Lazy Days on Symi (Dodecanese):

Fading beauty of Lazy Days on Symi

When I wrote my full post about Symi last year (Symi island ) I briefly mentioned the lovely old excursion boat Lazy Days which has been crumbling away in the Harani boat yard at Yialos for years. I've just recently edited the images and have been uploading them to my various photo agencies - giving me an excuse to publish them here.
Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I found this boat utterly charming and wondered about its history, where it had been and who had been on it. Most importantly, why had it ended up here in Yialos. Some of the answers were on the boat itself with peeling signs advertising Moonlight Cruises and excursions to Lindos (on Rhodes island).

For more information I turned to the excellent and informative symivisitor.com . This is a site I had looked at a lot before my trip to Symi in 2011. There's a host of information about the island on the site and even a webcam looking towards the harbour which you can look at (note: these are updated stills, not a live video feed!). Even better the site has a chat page (just click on the link there)
which is a forum all about Symi -with active contributions from both permanent residents of the island and visitors new and old. Pretty much anything you want to know about Symi is there and if not just ask. Someone on the forum is sure to have an answer for you.

Lazy Days excursion boat on Symi

Before I went most of my questions were about ferry schedules and what was likely to be operating (2011 saw a lot of industrial action in Greece and, indeed, I was delayed by an Air Traffic Controllers strike on my return journey). In the end, my flight arrived too late for the last ferry anyway and I had to stay on Rhodes until the next morning. As I said in my previous post, this was the only time ever I had failed to reach my destination island on the same day.



Where to find Lazy Days in Yialos (click to enlarge)

Obviously, on my return, who better to ask about Lazy Days. The forum came up trumps with all sorts of memories of actually travelling on it, old photographs, and an approximate date of circa 1995 for when it had arrived at the boat yard. The concensus seemed to be that there was some kind of dispute between various owners of the boat and that as a result Lazy Days had just been effectivly abandoned there for all those years.
Interestingly, views about Lazy Days ranged from how charming it was through to it was getting to be an eyesore. We do all, indeed, see things in a different way.
The big question that had to be answered before writing this post was Is Lazy Days Still There? Needless to say, the forum provided the answer when two regular visitors posted this month about walking past Lazy Days. It seems it has substained more damage from storms last Winter but, yes, it is still there.
So, if you are heading for Symi, take a walk past the clocktower on the left of the harbour and a few minutes later there she is. I hope you appreciate her as much as I did. Do you have any memories of Lazy Days? Feel free to comment below. Regards, David.

Edited to Add (October 2014): Sadly, the Symi Visitor Facebook page recently posted that Lazy Days is no more. Not clear if it is being broken up -or just collapsed through natural causes. We'll always have the photographs though.....