Another trip down memory lane

The above shot is of the main beach at Lindos, Rhodes during the winter of 2017-18, when there’s not an umbrella or sunbed to be seen. When you see it looking like this, you truly appreciate how beautiful that beach is. It’s a shame how different it looks during the tourist season really. This whole thing about getting the balance right between tourism and over-tourism is such a hot potato these days. I’ve talked about this before, but although getting older’s not a lot of fun, I’m so glad that we were able to experience Greece during the golden era from the 1970’s through 90’s, when most people still stayed in village rooms, or pensions, and if there were any hotels, they were of a modest size and family-run. That was when if you came to Greece for a summer holiday, you knew you were in Greece and could hardly fail to interact with local people, and thus to experience their hospitality and open heartedness.

The photo below is from the early 1990’s, taken on Symi. We’d spent a couple of weeks staying in an old village house at the back of the town, and one evening we’d heard the sound of a local shindig as we walked back to our room, and made a slight detour to a nearby schoolyard. There, in full swing, was a local celebration going on. Our landlady, the owner of our accommodation, was seated at one of the tables with her friends, family and neighbours, and there wasn’t a foreign tourist to be seen. Of course, we hadn’t been seated for long (whilst also being plied with free wine and food by some of the locals), when Yvonne was up and away. She’s always been the same ever since we first met, the sound of laika music never fails to get her feet twitching. I could probably write a book simply about all the times when she’s got up and danced in tiny tavernas, sometimes saying that she was never going home, but was going to get a job dancing for the taverna owners and bringing the clientele in. She’d have been a success at it, trust me.

Actually (never miss an opportunity for a plug, that’s me), in the Ramblings from Rhodes books there are several tales of Yvonne’s dancing escapades, at least one of which, up a mountain on Samos some years ago, went a long way towards cementing better relations between Greece and Turkiye! [Yes, folks, that’s how we’re supposed to spell it now]

Here’s a gallery of more photos from Naxos and Patmos [and yes, I do mean Patmos, not Paros in this instance]…