Greek Salad, Mythos and Calamri . . .

Me, Rose and Shel have spent the last 10 days reclining on a beach chair on the Aegean and sunning ourselves silly. What a great relaxing break. Rose and I knew this already as we had already been to the island of Symi more than a few times before in the last few years. Symi is a tiny rock island in the Dodecanesse Islands on the Turkish side of the Aegean. It is an island that used to be wealthy with sponge diving but throughout two world wars, the island didn't know if was Turkish or Italian. The "ownership" of the islands have been bouncing around for a while but it has been greek now since 1948 I believe. It's main income and wealth is now tourism of course. Apparently during bad times in Symi, a lot of locals emigrated to Australia and settled in Sydney. There are 3500 people who call themselves "Simian" in Sydney! There is even a hotel there now called "The Opera Apartments" after the Sydney Opera House.

Symi has a lovely deep harbor and attracts a lot of large sailing and cruising yachts as well as large tourist ferrys. It only has a couple of roads, two small towns and a monastery. This is why we like it. The tourists come in for the day to check out the beautiful Byzantine architecture and the jewelry shops. They come in AFTER 11am by which point we have totted off on a small taxi boat to a beach called Nanou around the other side of the island.



The beach has 50 umbrellas and sun lounges. One Taverna and plenty of goats. It is only accessible by boat or by intrepid walking types who enjoy walking down scree slopes! The water is blue blue blue clear and the mythos beer is kept cold by the locals who run the taverna.



For the time that we were in Symi, we were lucky to be present for the local Symi Festival. This meant that the local square was decked out with a stage ready to present a varied selection of entertainment for the locals and toruists alike. Our villa/apartment overlooked the main harbour and the local square, so although it took 160 steps to walk up to the apartment, we got a birds eye view of the entire stage and the ocean. This year we were treated to a Greek crooner, traditional Symian dancing, traditional Greek dancing, greek music. It was all rich with local life and tradition.

Before we got to Symi, we spent almost a day in Athens before getting on a Ferry (previously a cross channel ferry) for a 18 hour trip across the med. Athens was great, but the Ferry was a real challenge. It may have been worth paying the few extra euros to fly from Athens to Rhodes. In fact, flying directly to Rhodes would have been more sensible! But we chose to see Athens and the acropolis.



The whole holiday has been superb. We ate, drank, slept, walked, sunned, swam, read, talked, laughed and all the other superlative things people do on summer vacations! Back now in London a little poorer economically speaking, but a little richer in sun tans and well being!