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The weather throughout March, April and May this year has been unprecedented in both its changeability, and its low temperatures for the time of year. The one week [14-21 May] we spent in Sitia turned out to be the best and most consistent week of weather in all of that time period, so we could well be grateful for small mercies. Usually summer starts at the beginning of May, when you can almost wake up one day and literally overnight the skies have cleared, the temperature’s ratcheted up a few notches and the air is warm to the skin. During May (usually at the start of the month) the cafés on the town beach in Ierapetra put out their umbrellas and sun loungers and our several months of coffees on the beach, along with a swim for an hour or two, begin.

Not so this year. As I mentioned a few posts ago, January and February were decidedly summery, apart from slightly cooler evenings that is, and we enjoyed weeks of sunny, settled weather. Once March got under way, however, it all took a turn for the worse and it became unusual for the sun to shine for more than a couple of days at a time before the clouds returned, and along with them, more often than not, the rains too. It’s no exaggeration to say that many days during April and May were no warmer than they would have been during January in a normal year. Every time we watched Saki doing the weather forecast, the word ‘unsettled’ was a regular of his vocabulary as he described what we were to expect, and he wasn’t wrong. In this part of the Aegean the summer season for tourists from Northern Europe usually begins towards the end of April, with everything being open once May comes around. This year the whole thing’s at least a month late.

To be honest, it’s not a great bother to us, but when we have been taking coffee down on the seafront we have found ourselves feeling quite sorry for the early season tourists, whose faces have said it all. The locals have been sat around in jeans, quilted jackets, scarves and boots, and the holidaymakers have ambled past in their shorts, strappy tops and flip flops. It’s made us feel chilly just to look at them. At first we said to ourselves, “Why don’t they put something ON? It’s only 18º for goodness sake.” But then we’ve thought about it and realised that they probably didn’t have any proper clothes, after all, they’re in southern Greece in May and it’s usually more like 24-27ºC which, compared to temperatures where they’ve come from, is tropical. Let’s face it, a lot of people who come here,even if they do plan to see a few sights, fully expect to spend a lot of time either on the beach or around the pool. You don’t really want to be on a beach when there’s more cloud than sun and there’s liable to be a shower at any moment, let’s be fair.

Anyway, last Saturday, June 3rd, looked like it ‘ll turn out to have been the day when summer finally did switch itself on this year, a full month later than normal. Friday June 2nd had been wet and grey all day, goodness only knows what the tourists did with themselves, and we’d stayed indoors reading. Saturday dawned bright and clear, with the temperature at 8.00am already well above 20ºc. This was more like it. I must admit that by this time we were very ready to be complaining about being too hot. Down on the seafront at around 11.15am, I took this one…

Now that’s how it’s supposed to look at this time of year. Just returning for a few moments, though, to our short break in Sitia, when it came time for us to depart for home on Sunday morning May 21st, as we came down the stairs into the lounge area, there was Nikos along with his wife, her mother and her aunt. They all made sure to be there to see us off. I don’t know whether I mentioned this before, but Niko’s mother-in-law is around 84 and she and her sister still clean the rooms for the guests. A few times when we’ve been a little late setting out of a morning to stroll along the front to choose a café in which to take our iced coffees, Maria and her sister have been in the room nextdoor changing sheets, towels, mopping floors etc. No wonder that amazing woman (well, both of them, but her sister’s ‘only’ about 80) is still so fit and mobile.

As I settled up with Niko and Eleni, Maria asked whether we had eggs at home, which, of course, we didn’t. “I’ll give you some from our own hens to take home with you,” she said and scuttled off around the corner into the kitchen. She soon returned with a bag of probably a dozen fresh eggs, plus two more items. One was another bag packed full of aubergines, cucumbers courgettes and tomatoes that were easily larger than tennis balls, and the other was one of those oval-shaped clear plastic cake dishes you get from the zacheroplasteia here, and on it were several generous slices of orange cake from her own fair hand, plus some sweet bread and koulourakia, all under cling-film. Interestingly, although she handed us the bag of vegetables and the dish, the bag of eggs she placed on the table for us to pick up. This odd superstition about it being bad luck to actually hand someone a bag of eggs I mentioned some time back in this post, when Angla’i’a had given us eggs back in the village. On more than a few occasions since we’ve tried to get Angla’i’a to simply hand us her gift of eggs from her chickens, but she always refuses resolutely, insisting that she put them down for us to pick them up. Well it seems the superstition is held fairly widely over this region then.

After the usual round of hugs, cheek-kisses and warm pats on the back, accompanied by promises from us to return again as soon as we can, we packed ourselves, our luggage and all the gifts into the car and set off for home. All those kind gifts from old Maria were not only heartwarming, but they also meant that we wouldn’t need to go shopping quite so urgently when we got home. I’ll post a bunch more photos from Sitia, other than those I’ve already posted here on the blog, on my Facebook page after I’ve completed this post, rather than gum up my disk space with WordPress, who are a little careful about how many gb of space we use up with photos on our blog accounts. The photo at the top of this post was taken at 9.06pm in Sitia, the first night that this bar (The Black Hole Music Bar) was open for the season, several weeks later than usual, owing to the weather this year.

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Here are a few photos of random subjects from the past couple of weeks….

Above: Developments on the orange tree. The first of the two photos above was taken on May 3rd at 4.00pm. Tiny oranges, not much larger than pearls, are beginning to form behind the dead flowerheads of the tree. I managed by accident to get a worker bee in the shot too, nice eh? The second was taken on Thursday June 1st, almost a month later. Look how that fruit is developing, isn’t it a wonderful thing to observe? The rains have actually been good for the citrus fruit trees too, so every cloud has a silver lining, right? Amazingly too, if you look close enough, you’ll see that I caught a bee in this one too, only this time it looks like a bumble bee. Both are great pollinators, of course. You’ll need to click on the photos to get the full-sized versions.

Above: Taken on May 1st, during a brisk walk around ‘dingly dell,’ this shows carob pods deveoping on the tree.

Above: Taken on May 13th, the day before we set off for Sitia. It’s a little corner of the village at around 4.30pm.

Above: There can be few sights more lovely than bougainvillea against a bright sky, don’t you agree? These were taken May 29th at 4.00pm in our neighbour’s garden.

That’ll do for this one. Don’t forget to check out the Facebook page for lots more photos from Sitia in May this year.

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Sitting on our modest little veranda at the Nora Hotel, with a panoramic view of the seafront restaurants, bars and beach southwards to our far right, round through the hills straight across the bay to the east, where one can see the road that winds its way along the coast from Sitia and then up through the hills towards Palekastro and Vai, looking directly downwards we could see the vehicles and foot passengers on the quayside as the numbers would grow in anticipation of the arrival of the ferry either to Kassos, Karpathos and on to Rhodes, or back the other way towards Heraklion, the Cyclades and eventually Piraeus. Looking to our left we could see the open sea beyond the impressive harbour wall that ensures that the waters directly below the hotel remain calm for most of the time, irrespective of how many ‘provata’ (Lit: ‘sheep,’ the Greek equivalent of what in the UK we’d call ‘white horses’) there may be in evidence further out to sea to our north.

For many decades the ferry that plied these waters was the Prevelis, a ship built in the far east back in 1980, and subsequently purchased by ANEK shipping lines in the Aegean, who then operated her from Piraeus through the Cyclades, down here to Crete and then up to Rhodes via Kassos, Karpathos (occasionally Halki) and terminating at Rhodes. By today’s standards she’s quite small, and also, of course she’s now in her fifth decade of service and was becoming (even after a major refit a few years ago) inadequate for the demands of a ship servicing her route. So, this year, for the first time, we noted that the ferry running the same schedule as that which the Prevelis used to, is now the very comfortable, modern and much larger Blue Star Chios. We’ve travelled on Blue Star ferries many times and all their boats are superb, modern, and very stable, even in choppy seas.

So, since the ferry only passes through Sitia twice a week, it was an enjoyable spectacle to have a grandstand seat as she tied up and all the regular quayside hubbub took place while foot passengers came and went, often walking exceedingly close as huge articulated trucks backed on or drove off the ramp, and an assortment of vehicles were marshalled into and out of the ferry’s cavernous rear doors, which are hydraulically lowered to become the ramp, of course, while she’s tied up. Had there been a daily service, we may have been a little put out by the frequent noise, as she’d sound her horn too while turning to reverse up to the quay, but twice a week is altogether different, and I found myself riveted as the whole shebang went on a few metres below me. I’ve watched these port-calls many times, both from aboard the ship herself, or, as in this case, from a vantage point on land, and it never ceases to hold my attention for the duration, which can often be half an hour or so. I know how to live.

Our short breaks usually follow the same pattern. We park the car up and then don’t touch it for a whole week. When we mention to friends here in Ierapetra that we’re going to spend a week in Sitia, or maybe when we’ve come home that we spent a week there, the response is always the same. “Oh, you’ll want to go to Vai, you’ll be wanting to have a meal in Palekastro, go and swim in Zakrou Bay, eat lunch at the Hiona Taverna on the beach east of Palekastro etc. (or, in the past tense, ‘you’ll have done all those things…’).” The fact is, we’ve done all that in the past, and the last thing we want to do when taking a short break is to jump in the car and drive more of the twisty-turny roads around these parts. One place we really don’t want to go to during the season is Vai. Yes, all right, it’s a special place from a botanical and scenic point of view, but it’s also far too developed for tourism for our liking. I mean, you have to pay to park there for starters!! What? We’ve never been anywhere where we’re charged to park the car while living in Greece and we’re not going to start now thank you very much. Vai is the place to go right at the end of the season, or on bright, sunny winter days. That’s when it’s truly a paradise. Plus, the toll booth for the car park is closed. I know, that’s a luxury that holidaymakers don’t have, and they have little choice if they want to see it, and it is worth seeing, but to go during the holiday season. Got to have some perks from living here all year round, eh?

No, when we get to the Nora Hotel, where we can park up right across from the front door, we get all the stuff out of the car, lug it up to our room, and then walk everywhere for the duration, it’s bliss. Our days follow the same pattern, since at this stage in our lives we’re way past all that ‘visiting archaeological sites and walking around ruins’ phase, after having been coming to Greece for nigh on fifty years and having lived here for nearly eighteen of those. Nope, we get up, fix our muesli and fruit breakfast, sit out on the balcony to eat it, then get ready (which usually takes another hour and a half) before stepping out for the short walk to the sea front in town, where there’s a fabulous choice of café-bars to choose from in which to take our morning freddo espresso and then people-watch ’til the cows come home.

What’s lovely about Sitia too, is the fact that, while there is tourism of course (mainly French), still the majority of voices around you as you sip your coffee are Greek. I know, I admit it unreservedly, we are a couple of tourist snobs. We fail to see the attraction of being anywhere where the only voices you hear are those of your own compatriots, or of people from half the countries in northern Europe, all sitting there in their shorts, floppy fishing hats and strappy tops to show off their tattoos (no offense).

Having enjoyed the sheer pleasure of sitting for as long as we like over our coffees, we drift back to the room, maybe eat a lunch of fresh bread, chopped tomatoes and cucumber, fix ourselves a cup of Earl Grey, then slip into bed, read a book for a while, before drifting off for the afternoon siesta. We’ll get up around 5.00pm, maybe 5.30, then mooch about the room and veranda for a few hours before setting out once again around 9.00pm to go and select a taverna in which to eat the wonderful food that’s on offer here (whatever you do, order the grilled mushrooms at ‘To Limani’ taverna). The great thing about going out to eat that late is that’s when most Greeks eat out. Usually the tourists arrive at the restaurants at around 7.30pm, maybe 8.00pm, and are paying their bills by the time the Greeks arrive for the ‘second sitting’ as it were. I’m sorry, but I don’t get why people would want to eat in all-inclusive hotels, where they have the unbridled joy of eating in a bustling ‘canteen’ packed with their fellow countrymen and women. It’s nice that in Sitia there are not that many hotels of any size. Most accommodation is small, which tends to attract the more discerning traveller anyway, the kind of person who truly wants to absorb some of the atmosphere of the country which they’re visiting.

Which brings me to a bit of a cleft stick that the local business community in Sitia seems to have got itself into. I’ll tackle that in the next post though. Meanwhile, here’s batch no. 2 of the photos…