Author: Kathryn & Rick World Travelers

Today we was a travel day.  We are leaving Corfu and going to Thessaloniki.  It’s a Saturday and the Corfu airport is a mad house.  The entrance to the rental car return was blocked with buses and the line for international flights was out the door.  And as one lady said, “It’s only May!”. Luckily the area for domestic flights was much less crowded.

While in line we met a man who works for Dream Yacht Charters and he said we might be able to rent a boat for several months and sail it from Sicily to Barcelona and then to Ibiza or Mallorca.  Might be a trip for next summer???

The flights were fine, renting the car in Thessaloniki was easy, and finding the apartment was no problem.  The apartment is in a great location, right in the middle of the city and very close to the primary historical structures. Luckily it comes with a parking spot.  After our host showed us around the apartment, we headed to the shoreline to get some lunch/dinner (we didn’t get a meal on the planes).  Here are pictures of the shoreline.

It was 4:30 so most places were serving drinks, but eventually we found a place serving food.  We had a nice meal and then headed back to the apartment, stopping at a grocery store along the way.

Once back I figured out the rest of our land trip and booked apartments and hotels.  We leave here on Tuesday, spend one night in Meteora, two nights near Delphi, and four nights in Mystras before arriving in Athens, where we spend a couple of nights and then pick up the boat.  It feels good to have that settled.  Here’s a map of our scheduled travels.

 

 

 

 

 

Today we explored the town of Corfu. Corfu was ruled by the Venetians, French, and British, among others.  All those cultures are reflected in the town which is recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.  Luckily we had glorious weather for walking around.  Although we don’t have a lot of data, it seems like late May is the perfect time to visit Corfu.  The weather is nice but not too hot and there aren’t a lot of tourists.

We drove into town and parked the car.  We walked towards the old fortress, of course stopped for a coffee along the way.  We walked along the esplanade, a large park just to the west of the fortress.

Built by the Venetians in 1546 on the site of a Byzantine castle, the old fortress housed Corfu’s entire population.  Most of the old Venetian fortifications were replace by the British in the 1800’s.  The British also added structures including Church of St. George that was built to look like an ancient Doric temple.  We wandered around the fortress for awhile and climbed up to top.  The view from the top was spectacular.

We were hungry after exploring the fortress so we went to a restaurant right on the water and had a delicious lunch including a piece of baklava! There were people swimming next to our lunch spot.

After lunch we wandered around the town.  We visited a couple of churches.  The streets were very narrow and winding, the area reminded us of Venice.  You can definitely see the merging of the cultures in the architecture.

We walked back to the car and decided we would go to a beach, in Glyfada on the west side, which is supposed to be the most beautiful one on the island.  It was very pretty and the sun felt great.  We can now say that we have dipped our toes in the Adriatic Sea.

After enjoying the beach we returned to the apartment for a light dinner and packing.  We leave for Thessaloniki tomorrow.

 

Today we planned to explore the southern part of the island.  The weather forecast was the same as yesterday, possible showers and thunderstorms.  We saw dark clouds but didn’t experience any rain.  We headed to the very tip of the island. It is clear that the southern half is less developed than the northern portion.  We had lots of excitement but no cute harbors like yesterday.  While the roads in the north aren’t great they are generally better that those in the south.  Here’s our route for today (the stops are in order, A=Benitses, etc.)

On our way to the southern tip we stopped in a little town called Benitses.  We walked around the town a little after a coffee for Rick and a fresh squeezed OJ for me.

We got to the very end and found a little anchorage with fishing boats.

We continued past the anchorage on this VERY narrow road on the edge of a cliff.  The road forked and the left fork was a dirt road that had clearly been rained out.  It had ruts so big that it was impassable, so we took the right fork.  We continued around the corner about 1/4 mile and then the road just stopped.  There was a significant drop to the beach below.  Going forward was not an option and turning around was not an option so Rick had to back up about a 1/4 of a mile to the fork where he was able to back in a little way and turn around.  YIKES!

After that we drove through an olive forest to Lefkimmi Bay which was pretty but really undeveloped.  Here are pictures of the trees (I don’t know why the trunks look the way they do) and the bay.

By this time we were hungry for lunch so we headed towards Notos.  We found a restaurant there and had a good lunch.

After lunch we went down to the restaurant’s beach area.

Fortified, we drove to a marina that we saw from the restaurant‘s beach.  It was on the next little peninsula.  We talked to a guy who had a 48ft beneteau sailboat (very similar to the one we are renting in Athens).  He spent an hour with us talking about the boat and his experiences.

The next stop was Chlomos which is one of the oldest villages in Corfu (built around the 13th century) and one of the most picturesque in the whole island.  We arrived in Chlomos and were following google maps and not really looking at the signs.  We missed the sign that said we couldn’t drive into Chlomos; Google doesn’t seem to know that you can’t drive there.  The road was getting narrower and narrower until finally it was too narrow for our car.  Again we couldn’t go forward and couldn’t turn around so Rick had to back up the car uphill for about an eighth of a mile.  We had a bunch of tourists and locals watching.  They applauded when he finally made it up the hill.  Rick did a great job and there was no damage to the car, but the clutch will never be the same.

We didn’t stick around so I have just a few pictures that I took while Rick consulted with the local on how to get the car turned around.  Here are the pictures I managed to take.

Our last stop of the day was at The Governor’s Olive Oil Company.  We were hoping to get a tour but they had a seminar starting in an hour. However they explained what makes an olive oil good and how to taste it.  It is the polyphenols that give the olive oil its anti-inflammatory and  anti-oxidant properties and their olive oil has much more than your average olive oil.  That is because they harvest the olives early in the season and because they process them within three hours of picking them.  We learned that when tasting you first warm up oil in your hands.  Then you smell it.  If it’s good oil you should sense an aroma of flowers or fruit.  When tasting it you move it around your mouth for about 5 seconds.  Then you suck air in through your teeth and swallow it.  It’s interesting because at first you taste the flowery, fruity elements on your tongue, then you taste the bitterness in the back of you throat, and finally you taste the spiciness of the oil as you swallow it.  We bought some of their olive oil to take home.  Since we often eat salad with oil and balsamic vinegar, it seems we’ll invest in something better than the $2.00 Market Basket vinegar we have on hand to compliment this better than average olive oil.

From there we came back to the apartment and had a light dinner.

A couple of other things I have noticed about Corfu.

1.  They have a real trash problem.  The British couple we met the other day said that they had a dump that got completely filled up four years ago and have not yet identified a new site.  We certainly aren’t seeing four years of trash, but there are overflowing trash bins along the roads everywhere.  They also seem to have a problem with too many cats.  There are a lot of cats and I’m sure most of them are not fixed so they will continue to have a lot of new cats.
3. It feels like Corfu has an aging population.  We see a lot of older people in the little villages that we pass through.  We are guessing that the only jobs here are associated with tourism and many of the younger generation have gone to the mainland to find work.  Not an isolated issue from our experience traveling,  but one that certainly saps the vibrance and innovative spirit within a society.

We left the apartment around 10.  Here’s the view from our balcony.

The weather forecast said we might have a couple of showers and a thunderstorm, but they decided not to materialize today.

Our goal was to explore the northern part of the island, so off we went.  As we headed out our first impressions were somewhat bleak.  Traveling on the main road we saw dumpsters overflowing with trash and closed storefronts dotting the towns we passed through.  Everything seemed to be in a general state of disrepair and there was no real sense of an underlying Greek culture.  Fortunately we decided to turn off the main road and explore the back roads leading to the coastline.  What we found was just what we were looking for, picturesque villages, quaint harbors and inviting tavernas. And a lot of German and British tourists, but that’s beside the point.  Below is a rough idea of our route.

We stopped at a couple of places to explore and take pictures.  By the time we got to Agios Stefanos we were getting hungry so we found a wonderful terrace restaurant.

We basked in the sun while eating a delicious Greek lunch.  We talked to a British couple sitting next to us who had driven from Cambridge to Corfu and are spending the summer in a rented villa.

We continued our journey and, at the British couple’s suggestion, stopped in Kassiopi which was a very cute town.  Rick had a coffee and I looked in the stores.

Next stop was Sidari which turned out to be very honky tonk.  We didn’t even stop.

We went up and over the mountains in the center of the island to get to Paleokastritsa  which had a very pretty and interesting coastline.   The switchbacks made us feel like we were back in Switzerland.  While we were parking the car a flock of goats were herded through the parking lot.

Also in Paleokastritsa we saw a car with an US presidential emblem on it and a picture of Donald Trump in the window.  Just can’t get away from him.

We had a little rain while driving and several times we saw very dark clouds, but generally it turned out to be a very nice day. It was about 65F, so not quite shorts weather, but a lot better than the weather we saw in Switzerland.

We came back to the apartment and had a very light dinner. Here are pictures from our day.

Today was a travel day.  We left Irene’s house at 8:30.  She dropped us off at the train station and we said good bye and thank you to her.  I wished we lived closer because she is really fun to be around.  We will miss her.

Our flight to Athens was delayed so as soon as we got to the terminal in Athens our flight to Corfu was boarding.  Interestingly, we were sitting next to a girl who attends Bates College in Maine which is where I went.  She was doing a short term in Slovenia and then visiting family in Zurich.  It was fun comparing thoughts about Bates with her.

We arrived in Corfu and picked up the car.  We are renting an Airbnb in Corfu.  Our host is away for work so her parents met us at the grocery store and we followed them to the apartment.  They didn’t speak much English but enough to show us around.

We went to the grocery store and stocked up.  We had a nice dinner at the apartment and called it a night.

I know the last couple of days have been a little boring from a blog perspective, I hope to have some pictures of beautiful Corfu to show you tomorrow.