- Lunch at St.Nicks
Friday - Day 9 on Symi
As we had had a relatively early night on Thursday and breakfast stocks were low we decided to head to St.Nicks via the Nireus for the walk-in breakfast and Pedi to catch George's boat - something we have never failed to do over all the years.
So after a heartfelt farewell to O&L who would be gone by the time we got back we headed off. Whilst having breakfast a couple who had been our neighbours the year before, G&T (yes !) surprised us - they are holidaying on Tilos and had caught the early morning Dodek boat over to do a bit of walking on Symi. So after catching up with their news we were between buses and in view of the amount of "stuff" we take to the beach, and wanting to get over to St.Nicks quite early, we made the decadent decision to jump into Konstantinos's taxi. We arrived Pedi 09:30, grabbed two frappe to-go from the supermarket and George took us over. We arrived just at the same time as D&G who we have seen on St.Nicks for many years now.
It seems that there has been a sudden reduction in visitors as we were told that a couple of days ago St.Nicks was very busy but there were only about 30 people all the time we were there and only about 10 having lunch in the taverna where they still had quite a full menu. Not enough people to make opening the cabin necessary but you can always get a beer from the restaurant area, which if course we did mid morning. Watching the water taxis drop people off seemed to confirm that there has been a sudden reduction in numbers.
After a swim and some snorkelling we headed for a traditional lunch of Greek salad, tzatziki & calamaris. Spent the afternoon reading and relaxing before heading back on George's brother's Aquarias boat in time to catch the 17:30 bus back over to Yialos. Whilst returning on Aquarias a couple who are regular Symi visitors mentioned the threat of Greek air traffic controllers strikes over the next four or five days which could impact our return
But no use worrying so we stopped at Cafe Alegriko for a retsina & ouzo and that wonderful Mezes that he throws together. Several known faces were in Medeteraneo next door. We got talking to L who we had seen when we were here in May and she, like us, is due to go back on Wednesday so many of us are in the same boat if this strike goes ahead - we will see.
Home showered and in Elpida's by 20:00 and the nightly feast of small Mezes continued. To put this in perspective E has a small carafe of retsina whilst D has one of those small carafes of ouzo (enough for two glasses) and then we share a second small carafe of retsina - that is the nightly apperitife. In the time we had our drinks we were presented with a filo cheese pie, a tangine with couscous, strips of spicy pork and sausage with potato - D is running out of notches on his belt.
We then headed home via Thollos where we shared the grilled prawns followed by E having soutzoukakia with rice and D had the pork cooked in mustard which was a significant piece of pork which had a very mustardy flavour but would have benefited if a light mustard sauce had accompanied it. With complimentary retsina and ice cream with cherries to end we headed off home after a long and pleasant Symi day.