Unfortunately we hit bad weather as we were arriving and our planned trip of chugging around the coastline in a fishing boat to see some beautiful beaches, sea caves and grottoes, was cancelled. We were offered, and accepted, the alternative which was a visit to the old town. Sounded ok but we didn’t account for buses running on Greek time, 4 other cruise ships arriving into port on the same day, pouring rain and howling wind (a mild exaggeration but not by much).
Our first stop was to the Monastery on top of the hill.
Our bus was practically empty which made me think the other passengers must have known something we didn’t. Turns out they did.
Along the way to the Monastery we passed a shop called Olive Wood Carving and outside was a full sized carved wooden motorbike.
Naturally we didn’t stop but I found this picture on Google.
Our guide was lovely – born and raised in Corfu so we received a slightly one sided view of the charms of her island.
Everything was “world famous” from the World Famous International cricket ground (no bigger than a small oval) to the World Famous town square to the World Famous beaches. The 30 minute drive to the Monastery was taken up with Greek Mythology (great but we’d heard it before in Athens and Olympia) especially a long winded story about how Ulysses was washed up onto the shore, naked. This seemed very important as the guide reiterated it numerous times.
Ok, being facetious as this was a hand written religious text from the 1500s. BTW, did you know that the word facetious is the only word in the English language that has all the vowels in the correct order? I remember that from a Trivia quiz. My team didn’t know the answer but we won anyway because I knew the words to “the Beverly Hillbillies” theme tune plus I got double points because I sang it.
We left the Monastery and headed back to town where we were to be “amazed” (the guide’s word) by the beauty of the World Famous town square.
We zoomed past Prince Philip’s birthplace, saw the church where he was christened (I didn’t realise he had been christened as a Greek Orthodox) and prepared to be amazed by the World Famous town square.
It started raining again and the wind hadn’t stopped howling so we decided to head back to the ship and get dry.
We passed a small statue of Lawrence Durrell, an equally small statue of Gerald Durrell and saw a plaque on a very run down building that claimed Edward Lear lived there from 1863 to 1864. In case you are unaware, Edward Lear is most known for his art, his nonsense poetry and was the creator of the limerick although I don’t think he wrote “there once was man from Nantucket…”
Leaving Corfu now and heading for Montenegro.
C
Rhudimentary 