Corfu, Greece

This morning we arrived in Corfu (have you watched The Durrells In Corfu?)

Since we’re now in Greece, we had to set our clocks ahead one hour.  Tomorrow we’ll set them back again as we return to Italy.

After breakfast we headed down to the gangplank to join our tour du jour, dutifully carrying our passports which we’d been repeatedly told we’d need to get through port security to get back to the ship.

Today’s tour was a drive to a scenic lookout, followed by a walking tour of the old town.  Again, we opted to take the tour bus to the lookout and then back to the center of town before losing the guide and group and exploring on our own.

Corfu is an island, one of roughly a bazillion Greek islands.  One of its claims to fame is that it’s the only one that wasn’t part of the Ottoman (Turkish) empire - it was ruled by Venice.  Hence it has a significant Italian influence.

The view from the lookout point was great - especially since it’s a beautiful sunny day.  (Apparently it’s been overcast and showery for the last week or so.)

The monastery in the foreground has been abandoned for the last 50 years or so.  Mouse Island, behind it, was so-named by pilots who once used it as a location marker - supposedly it looks like a mouse from the air.

Looking the other direction, we could see Corfu’s airport runway - the shortest runway in the European Union.  More than a hundred flights a day use it during the tourist season, but only four or five a day this time of year.

Another key site is the fortress, which dates back a few thousand years.  It can be seen from many parts of the island, as well as from our cruise ship.

It’s situated on two natural stone outcroppings and has been modified and added onto over the millennia.  It continued to be used by the Greek military until the 1980’s.  The original inhabitants lived in the valley between the two peaks.

As we were standing there admiring the site in the last photo above, four Greek fighter jets zoomed by low overhead at full speed - they buzzed the fortress.  Quite the juxtaposition of old and new. (They were American-built fighter jets.)

The old center of town has lots of shops and restaurants, and we took advantage of both.  Our purchases were limited by room in our suitcases, but I had wisely allowed extra room in mine.

An added bonus was some construction!

We had a great lunch at a restaurant that had been recommended.

I had one of the daily specials, which was an example of the mixture of Greek and Italian cuisine that Corfu is known for - ravioli (Italian) filled with a spinach mixture like that found in spanakopita (Greek).  It was delicious, as was John’s Greek “meatloaf.”

After more shopping, John suggested that we walk back to the ship, instead of taking the shuttle bus.  He’d gotten directions from the guy who was coordinating the tour buses, who’d said it was a 15-minute walk and just a matter of keeping the water on our right.  

Keeping the water on our right side was accurate, but I’m not sure who could walk the distance in fifteen minutes.  It took us an hour, but we did stop to look at interesting things along the way.

We walked by quite a few apartment buildings that would have been beautiful had they not been in such a state of disrepair.

They had great views of the waterfront - and they were lived in - but the detailed wrought iron railings were rusted and the paint (and plaster, in places) peeling.

Another Italian influence seems to be the habit of parking absolutely anywhere.

That can’t be good for the suspension.

As we circled the harbor going toward our ship, we passed all kinds of boats - fishing boats, diving boats, etc.  this party boat was the most interesting.

We’d been walking for a LONG time when we could finally see our cruise ship, but we still had a way to go - 15 minutes, really???

Now there’s another one by ours - it wasn’t there when we left this morning.

In order to reenter the cruise port, we had to go through passport control and inspection.  We were ready with passports and ship cards in hand.  But nobody really cared.  One guy took a desultory glance at our cards (not actually looking at them - it could have been a credit card for all he cared), and no one wanted to see our passports.  We went through the scan inspection and on into their duty-free shop.  I got the feeling they were more interested in marketing the duty-free merchandise than checking our identity.

There was a shuttle bus waiting at the cruise port entrance to take us to the ship, but taking the bus for the last five minutes’ walk seemed, well, nuts.  We walked.

Once back in our room we kicked off our shoes and rested our feet.  A little later we went to a lecture - “The Italian Renaissance In 42 Minutes” - which was both entertaining and informative.  I’m in awe of how a presenter can select just a small handful of the myriad individuals, discoveries, and events to exemplify this momentous time period.

  

After dinner we headed back to our room where John logged into an online seminar for the hospital foundation board that he now chairs.  I simply called it a day.