We spent some time yesterday evening sitting on our balcony with a glass of wine and enjoying the view. We were facing the wrong direction to see sunset, but we did get a glimpse of the clouds turning pink.
By the time we set out for dinner, it was starting to get a little dark.
We chose a restaurant with Greek specialities. I tried stifado, a dish involving beef in tomato sauce...
...while Helen ate gigantes, sometimes described as "Greek baked beans"!
It was properly dark by the time we'd finished eating and walked back round to our hotel.
We got up early this morning and had the first coffee of the day on the terrace.
We wanted to visit Symi's upper town and the plan was to make an early start, to avoid climbing in the worst heat of the day.
There are various sets of steps leading uphill from the harbour area, but it's often hard to tell whether they're a public staircase taking you to the town centre or a private staircase just leading to someone's house. We managed to track down the starting point of the Kali Strata, a series of 500 wide steps which leads from the lower town around the harbour (Gialos) to the upper town (Chorio).
500 steps sounds like a lot, but they were arranged in manageable small doses.
As we climbed up we had beautiful views of the churches above us...
...and occasional glimpses of the sea below us.
We climbed past many of the colourful houses which we'd been admiring from down below in the harbour.
There were lots of yellows...
...but also some lovely blues...
...and even the occasional red.
After a while we came to a resting place with a bench, which was quite welcome. From there we had a fantastic view of the sea.
From this point there weren't too many more steps to go.
Soon we had made it as far as the main square in the upper town.
From here, little side streets led in different directions.
We were looking for Symi's castle, which we knew was somewhere on the hill up above us.
We got slightly distracted from the route when we caught sight of this beautiful church, slightly downhill from where we were...
...but once we found these blue steps we were back on track.
Blue seemed to be a theme, as we walked this bright blue doorway with matching blue flowers
There were a few more steps to go...
...and then we had a view down the opposite side of the hill, towards part of the town that we hadn't been able to see when we were at sea level.
Final steps...
...and then we'd reached a stunning white and blue church on the top of the hill.
The views from up here were incredible.
We could look down on the entire town of Symi and beyond.
You won't be able to make it out on the picture, but we could even see our hotel and terrace.
With the help of a map we figured out that we could see a peninsula of the island sticking out, and then that the land on the other side of the sea beyond it was part of Turkey.
We were so excited by the view that we even tried a selfie
There was one more church, a little bit further up the hill...
...plus a smaller chapel.
The views from everywhere were fantastic; the sea was so calm.
When we eventually found the castle, it was a bit underwhelming though. The entrance seemed quite overgrown, so we didn't go in.
Instead, we headed back down towards the upper town's main square. After a couple of iced coffees to cool down, we had a belated breakfast which involved Greek coffee, yoghurt and honey...
...as well as what was described on the menu as "special omelette".
It was a lovely place to sit and relax.
Before climbing back down to the harbour, we had a walk around the upper town to make sure we hadn't missed anything exciting.
We could see that we'd already come down quite a long way from the white church.
We realised we were near the town's old windmills, which we'd seen from afar when we were at ground level.
Some of them seemed to be converted and potentially had people living in them...
...others looked like they were in need for a bit of restoration.
We found a short trail we could walk on past some of the windmills.
The views from up here were potentially even better than from the church.
As we walked along we realised that we could see the ferry that we'd travelled on yesterday making its way into the harbour.
It looked like it was packed full of people again!
When we got to the end of the trail there was another castle signposted.
This one was behind a gate which appeared to be locked, so we didn't go in.
It had definitely been worth climbing up here for the views of the sea, though.
The walk downhill required far less exertion than the climb up (although you did have to take care on some of the steps - where people had been cleaning them and they were still wet, they were a bit slippery).
Once back in the harbour area we found a taverna for lunch. We were still quite full from our special omelette, so we went for an assortment of sides, including haloumi and cheese balls!
Then we had a little stroll around the harbour...
...where we stopped for some pomegranate sorbet...
...and an iced espresso.
As we walked back around to the apartment, we realised we could now look up to both the windmills we'd been walking alongside...
...and the little white/blue church.
All in all it was a really fun day in Symi
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