Symi Easter blog
My weekend, my Symi Easter, can be put into two parts; Friday evening and Saturday generally. There was also Sunday and there will, I hope be Monday, but I’ll save that.
On Friday we went into Yialos to meet some friends for dinner at To Spitiko. The number of the party had been growing through the day but finally, and very appropriately, settled itself on thirteen. Thirteen for dinner – yes, not only an Agatha Christie book and film adaptation (Actually, it’s ‘Thirteen at dinner’) but also the subject of a famous Leonardo mural as I am sure you know, and a happy coincidence for us on Good Friday. So, we sat down and our waiter served us calmly and very politely and with humour and efficiency – and I’m not only saying that because he is my nephew, it also happens to be true. A lovely dinner and we even had some cabaret thrown in thanks to big boys and bombs.
Big boys and bombs? Well, not so ‘big’, but brash and stupid really. There we are, sitting among the remains of a large dinner party -some of the guests had left and the tables were being cleared- the bangers and dynamite were going off as the Easter procession was making its way along the other side of the harbour, carrying the bier from church to church, when suddenly some bloke on a boat decides that he doesn’t like these bangers and shouts out, very aggressively and with some threatening gesticulation, ‘Don’t throw them I don’t like them!’ The standard response to this from any self-respecting banger-thrower would be to light one and carry on throwing, that is, after all, the custom. It is, after all, your island and it is, after all, Easter Friday. That is, after all, what happened. This was too much for Mr Seven Stone-Macho (hyphenated) and he was straight off that boat, fists raised, and into the party of diners a little way up the quayside. He was a bit outnumbered and things were calmed down, Neil was in there sorting it out too and calm was restored; a little too much of the falling down water methinks. Clearly if you don’t like bangs, explosions and fire crackers, then you don’t come to Greece at Easter weekend. Such things (trying to start a fight) are uncommon sights on Symi, but a bit of cabaret for us after dinner. And no animals were harmed, nor any humans and the bar owner (whose fault it certainly was not) sent them over drinks as a gesture of hospitality, but they were rejected and the boat set off into the night to find a quieter country. Anyway, that was that and then…
Then we spent a very quiet Saturday at home, after the mild rain on Friday night as we walked up the steps. I read, and watched television, we popped out for some shopping and then, around midnight, spent some time up on the roof watching the Easter fireworks and listening to the dynamite – more fireworks than previous years and less dynamite I thought. There were displays going on at Pedi, Ag Triatha, at the Castro, Lemonitisa, Evangalismos and elsewhere, and loads of red flares being sent up. The ones from the Castro were spiralling down right over our heads and looking like they were going to land on the house but they were out well before that. The scene was enriched (ha ha) by the massive super yacht that was in the bay, all lit up. This was, I am told, the floating palace of some Chelsea football club owner or something (I don’t follow and am not impressed by this kind of thing) but what was nice was that he had come over to Symi for his Easter, to attend church at Evangalismos and was then on his way just after midnight. Mr Abramovich his name is, or something. Seems like a nice man. Anyone who can spend over 1.5 Billion on a fleet of private yachts and chooses Symi for his Easter can’t be all bad in my book.
Anyway, enough ramblings, off into Monday and back to the grindstone. Have a good week and I’ll be back tomorrow with more nonsense or some such. Happy bank holiday and May Day and kalo mina for yesterday and have a good month.
