Chasing the Sunshine: A Grand Day Out!

Hilary and I are having a sneaky girl's week in Datca before we set off later today to meet Matt, Melanie and Rob in Gocek about 4 hours drive away to help Melanie and Rob celebrate their honeymoon. Anyway we thought it might be nice to splash out and do something different this week. So with the help of Metin our Mr Fix It, we negotiated a passage to the Greek island of Symi on the Archipel gulet. Considering we can see Symi from our garden and it is only about 12 miles away, it is an expensive trip at 75 euros return each, taking about an hour and a half. However we thought never mind we will go anyway because Hil was hoping for a Shirley Valentine moment over there what with it being Greece and full of men called Costas. Also we had a long shopping list from friends in Datca for duty free items and bacon!
We were up early last Monday and hot footed it down to the harbour for 9am and waited to board the boat. The boat boy brought us coffee and finally we were away with our six fellow passengers. There was a German couple, an American /Turkish couple, a Turkish girl and a Datca gentleman. The trip over was smooth and convivial with lashings of free tea and coffee.
We sailed into the beautiful port with Italian influenced architecture. The island was Italian until it was handed back to Greece in 1945. During the sail over we agreed to an island taxi trip with the German couple and so on arrival we located the taxi rank and Constantinos who loved his family, his island, his country, his taxi, his customers and his job. He was bit of a joker as he told us he didn't speak the English but soon we found he was the most fluent English speaking taxi driver on the island and we couldn't shut him up. He did however give us plenty of information about the island and set an exam at the end!
There is only one road on the island leading to a stunningly beautiful monastery. The mountain road leading to it was narrow and winding with many hair pin bends. We spent a while at the monastery which is quite big but only two monks live there with quite a few workers.
On return Constantinos, who by the way wasn't suitable for Hilary's Shirley Valentine moment, said he had a good idea and that he could drop us off at the top of the hill behind the main town and then we could just stroll down hundreds of old steps and take in the beautiful view of the harbour. He said it would take ten minutes. Well the view was indeed beautiful but it took us half an hour to negotiate the wobbly old steps. At the bottom my knees were like jelly so we had to revive ourselves in the bar. Then of course we had to do the shopping and it was getting late. We failed miserably in sourcing the bacon but just about managed to get the whisky and vodka.
The trip back was not as smooth as the one going over, we were warned it would be wavy. Well wavy it was, with rather large ones crashing over us. I couldn't see the life jackets which was concerning and the young Turkish girl turned green.
You'll be pleased to know we survived and all in all had a grand day out.