Today it was not raining, yet JW still had wet cloths from laundry day that was not dry. No matter, we were heading to Corfu. We again woke up and packed our stuff and headed on the highway after stopping to get cheap land gas coffee and a pastry.
The road to Igoumenitsia was basically the highway, lots of tunnels, 130 KMP, fast driving, and it took less than an hour. We followed the signs to the port and eventually the road ended at a locked gate and about 20 semis sitting in a row waiting for some sign. Two men pointed back the way we came and we backed up, on the highway, and saw the exit sign we missed, and took it towards the port. We arrived at the Corfu ferry port and had no clue what to do as we’ve never taken a car on a ferry boat before. It was about 1/4 10 and we had no idea what we were doing or when the next boat left.
I drove out onto the loading area after the gates and walked back to the ticketing booth and asked for a ticket to Corfu with a car. She said wait a minute, and she will find out if there is room. I thought she meant on some future boat. 3 more people came up to the booth and also asked for cars on the boat and she told them I was first. Shortly after she waved me over and said they had one spot on the 10 am boat and they were waiting for me. I was shocked. I paid her and ran to the car and told JW that we were on the 10 am boat. I drove around to gate 6 and a man was waving me forward. He made JW get out of the car and told me to back onto the boat. I looked on the back of the boat in the car holding area and it was PACKED. There were buses, and trucks and vans and it looked total capacity. As I backed up on the boat he stood right next to me says, left, back, full right, back, left left left, back. And when it was all over, our car was on a ferry boat, 2 inches from the car next to it, and we were on the way to Corfu.
The white car on the left is us.
The ferry to Corfu was windy. This was our first ferry ride in a while we kinda like the experience, this boat had an upper level open, a middle level with an enclosed space and a Lower level with all the cars. We went to the top level to watch us pull away from shore and it seemed it was full of small children, running around and being total kids. As we got further out into the Sea, the wind picked up, and the children because more agitated. At one point I decided to go into the lounge area to get a coffee and when I opened the door and was immediately assaulted by hundreds if not thousands of children screaming yelling and crying. For every one annoying child on the upper deck, there were 4500 others in the lounge. I made haste back to the safety of our less caucaphonous upper deck and we waiting it out in the cold until we arrive in Corfu about an hour later.
Rolling into the harbour we saw sights of the city we’d only seen in youtube. As we got nearer we saw people going down to the cars so we headed down to ours which was in the front row. We had no idea what to expect as we’d only ever been food passengers before. The boat guys came down and stood next to the gate and before long it started to lower and he heard one of the trucks start his engine and we did the same and we saw the gate go all the way down as the boat pulled into dock and all the foot people rushed forward to get off the first and the car next to us shot forward and I followed right behind and before we knew it we were off the boat and driving on the streets of Corfu heading to our hotel..
TMy keyboard died I’ have to finish this in a bit
The road to our hotel is a one way street, it loops around the castle and it was a Saturday so lots of people visiting the castle. Needless to say there was no place to park. We snuck in the taxi stand across the street and checked in. The hotel outside and inside is a marvelous treasure. The rooms are tiny but this is not a big deal to us, as we only use them to sleep in.
We unpacked everything and headed out on the road towards northern Corfu. The first stop if we could find it was the house they shot Durrels on Corfu, a BBC show based on a British family hiding in Corfu after the war. We found the house but it was behind a massive gate, so we only managed a picture from the road.
We were back on the road and rolling through tiny roads that hugged the coastline. We were looking for lunch and picked a place called Taverna Nicholas and it was fantastic food.
We continued on along the coast and eventually arrived at the small village of Kassopi. there is a castle there and we had to go. We parked a bit outside of the village and walked up to the castle, which was mostly invisible from below because of the over growth. Inside the castle was worse, the entire middle of the castle was covered in overgrowth. We walked the pathway around the walls inside the castle and got a couple great views of the beaches below before the path looped back to the beginning. Not the greatest castle.
Back on the road to a special place called old Perithia. An abandoned village up in the northern mountains. The road was perilous to say the least and some kid in a small car kept riding my ass all the way to the top. We arrived and walked around the abandoned town and it was old and neat, but not terribly exciting. 4 churches! 4!
We’d had enough adventure for the day and headed back to town, mostly the same way we came, and when we got back to the one way road around the castle, it had cleared out quite a bit. We found a parking place close to the hotel.
The we walked into the old town. Apparently the 3 places I picked to eat in Corfu were closed Saturday and Sunday. WTF? I have no clue kids. I found one that was open and we sat down to such a terrible meal I’ll probably leave them a bad review on Google. Let me rephrase, Julia had a great vegetable stew and eggplant salad with walnuts, I got some veal dish that used shoeleather for veal and tasted like crap. I was not impressed with their quote “veal”.
After dinner we walked over to a neat little bar called Alchemist or something and had a couple drinks before heading back to the hotel where JW immediately fell asleep and I finished watching Andor.
What a great show!
The Durrells!
ReplyDeleteAlso, I’m obsessed with all the stone doorways.