The other day, I was wandering through some of the social media pages dedicated to Symi, to see if anyone had brought up any interesting thoughts or had a question I might address, and I found one post asking what it would be like to holiday on Symi in December. With some holiday companies now extending their operations into the later months of the year, I thought, ‘Why not December?’ It can be a wonderful time of year here, though it’s doubtful a holiday in the winter would be anywhere near the same as a holiday in, say, June or even October. Not impossible, and rather an adventure, but there are things you’d have to look out for.

Getting here, for example. With charter flights and airlines not available at that time of year, you’d have to get yourself to Rhodes with another airline. We use Aegean (my favourite), because it’s about all we have in the winter. There may be other airlines using Rhodes in December, but I’ve only ever had to get to Athens and then onwards, and you can get to and from Athens around three times a day throughout the winter. There, you change for other countries, but those connections may not be daily. So, a scheduled flight into Rhodes is your first task. Then, you have to get across to Symi.

This, naturally, you do by boat, but in the winter, we have a limited supply of ferries. Gone are the 14 + crossings a day by various summer boats, some of which you can’t use one-way anyway, and we’re down to three Blue Star crossings (usually, Monday, Wednesday, Friday), and maybe one or two with Dodekanisos Seaways (weekends, I seem to remember, but the timetables can change). As the most regular/reliable service is Blue Star, you leave Rhodes in the later afternoon. If your flight arrives before, say, three, on a boat day, you might make the evening ferry, if not, you will have at least one night in Rhodes. There will be plenty of local hotels open; those used for conferences, locals, and general travellers, as opposed to seaside places.

We have to assume the weather hasn’t turned and left you stranded in Rhodes for five days, as happened to us once when coming back from Romania, though this was in April, when the weather is more inclement. Had we known we would have been able to see the island and the boat that was due to take us there, and yet, not been able to get anywhere near either, we’d have stayed in Transylvania, because it was (then) cheaper. But, we got here.

Try and book a Symi taxi in advance, as they will be in short supply at six pm on a winter’s night, and it’s a fair hike from the port to the cab rank (which will be empty) and the bus stop (where there should be one or maybe two bus runs of an evening), or else, it’s a walk, or a pickup from your host, assuming you have found one.

You shouldn’t have any trouble finding somewhere to stay, though you’ll have to hunt around the listings. Every other granny flat and derelict workshop is now an Airbnb, it seems (some friends recently stayed in what used to be the shoe shop on the main road, others in what was once a storeroom), though the larger hotels will be closed.

As for entertainment, you will find some places in the village open all year round, though operating on half a shoelace. The big taverna in Horio stays open, and places like the Secret Garden and the Sunrise remain operating (bar holidays for the owners), Scena, too, is usually open and still serving food, and one year, Niki’s Kitchen was open in the winter, but it wasn’t last winter, so I’m not sure. Down in Yialos, it’s a similar story with only a very few (one or two) tavernas open, some of the bars, and maybe a giros shop or two. Elpida’s is a very popular place all year round, and there are several others. You may, though, be having a drink behind plastic with your feet in water as the rain lashes, and you wonder, ‘What to do now?’

You can go for walks, you could try the sea for a swim, you could check out if there are any festivals taking place, you could sit in a bar all day and drink your pension, or just wander the village and harbour and explore the fishing boats and general ‘Isn’t it cold?’ and ‘Wet again,’ kind of winter vibe the island has.

It will be an adventure, but remember, it will not be easy to get here (all part of the adventure), you may get weather-stranded in Rhodes, or here on the way back, and there’s not much ‘touristy’ going on. But, there are always local things happening (especially around the Christmas and New Year weeks) with a Christmas market, some concerts in the square, church services, fireworks on NYE night and so on.

Oh, and dress warm. It can get down to 5° in the winter, and your accommodation won’t have carpets, central heating and other northern comforts you might be used to. All the same, enjoy! (And bring a good book.) Oh, and did I mention the rain? Bring a sou’wester.

Oh dear. Look, no offence, but if you are going to use AI to create a post, or if you are going to copy and paste someone else’s, please don’t make it one created by a machine that has fed off the writing of thousands of talented people and then, in a very untalented way, put it back into a completely farcical set of words.

I am referring, without prejudice, to a post on a social media group/page that purported to be talking about Symi. It has appeared a few times in various places, and perhaps people share it because they can’t tell that it is AI at work. Let me give you a few examples from the translated text (the original is in Greek); a few things that prove it was regurgitated by a computer and not thoughtfully composed by a creative human. (Ps. This is only for a bit of fun, and not a slight against whoever has used this text and shared it.)

For a start, in one place, when talking about the island generally, the text line says: You don’t read her story, you listen to it. Apart from making me think, ‘What on earth does that mean?’ I note that Symi is female. A little later, she has transitioned. She’s not just beautiful. He has energy. Then we have the rather worrying, … stone courtyards that smell of basil, worn steps that lead you up or inside you.
Worn steps that lead inside you? Carry on Up the Khyber Pass, perhaps?
Holding hands with that rare silence that only companionship has when words are not needed. [Reaches for sick bag.] That’s the kind of drivel you might read in an AI-generated Regency romance novel, all heaving breasts and ripping Empire lines, no plot, no character development, only saccharine words that not even Dame Barbara Cartland would have dictated from her chaise.

… cats that were sleeping like queens on terraces and benches. Ah yes, a reference to that time when Good Queen Bess found herself homeless in Chatham and had to kip in the park.
… discovering corners forgotten by the world, yet so alive. Don’t overdo the hyperbole, love. Forgotten? Not by the thousands of day trippers and cruise passengers, regular visitors, not to mention us 3,000 inhabitants, and if there is a forgotten corner, it will soon have another Airbnb built on it.

We got lost in hidden chapels and sheltered bays, leaving behind us only our laughter and the sound of exhaust. The. Sound. Of. Exhaust. [Thinks for a moment, and imagines the Honda 125 that screams past the house at 3.00 in the morning, leaving behind the stink of burning engine oil.] Nice.

Along the way, our gaze became a pilgrimage. Now we’re getting into the realms of Oscar Hammerstein II and some of his classic lyrical writing. I cite: [My heart wants…] To sing through the night like a lark who is learning to pray. (The Sound of Music.) A lark who is learning to do what now? Ah! Kneeling at a prie-dieu with a rosary in its wings… Come on, Oscar, you can do better than that.

The AI word vomiter, sadly, cannot.

We reached Archangel Michael the Roukouniotis and got lost in that silence that only stone monasteries near the sea can offer. It’s inland, babe. Were you using Google Maps?

Next comes a different, old, ecstatic pilgrimage that I first read as ‘elastic,’ and a quietness that was not just silence. Er… There’s a difference between quietness and silence, isn’t there? In this case, quietness is clearly made up of silence and something else, therefore rendering it neither quiet nor silent. I’m confused.

… we stood reverently, not out of obligation, but out of a sense of deep inner silence.

We remained silent.

… the prayer of the Aegean sailors could still be heard. (They only had the one prayer between them, but it was apparently loud enough to break this interminably noisy silence from which the island apparently suffers.)

The sea of ​​Symi is crystal clear, a mirror of the sky. Your average Symi sky comes with clouds, chem trails from planes, the occasional helicopter, drones and Sahara dust clouds. On the upside, we do see ravens, hawks, migrating birds, incredible sunrises and sets, turtle doves and so on – but not mirrored in the sea.

The post goes on, endlessly taking us into realms of quiet silence through the treacle of nonsensical embellishment… And on. And on. And runs for so long, only a pedant like me would read it. But as for the remaining highlights:

She wasn’t just clean. O…kay. What else was she then?

… small vessels that seemed to have come out of a Greek black and white, picturesque, as if they had a soul. What? Has Trump now taken over the AI machine?

Every shoreline and a sigh of joy. [Inserts about-to-vomit emoji.]

And the sun is warm, sweet, like a caress as it sears the skin of whiter than white tourists, turning it to the raw red of our childhood skimmed knees and silent moments of Greek joy like we used to know in another person’s life of such tranquillity and reflected sky. (I put that in so when an AI snout comes a-snouting, it won’t know what the hell to make of this.)

And so on and so on… Until we take a very extended excursion, There, in Marathon, among the few pine trees… According to Google Maps, Marathon is a 640 km drive away, but there is a road joining it directly to Symi if you don’t mind driving over water. But, whatever…

This line, on its own, possibly cribbed from Gerard Manley Hopkins or another Jesuit poet: As a souvenir from the times of radio, fishing line and family Sundays.

I’ll leave that conundrum with you because, quite frankly, I’ve had enough of this drivel.

Perhaps, now, you can see why I am so against generative AI. (The thing you use when you want to become a published author overnight, so you type in ‘Write me a successful novel overnight,’ and out pops this kind of crap.) Well, at least it’s novel, I suppose. But the worst thing is, people fall for it. The need to produce content, it seems, is more important than the content of that content, and that can only lead to a dumbing down of human creativity. The more we accept this kind of nonsense, the more immune to it we will become, until, one day, we’ll end up speaking like it.

On that note, I shall be away now. I shall take to the ancient, basil-smelling stone steps of antiquity, while watching the sea reflect the lark-prayed hopes and dreams of the young blacksmith’s daughter, whose passion was as intense as the furnace of her nearly-silent youth, his breasts the bellows at her fire, there to give [preferred pronoun] all passions to the sage-sniff of the poacher’s pouch when he threw her manfully onto the sandy shores of Marathon… Oh, per-lease!

Spoiler: I have no idea where I am going with the following.
I can’t tell you what it’s like in the evening, but the village square yesterday afternoon was busier than I had seen it for a while, with both bars doing a reasonable afternoon trade. This is the time of day (between three and six) when the various clans who visit Symi are either staying or going. Those who are staying are often at the beach, or just leaving the beach to find their water taxi back to the harbour or Pedi, or are taking a gradual walk up from the beach to the village, heading home to refresh, change and prepare for an evening out. For those who are going, having been here for the day or part of it, they have to return to their boat to ensure they get back to Rhodes. For these reasons, the afternoon in the village can be a quiet affair, and when people decide not to attend the beach but want to sit and watch the world go by, this is the time to do it.

Currently, there are plenty of regular visitors here, whom we know and like to meet up with, and there was a jolly atmosphere at that bar in the afternoon.

Mind you, there often is, and it is partly to do with Neil working there, and the fact that the bar he works at sits at the top of the Kali Strata on a junction which creates a crossroad for any breeze that might happen by.  I’ve heard a few dimwits say that the bar becomes ‘English’ during the afternoon, as though it was one of those places on the Spanish coast, ‘Too English,’ they say. ‘I came here for the real Greek way of life.’ (My dear! You came here for red tape, financial hardship, and long working hours at 40° plus? How brave.)

It’s quite simple. If you want to meet your friends, old and new, in a place where you feel better able to communicate, then go to a place where the staff and customers speak your language. That’s a rather pointless statement, seeing as how most/many/just about all tourists and local businesses employ someone who speaks English (and many other languages), and even if not, will do their best to understand what you want. I’m pleased to say, these days, there are no what you might call ‘obviously English’ bars, just as there are no obviously Scandinavian or German, French, Italian, etc. ones. There is nowhere on Symi that you can go to for a typical British Sunday lunch, or to drink in an ‘Irish’ pub, or gather to talk about hideously right-wing British politics. None of that sausage and chips and a pint of Watney’s places you might find on the Costa del Wherever, as seen in the TV show, ‘Benidorm.’ (Funny for the first couple of series and then pure naffness.)

As you sit with your glass of chilled white in any bar on Symi and partake in the ancient tradition of people watching, you will see much that is ‘traditional’, or as we like to think of it, much that is simply island life. Either side of the summer, you see the youngsters going to and from their after-school private school lessons with backpacks often heavier than they are. Young parents or grandparents collecting the little ones from nippio or pronippio (nursery/primary, or whatever it’s called now, probably ‘Stage one educational level year two’ or something that makes no sense to us older folk). Someone may stop by with a carrier bag and ask you to look after it until her husband comes past at four to collect it, and could you tell him the key is behind the stone? The taverna owner from next door might leave his premises to have ten minutes to himself before returning to his midnight-to-morning way of working, and ask you to keep an eye on the ovens while he’s away. (It’s happened to me, and I didn’t burn anything!) You just sit and watch the world go by, chat to anyone who might be open to chatting, watch the mopeds crossing the square, sometimes carrying livestock, or a family of three or four (no helmet now means risking a fine because we have helmet police on the island). Or you just meet up with holiday friends and talk about all and everything (and, very often, anyone who isn’t there). For those who feel intimidated by the Greek language (and who doesn’t?) then it’s good to have a place to go where you know you can talk with someone in your own language. Not only that, but someone who has been living on the island for nearly a quarter of a century, and working at that bar for the last 22 years (as we have between us), so you know you’re going to get ‘insider’ information about what it’s like to live here.
So, whatever place you choose to hang out and at whatever time, it’s up to you, and no-one is going to judge you for doing so. (Well, some always will, but that’s ignorance for you.)

Just as a final word of warning, the bother-in-law will be on the island this weekend. If you want a conversation about world football with European football as a speciality, and if you like to drink beer, then hunt out this man (right) for an erudite conversation about the offside rule.

Around here, there’s always something new going up or something old being done up. For the past year and a half (maybe more), we’ve had a little Tonka Toy dumper truck shifting rubble from A to C via B (B being just outside our window). This is to remove building rubble from a ruin lower down and away from the lane. To make things cheaper for the project, the developers built wooden and metal-rod ramps over several sets of steps leading to the property, and these are now dangerous to walk down, thanks to the metal supporting rods being an inch higher than the planks. The same arrangement also rattles whenever anyone drives a motorbike over these newly found shortcuts to their houses, because covering steps with ramps only leads to a deeper infiltration of mopeds into the so-far unreachable parts of the village. You never used to see parked bikes much further from the ‘main’ road than a few feet; as close to the driver’s destination as possible, but stopped by the first set of steps. Now, you can drive all the way into Ag Athanasios and beyond, and thanks to the ramps now near us, halfway down to Yialos below Lemonitisa, a place that was previously unreachable.

We’ve become used to the relentless chug and puff of the little digger/carrier thing, which carries about half a mule-load each time it growls up the slope, past the front door and to the patch of ground nearby where the rubble is dumped. Then, it comes back empty, trundles past the bedroom window and down again, and there’s a lull before the process starts again. I guess it’s cheaper that way than hiring the mules (I’ve only heard one braying this year and not seen any others), and I can only wonder how many more months or years this is going to go on for. We’ve got used to it, but I’m glad I’ve not paid an exorbitant amount to holiday nearby.

On the other side of the coin, this non-stop building work, for which all islands are now well known, I expect, leads to new ventures for some. Such as this new/old place:

I’ve not stayed there, of course, there’s no need. I don’t know who built it, but I assume it’s to do with the Village Hotel (or it’s been sold on to someone else) because it’s behind the hotel. Rather, it’s the old part of the hotel that’s not been in use for a while. It’s now done up and ready to receive visitors, which it probably already has. I had a quick look online, and it’s charging around €100 a night for a ‘budget double room’ right in the centre of the village, and the rooms look very nice too. I guess that’s not a bad price for a night in July.

When we arrived here to live and needed a place to stay for a few nights while we found a house (it was relatively easy in the greed-free days before Airbnb), we were quoted €30.00 per night, but that was nearly 25 years ago. I notice that during August, the price rises to roughly €130 a night. The price includes an ‘airport’ shuttle, but I think that’s Booking.com’s generic term. It would, of course, be a ferry shuttle. You can find all the details on that site and elsewhere.

This new place (new to me at least) is opposite another revamp: the Windmill Restaurant which is now open again and serving traditional Greek fare. I passed by in the morning, so the outside terrace was closed and left fallow, as it were, for the night/morning. Therefore, my photo doesn’t give any hint of the warm atmosphere it must have in the evening, but at least you know to check it out when you next come this way.

So, here we are with another day of truck trundling to ignore, and loads of more new accommodation for visitors to stay in. There are so many now, I seem to pass a new one every day. ‘Someone’s Symi Villa’, ‘Someone’s Symi House’, ‘Someone’s Symi-View-House Villa…’ Tiny one-beds or studios that used to be shops, a storeroom or granny’s flat downstairs, are now available for visitors to enjoy the latest in traditional island Ikea furniture and suchlike for city-centre prices… Sorry, don’t mean to be cynical, but this Airbnb bubble has got to burst at some point. I only hope people can recoup their outlay in time. I also hope ‘they’ get rid of the lethal ramps once the building work has finished nearby, but I doubt it. The new route to ten feet nearer to home has already become a popular racetrack for someone heading homewards at three in the morning…

To my mind, the temperature around now is just about right, and we’ve not (yet) seen any of the very high temps that other parts of Europe have been dealing with. It’s about right for this time of year; an average of 30° to 35° in the shade. At least, it is in the corner of the courtyard where we keep the thermometer. There are ups and downs to the warmer weather, and the downs can be uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous, but it’s always worth thinking of the ‘ups’ too.

For example: In the winter, the bed is made up with a duvet and two blankets. This means having to make the bed every day and do the weekly battle with the duvet cover. As spring comes, sob the blanket (1) comes off, then blanket (2), and finally, the duvet insides go, and we’re left with only the duvet cover to reset in the morning, and then, that too finally has to go. These days, there’s no such thing as making the bed every morning; you just sleep on it and get up off it, straighten the bottom sheet and on with the day. You’re also free to wander around the house wearing very little, though there’s always a shirt on standby in case someone comes to the door; we don’t want to scare anyone. I can slip into sandals rather than go through the arduous task of putting on socks and shoes when going out, and that saves a few minutes per day. Then, with all windows open, any breeze that’s available is a welcome guest. Better, we don’t have to put on the expensive hot water tank because the cold tank is on the roof in full sun, meaning the cold water now comes from the cold tap, warm or hot, and if we want cold to temper it down, we use the cold water in the hot water tank, which is inside and away from the sun. Then, on leaving the shower, you only need to stand in the breeze to dry off.
And so on.

Of course, on the downside, it can be very hot and, worse, clammy when it is humid. So, we’re currently on at least three litres of water a day, probably more. If I’m to count, I’d say I got through four litres yesterday, one of which I downed at the bar with my frappe, and a half litre of which I downed while on a short walk around the village in the morning. (Hence today’s photos.) You know the rules: hat, sun cream, water, sensible shoes, keep hydrated, eat regularly (for moisture intake as much as anything else), stay out of the sun, put factor 50 on the nose to stop it doing strange and colourful things, and generally be sensible.

But hotter means slightly cheaper, with no need for the hot tank or heating, but a need for the fans, on and off through the day, and on in the bedroom overnight. It’s also quicker when getting ready to go out: sandals, shorts and one of my two summer shirts (I have a third, but it’s for evenings out, because it’s slightly thicker than the daytime two.)

So, that’s where we are, and although things will get hotter, it should happen gradually. We’ve not had that sudden ‘turning up of the thermostat’ that has happened in previous years, where one day it’s 24° and the next, it’s over 34°, and currently, it’s all very manageable.

I’m not sure what the weather’s doing to our bougainvillea, or maybe that’s quite normal, but on a walk yesterday, I found only one other plant that was doing what ours is doing (drying flowers and sending them on the slightest breeze to every part of the house, inside and out.) The others were flourishing. Perhaps it’s because ours is in a pot, or old. It certainly had a difficult start in life when it was left for us outside a shop, and we didn’t know until two days later. Luckily, the shop was Jenine’s café, the Olive Tree, and she suspected we might be involved with the gift of an unwanted plant in her backyard, and it found its way to us on shaky but still living stalks. Anyway, there’s lots of purple and red to be found in the lanes at the moment if you’re wandering that way. And if you do, remember: hat, water, sensible shoes…