a Dodecanese chronicle
Day Four
Symi · the Dodecanese
11.57am · “Maria’s Boutique at Symi” — Beck’s pick for the day’s hero
Sixty-one photographs, and the whole day on one island. Dawn on the cliffs of the bay they slept under, then round the point into Symi harbour by nine, with its terraced houses, the clock tower and a chart on Beck’s phone to prove it. The morning went up the stairs to the top of the town and Craig came back with thirteen frames and a verdict: like a little Disney town. Beck found the boutique with her name on it; there was Serenissima merch, and it was worn. A long lunch, a beer by the water, a road walked in matching black shirts, and then the harbour after dark — shrimp, an octopus, and a table that ran the length of the taverna. Beck filed Symi in the Black Book four times.
Mark was up first. At 7.11 he photographed the cliff over the bay twice — a wall of ochre rock with the sun just on it and the water flat as a plate underneath — and Mandy, a quarter of an hour later, photographed straight down instead: the seabed through four metres of water, three frames of turquoise and rock, then the beach at 7.50 with its one motor yacht, and the anchor line running off the rocks at 8.02. At 8.46 Mark caught three of them on the foredeck, all standing, the town coming into view behind; Rod’s 8.49 has two of the men at the bow with their backs to him.
Beck’s 8.50 is the first look at it: the town stacked up the hill from the water, ochre and cream and terracotta, every house with its pediment. Mandy took it again at 9.01 and 9.02 with the yellow hotel on the quay in the middle of the frame, and at 9.03 her phone shows the chart — the blue dot at the harbour mouth, Symi in the corner. Beck found the clock tower at 9.03 with the boats moored under it, and filed Symi in the Black Book at 6.05 and again at 11.27 and 11.29, place only. Maria’s 9.31 is the houses over someone’s shoulder from the cockpit; Mandy’s 9.39 is the waterfront from the dock, and at 9.57 Roger photographed Serenissima herself, moored stern-to with the tender across the transom and the town rising behind her.
Craig’s morning is the town, and he sent all of it at once in the evening with one line: Beautiful town lovely architecture, clean and well presented. Like a little Disney town. The red house with the green shutters and the café tables under it at 10.10; the harbour from the quay at 11.06 and 11.15, Roger’s taverna table with the blue-and-white cloth at 11.11; then the climb. Maria’s 11.27 is the wide white stairway going up between the walls — the Kali Strata, five hundred steps — and by 11.33 Craig was above the roofs looking down on the harbour, with the whole bay and the far headland at 11.34, Roger’s stone chapel with a blue door and two of the men in front of it at 11.35, and the town spread out below at 11.36. At 11.38 two of them at the top by the whitewashed wall; at 11.41 Craig’s selfie, two faces and sunglasses and the harbour a long way down; at 11.43 the harbour from the very top, the ferry in. Roger sent the same view at 11.42. Beck had found the shop with the coral on its shelves at 11.24, and at 11.57 the sign: Maria’s Symi Boutique, Maria in the doorway in black and white — her pick for the day’s hero, and it is at the top of this page.
Everything written on Day Four, in the order it arrived. The log has added nothing.
Mandy photographed the town from the water again at 12.28, twice, the same stacked houses with the yachts in front; Maria found an alley roofed with vines at 12.35 and took a selfie of two of the women at 12.52. Beck’s 1.42 is the fishing boats; her 1.53 is the merch, worn: the two of them in white caps with a star on the front, the harbour behind. At 2.36 Maria photographed the stern — Alegria 67 on the transom, the tender up — then a yellow house with a balcony at 2.40 and lunch at 2.41, a plate of chicken and potatoes and a salad with feta on a blue-and-white cloth. Mark’s 3.12 is a bench under a shop awning with three of them on it; Maria’s 3.21 is a woman at a café table raising an iced coffee. At 4.01 Mark sent two men on a hilltop with the bay and the islands behind them.
Beck’s four frames at 5.02 and 5.03 are a table in front of a wall of green: the whole party round it in caps and sunglasses, two of the men in black, Roger in a straw hat filling the last one on his own. Mark’s 5.24 is a glass of Alfa on a table at the water’s edge with the bay behind it, and at 6.16 Craig sent three of them on the road out of town, two in the same black shirt — in vino veritas — the sea behind. Mark’s 6.19 is the harbour front with the yachts in; Craig’s 6.51 the fishing boats at their moorings, blue and white. Then dinner: a plate of Symi shrimp at 8.35, Maria’s Symi specialty, small and red with a wedge of lemon; the octopus at 8.45, one tentacle curled on the plate, sent by Mandy; and at 9.24 Roger’s photograph of the table inside the taverna, the length of the room, everyone at it. Mandy’s 10.13 is the last frame: Serenissima at the dock under her deck lights, the boarding ladder down.
