Corfu
Corfu is the largest of the Greek Islands, and also possibly the least Greek. Unlike the cute little whitewashed buildings of Mykonos and Santorini, Corfu boasts elegant Venetian townhouses and huge stone fortresses. Given that Corfu was the southern gateway to the Venetian empire for nearly 400 years, this is not surprising.
The weather cleared for Corfu, bringing back bright blue skies for the last day of the cruise. However we were not destined to see a lot of it, thanks to two issues. One, the cruise line had only arranged to stop at Corfu for five and a half hours. And two, they only opened one disembarkation point for the two and a half thousand passengers who wanted to spend as much of that five and a half hours as possible actually enjoying Corfu and not, by contrast, standing in a stuffy queue wedged between loud, bad-tempered Bavarian tourists.
I mean, why would you want to be out and about in this?
The only reason I got off the ship after an hour was because someone in the crew finally came up with the bright idea of opening a second disembarkation point.
With limited time, I scurried to one of the two crumbling forts that sit on either side of Corfu’s main town. I found the New Fort easily enough – it’s the size of a largish city block – but it took me half an hour of circling its huge walls before I worked out how to get in. At which point I discovered that it was closed for a local public holiday.
Nevertheless, I could still take pictures of Benny enjoying the fort's unintentional bounty of spring wildflowers.
Having been foiled in my attempts to breach the New Fort, I trotted off to the Old Fort - which ironically looks a lot newer - on the other side of the town.
It was open… for another fifteen minutes. So I did what I do best and bolted to the highest point in the fortress I could find. And just as I got to the last doorway, the attendant slammed it shut, then proceeded to have a huge screaming match with a disappointed local tourist in that way that impassioned Greeks do so well.
I still got some good pictures from the slightly lower points, since the attendant was too busy trading ferocious abuse with the tourist to trouble herself with shooing me away.
I still had an hour or two before I had to be back at the ship, so I wandered through the shopping area, had some gelato, observed the tomb of Gerald Durrell, and watched some sort of Catholic parade associated with the aforementioned local public holiday.
And finally, I realised that throughout this cruise I’d been meaning to take a swim in the Mediterranean, but I’d never had a decent opportunity. So I walked down to a quiet stretch of the seafront and paddled my feet in the water. It wasn’t a swim… but then it wasn’t the Mediterranean either, since Corfu is in the Ionian Sea. But I immersed part of my body in seawater, so I figured that counted.
Benny got his feet wet too.
The weather cleared for Corfu, bringing back bright blue skies for the last day of the cruise. However we were not destined to see a lot of it, thanks to two issues. One, the cruise line had only arranged to stop at Corfu for five and a half hours. And two, they only opened one disembarkation point for the two and a half thousand passengers who wanted to spend as much of that five and a half hours as possible actually enjoying Corfu and not, by contrast, standing in a stuffy queue wedged between loud, bad-tempered Bavarian tourists.
I mean, why would you want to be out and about in this?
The only reason I got off the ship after an hour was because someone in the crew finally came up with the bright idea of opening a second disembarkation point.
With limited time, I scurried to one of the two crumbling forts that sit on either side of Corfu’s main town. I found the New Fort easily enough – it’s the size of a largish city block – but it took me half an hour of circling its huge walls before I worked out how to get in. At which point I discovered that it was closed for a local public holiday.
Nevertheless, I could still take pictures of Benny enjoying the fort's unintentional bounty of spring wildflowers.
Having been foiled in my attempts to breach the New Fort, I trotted off to the Old Fort - which ironically looks a lot newer - on the other side of the town.
It was open… for another fifteen minutes. So I did what I do best and bolted to the highest point in the fortress I could find. And just as I got to the last doorway, the attendant slammed it shut, then proceeded to have a huge screaming match with a disappointed local tourist in that way that impassioned Greeks do so well.
I still got some good pictures from the slightly lower points, since the attendant was too busy trading ferocious abuse with the tourist to trouble herself with shooing me away.
I still had an hour or two before I had to be back at the ship, so I wandered through the shopping area, had some gelato, observed the tomb of Gerald Durrell, and watched some sort of Catholic parade associated with the aforementioned local public holiday.
And finally, I realised that throughout this cruise I’d been meaning to take a swim in the Mediterranean, but I’d never had a decent opportunity. So I walked down to a quiet stretch of the seafront and paddled my feet in the water. It wasn’t a swim… but then it wasn’t the Mediterranean either, since Corfu is in the Ionian Sea. But I immersed part of my body in seawater, so I figured that counted.
Benny got his feet wet too.
posted by Blandwagon at 11:22 PM
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