Symi again.

Its a long time since I posted and today I'm going to do two posts.  The other one is about Yarndale. 

This one is a reminder of our trip to Symi on 11th for a week, and I enjoyed it more than ever. It was our fifth visit..and I have to admit I didn't really want to go this year. I'd had enough of being away from home for a bit with Yarndale coming up and I wasn't looking forward to the journey. However we booked the flight with Ryanair and booked the apartment, that was the easy bit and then I went onto the Dodekanisos ferry booking site and discovered the evening ferry is broken! 

So even though we'd booked 7 nights on Symi we had to have our first one on Rhodes.

 We had a lovely meal in a restaurant in the New Market place called Oute Lepi which apparently means 'No Scales' some kind of jokey pun I think, lost on me.

I like this little garden hanging from the wall..I took a picture so we can build our own, but I fear it may just become a slug paradise if I do.

 So the next morning we hadn't managed to book on the early ferry and the later one went a sort of scenic tour, stopping for an hour at the Monastery of Panormitis. I had said I'd like to go there again. I hadn't quite envisaged that I would be there in my traveling clothes with all my luggage. It was incredible to see the number of people who arrived. Two huge day tripper boats from Rhodes  came in and I'll bet two thousand people were walking about this tiny village which is mostly monastery.

So eventually we arrived in our lovely apartment. I would recommend Taxiarchis apartments. A very kind owner who met us from the ferry in hos car, and encouraged tow young Hungarian tourists to share the ride even though they weren't staying there, and wouldn't take any money from them.

We had a lovely little terrace with a view of Pedi bay. It was very relaxing. Simple, quite basic but inexpensive and very clean and well cared for.

 we were near a lovely little cafe called 'The Olive Tree' run by English women. I know thats the worst kind of tourist thing to do...find an english cafe, but the food was so delicious and we had lunch a couple of times when we fancied a change from Greek food, under a canopy of leaves and a deep blue sky.

 There were a lot of leaves on the ground, it being September and I was quite inspired by the groupings of teh leaves and stems.

We had an adventure. The nearest beach to us was Pedi, reached by a walk down a not terribly picturesque road. We had heard people talking about a walk through the Pedi valley so we asked and thought we knew the way, and set off. We followed what we thought was the right path and after about an hour we arrived at a small higgledy piggledy farm.  (See the goat asleep on top of an old freezer?)

 We heard a menacing dog growl and turned around to see a pug barking at us.
The owner came out. We said 'Pedi?' he pointed up wards and indicated that if we continued down his track we would encounter a fence.

We went up. We seemed to be too high and the hills are very barren. We knew we were on teh wrong track so we decided to follow a dried up river downwards.

 Bear in mind, it was hot, it was prickly underfoot. I was wearing slip on shoes (which slipped off a lot)shorts and a sun top over my swimming costume. No hat .
The river valley went from small stones, t rocks, to boulders, to rock face. As we climber down and down I was thinking to myself, thank goodness we aren't going up. I twisted my ankle, ouch; I jumped down and bent my knee further than it is used to; i bashed my finger on a rock; I got prickly bushes in my face.

 Then we reached.................

 Can you see the sea? We only wanted a swim. In that blue sea. There, in that picture.

 We realised we could go no further. The awful truth dawned. We had to turn round and go back. Back up the boulders, through the prickly bushes, in the heat, without a hat, in my shorts and my slip- on shoes.

I wasn't sure I could do it. I thought we would be stuck there forever.
We sat down for a long time until we cooled off.

 And the little goat laughed.....

The climb was not easy, up the steep rocks. I was quite amazed by my rock climbing prowess and am thinking of doing the Duke of Edinburgh's award.

I  have to say it was beautiful on the way up with the backlit grasses. I was very inspired by the vegetation and the ittle brown lizards that scurried about ahead of us.

We lived to tell the tale, but we didn't get a swim that day and made do with a lovely shower and sleep.

Now can you believe we tried again two days later?
This time we knew exactly where we were going!
Up to a point.
The first time we felt we were off the track, we turned round, walked up to the bus stop and went down to Pedi on the lovely, air conditioned, comfy bus, and had our swims, lay about on the sunbeds and caught the bus back.

Out in the evening to 'The Windmill' to eat their wonderful food under the stars. The man with his back to us is the owner/waiter Michaelis, who hurtles up and down those steps hundreds of times per evening. He is always courteous and friendly and works so hard. He starts in May and finishes in October and doesn't have a day off.

 One day we went out on Poseidon for the round Island trip, with several stops for swimming, the best one being two hours on Sesklia Island.

Its just what you might expect to see in Greece. Beautiful water, goats, olive and tamarisk trees,

 and there, we were treated to a superb picnic and Barbecue under the trees. There were rather more people than we are used to on this particular trip and the actual boat time was a bit cramped.

On another day we took a boat to our favourite beach and taverna, Marathounda. 

 The water is beautiful and blue and warm, and the taverna is very good indeed.
Swim, eat, sleep, swim, sleep, swim...so tiring.

I didn't take so many photographs this year, but if you want to read more there are plenty of Symi posts in this blog. 2008, 2011, 2013  which show much more.

I could have stayed a bit longer but we had to leave on the early morning ferry, with 'rosy fingered dawn' on the mountains.

 

Flying over Rhodes..

Its nice to be home. The welcome was heartfelt.