website needs a bit more tweaking. I am still sorting out some logistical issues with my business premises in Pedi so I am currently still working from home. The people whose Symi holidays I managed to salvage seem very happy which can only be a Good Thing. Various of the old Symi Visitor properties can now be found on AirBnB and other on line booking platforms. If you can’t find the one you are looking for, please email me on symipropertyservices@gmail.com and I will put you in touch with the relevant person.
A wide range of languages can be heard on the streets of Symi, including Mandarin and Hebrew in addition to the more usual Russian, French, Italian, German, Danish, Norwegian…
Semi-detached Symi style.Generally speaking, Symiot village houses are not big – often just a kitchen downstairs with the rainwater cistern behind and then a salon above with a moussandra sleeping loft above that. When flush loos and showers arrived in the 1970s, there was seldom space indoors for the plumbing arrangements so they were build on wherever they could fit. It is not unusual to see facilities separate from the house or tagged on in the courtyard or even, in some cases, actually across the lane on a separate plot.Not quite en suite but it will do!The Harani area of the harbour has become very built up in recent years. Quieter than the main harbour during the busy months of summer, it is also one of the very few places on the island where one can live within walking distance of a beach.This narrow concrete track was the original motor road connecting Yialos with Chorio. Apparently it was built by the Italians with motorbikes in mind and the angles of the zigzags are acute to say the least. Chopped off when the new two lane motor road out of the town was built in the 1980s, one can still see remnants of the stone foundations of this original road up by the windmills.Now abandoned, this intriguing house on the Pedi road probably has the most ornamental faces on the island. The winged Hermes/Eros motif also appears on the dentist’s surgery at the bottom of the Kateraktis lane at the back of the harbour. The grimacing man is also a central motif on a pediment near Kampos in Chorio and several other houses in the area.The faces even continue round the corner.A neighbour was not so extravagant.Stars and flowers above a door below the windmills.
June has arrived, hot and sticky with the rumble of far distant thunder storms over the embracing Turkish coast. We actually had a couple of hours of steady light rain one evening earlier this week, enough to make the gutters drip and wash the dust off the citrus trees. Every night we hear the desalination plant, squeaking away on the Pedi road as it frantically turns sea water into an approximation of the fresh stuff to keep our lavatories flushing and our showers running. We had a lot of rain this winter but it came to an abrupt halt at the end of February and cisterns are emptying fast.
The water taxis are back in business. The beach tavernas are opening up, albeit with limited menus at the moment. A wide range of languages can be heard on the streets of Symi, including Mandarin and Hebrew in addition to the more usual Russian, French, Italian, German, Danish, Norwegian… There are still lots of British visitors around but they are no longer the dominant group they used to be. June used to be referred to as ‘the English month’ on Symi. Not any more. There’s a polyglot cosmopolitan vibe that used only to be in evidence in the high season months of July and August.
Symi is famous for its beautiful neo-classical houses. The pediments are adorned with all sorts of devices such as stars, crosses, concentric rings and, sometimes, faces. I spotted this one recently in Chorio, near the windmills.
Looking across to the old Kastro from Milos (windmill) ridge of Chorio. The tree-topped hills on the right form the back of the famous amphitheatre harbour. There is a narrow winding road along that crest, leading to the ancient monastery of Roukoniotis and the precipitous descent to Toli Bay.Another view from the same vantage point, showing the back of Yialos far below. The diagonal row of houses visible just above the pergola in the right foreground are on the Kali Strata, the famous steps connecting Chorio with Yialos and Harani. Symi is a very compact island, only 8 miles long and 5 miles wide at its broadest, and most habitation is clustered around this north-eastern group of hills. Getting about, however, involves a great deal of legwork. Those tiers of pretty houses are connected by steps rather than roads. The motor road that connects Yialos with Chorio is an incredible feat of engineering, sweeping far into the countryside and back again, to embrace the steep incline.Symi is famous for its beautiful neo-classical houses. The pediments are adorned with all sorts of devices such as stars, crosses, concentric rings and, sometimes, faces. I spotted this one recently in Chorio, near the windmills.When I first came to Symi in 1993 ochre and brown were the dominant colours. Indeed these seemed to be the only colours stocked ready mixed by the local hardware store. If you wanted anything else, you bought packets of pigment and mixed them into the whitewash yourself. Gloss paint was limited to white, ochre and mid-brown – colours that are still common in some neighbourhoods. Then along came acrylic paints and computer mixing and the fun began. The archaeologia, the government department that looks after heritage sites such as Symi, still has final say on what colours are permitted but Symi’s palette has expanded in many directions.An immaculate house in a quiet lane below the windmills.Dragon’s breath has scorched the tender petals of roses and other flowers, turning them into pot pourri overnight. Falling humidity and rising temperatures are taking their toll.This tottering three storey mansion house off the main square in Chorio has some delightful touches of whimsy. A few months ago, when I was still writing on my original blog, I posted a photograph of the Greek flag held to the balcony railing by a yellow measuring tape. Now the sun brings emphasis to an otherwise ugly electricity meter.Agia Trianda (Holy Trinity) is the last of the really big churches at the top of Chorio. There is the small church of Periotissa (Our Lady of Pireus) above it but that is little more than a chapel. Those pink blobs on the slopes of the Vigla behind are oleander bushes flowering along the motor road that connects Yialos and Chorio with Panormitis monastery at the south western end of the island. The oleanders continue as far as the turn off to Xisos, Roukoniotis and Toli.The Markle Sparkle was felt even as far afield as Symi. This was the Olive Tree on Saturday. They were selling Royal Wedding themed elderflower cupcakes in aid of the local high school. Further up the steps, at Lefteris Kafeneion, otherwise known as Bulmas, Pimms was being served with ever more fanciful garnishes as the island’s British expat community arrived, armed with plates of nibbles.A fallen bag of barley made a great breakfast for these two. They were both trailing loose tethers but showed no signs of going anywhere further than the bag of barley. Ponies, donkeys and mules are still commonly used on Symi, particularly to take materials to building sites and to remove rubble. Most places are just totally inaccessible to any other form of transport. Foals are taught the routes, following with the trains on the various jobs, so that by the time they are old enough and strong enough to carry loads, they know all the lanes and steps.
Most of those package holiday companies have either dropped Symi from their listings as too expensive and awkward to get to (the shrinking ferry schedule is a self-fulfilling prophecy) or the companies themselves have disappeared, gobbled up in the eternal quest for ever cheaper ‘value for money’ deals that eventually became unsustainable.
May is a fragrant month on Symi. Apart from the ubiquitous jasmine and the somewhat cloying Persian lilacs, many older gardens also have honeysuckle scrambling over fences and pergolas. On Symi this usually flowers twice a year – in May and then again in September.Pomegranate flowers. Pomegranate trees are quite small, more like big shrubs than proper trees. As you can see, the flowers are quite solid with thick waxy petals. The fruit is ready to pick in late September through October.The courgette glut is well underway. New blossoms appear early every morning, shrivelling away in the heat of the day. The fruits grow so fast they have to be picked daily, even if one does not intend to use them that day. Today’s sweet tender courgette becomes tomorrow’s tough vegetable marrow if left a day too long. Courgette fritters in all their incarnations are a taverna staple at this time of the year. They can also be used instead of aubergines in the making of moussaka, sliced thinly lengthwise and grilled to eat with garlic sauce as a mezze, hollowed out or halved lengthwise and stuffed with rice or meat – in May and June every housewife on the island is working her way through kilos and kilos of fresh courgettes. There are more yachts about now. I caught this early morning departure from Pedi one clear morning last week. That scar on the hillside on the right is the foot path to St Nicholas beach, one of Symi’s most popular family beaches.A novel way to discourage cats from sauntering into a Chorio courtyard. If you spot this place, take a quick peak over the wall. There are the remnants of an old and elaborate colonnade, a fragment of which you can just see on the left of the aperture.A last lingering poppy in Chorio. As the earth behind the dry stone walls dries out, the plants shrivel away. Symi’s secret stone gardens turn back into barren dry stone walls until the drought breaks in late October.This was the view from the terrace of Agios Thannasis church in Chorio one afternoon last week. This was most probably a flotilla of charter yachts being delivered to their cruising base such as Kos or even a Turkish port such as Bodrum.
A band of thunder showers passed over Greece last week. Symi got off lightly with a few muddy sprinkles and a general clearing of the air. Rhodes and many parts of the Greek mainland as well as neighbouring Turkey had heavy downpours, enough, in some cases, to cause local flooding. We are unlikely to see any significant rain now until late October or even November. The Southern Aegean has one of the longest summer droughts in the Mediterranean. The last time Symi had rain strong enough to set the gutters flowing to fill cisterns was the end of February. It looks as though 2018 is going to be a very long hot dry summer.
The first Olympic Holiday people arrived on Symi last week, marking the beginning of the official tourist season. 25 years ago there were many package holiday companies servicing Symi, notable among them being Laskarina, Manos, Kosmar, Small World, Travel a la Carte and Hidden Greece. Accommodation was a mixture of restored traditional local houses, privately owned small studio and apartment developments designed to look just like Symi’s traditional houses and small pensions. The emphasis was on authentic island life, simple self-catering and lots of convivial dining in local tavernas. Symi’s tourist businesses timed their openings to coincide with these arrivals, knowing that there would be enough visitors staying on the island to provide them with customers in bars, cafes, tavernas, excursions and the like.
Now that certainty has gone. Most of those package holiday companies have either dropped Symi from their listings as too expensive and awkward to get to (the shrinking ferry schedule is a self-fulfilling prophecy) or the companies themselves have disappeared, gobbled up in the eternal quest for ever cheaper ‘value for money’ deals that eventually became unsustainable.
All inclusive packages to resort hotels in Rhodes are good for consumers who want to know exactly how much their holiday is going to cost and don’t really care if it is Greece, Spain, Egypt or Turkey as long as the sun shines, the pool is full and the food and drink bountiful and free. Unfortunately these packages are death to local economies as holiday guests seldom venture forth into the community, prices are pared down to the last cent so wages in these complexes are often below the legal minimum and limited local resources are stretched to breaking point.
Last summer Rhodes found itself in the previously unheard of situation of running out of water. So much water was being diverted to hotel complexes with their swimming pools, manicured lawns and unlimited showers that there was no water available for the locals. Villages and towns found themselves without water for days on end. A situation with which Symiots are only too familiar – this is why we all have cisterns – but for which Rhodes is poorly equipped.
Ironically, high value property owners who had invested significant sums in purchasing holiday homes and villas on the island found themselves seriously inconvenienced for the benefit of low value all inclusive holidaymakers whose tourist spend largely stayed in the pockets of the international holiday companies hosting their holidays. A state of affairs hardly likely to encourage further foreign investment.
That’s probably enough of the serious food for thought for today. If you are still reading, have a good week! Remember, you can always join in the discussion by commenting, or by emailing me here.
Shortly after 11 on Monday morning, once the day trippers from Rhodes have safely disembarked into the custody of assorted tour guides, I noticed activity at the stern of the Sea Dreams Symi.On closer inspection, this turned out to be a plank.Followed by a ladder.Don’t look down!I hope this takes my weight.No, I don’t need the ladder anymore.Can’t you see I am still putting the tape on? I don’t need the paint just yet.Marking out the letters with masking tape.It looks better already.
Health and safety rules do exist in Greece. I mean, once a year a road block is set up at the windmills above Yialos to check that people are using helmets when out on their motorbikes. It is illegal to use mobile phones while driving but no one pays much attention to that one either. We have all seen such Greek island classics as a motorcyclist yakking on the phone while juggling a frappe cup and a cigarette and steering with his knees as he negotiates the waterfront bends in Yialos.
Painters totter at the top of extension ladders, the bottoms of which are balanced on steep steps or out in the street with no hazard signs. Occasionally someone comes unstuck but this happens remarkably seldom. This might be because in Greece, particularly in the islands, people grow up taking responsibility for their own actions and don’t count on someone else to look out for them. If you have survived childhood sleeping on a moussandra loft with a 3 metre ladder to climb up from the stone floor below, the chances are good you have been living dangerously from the outset. Riding to school on a motorbike, clinging to dad’s back along with several other siblings, because there’s no money for a family car brings with it a confidence those of us from more sheltered backgrounds can only envy.
I watched the above sequence of events play out in Yialos yesterday morning. Harbour balconies offer fascinating insights into island life and if you can handle the steps, it is well worth spending at least your first visit to Symi in one of the neo-classical houses that form the tiers of Symi’s famous amphitheatre harbour. You may never leave your opera box vantage point for the duration of your stay. For more mesmerising harbour view observations, visit James Collins’ blog over at Symi Dream – he has to try to work with that view from his desk!
