A little bit of greenery. Corfu Tuesday 5th May

Arriving in Corfu at dawn

Goats have right of way here

Paleokitstritsas

Yes those are bottle brushes

View from the highest point on the island.

Where we enjoyed a snack and local wine

In the old town

The water was as smooth as silk at dusk

Corfu  Tuesday 5th May
The first impression of Corfu is one of lush greenery.  Corfu is the most northerly of the Greek Islads and is where the Ionian Sea joins the Adriatic.   It lies very close to the Albanian coastline, which is quite barren in comparison to its lush neighbour.
The weather at the moment is quite mild but it becomes very hot in Summer and can reach 95% humidity.  Ugh. 
Corfu produces large quantities of olives and wine as well as almonds and cumquats and many shops sell their own extra virgin olive oil and oil based cosmetics, nougat and cumquat marmalade.
Interestingly it was the only one of the Greek islands not to have been overtaken by the Ottomans so its overall feel and its architecture is more European than Byzantine.  We also noticed many eucalypts and bottlebrush plants in the towns and villages that are clearly thriving.

I was already awake as we approached the harbour around dawn, thanks to Vaughan's phone updating itself on a network in another time zone.  The silver lining was that I was treated to a really stunning view of the old town. 
Our tour left at nine and took us to the most spectacular site on the island: the Paleokitstritsas, after which we were taken through scarily winding roads and narrow streets barely wide enough for our bus to the highest point on the island to take some photos.  After that we went on to Mikrades where we were treated to some local wine and some Greek delicacies including: dolmades, cheese pie, home grown tomatoes and cucumber, bread and salami.

Once back at the dock, we opted to take a cab into the old town (10E) to have a look around before our 5pm departure.  We ordered two local beers, a greek salad and kalimari from a sidewalk cafe for a latish lunch.  We were warned that it was 'Greek' Kalimari, so we said OK.  Out came a whole grilled squid bathed in lemon juice and oil with salad on the side.  We were so surprised we forgot to take a photo of it  but it was delicious and as we sat there, we congratulated ourselves on being so authentic in our menu choices.  Over some very fine coffee we indulged in some low key people watching.  In Corfu motor scooters are a  popular form of of transport.  I lost track of the number of people zooming around the narrow streets, mostly riding bikes without helmets, with extra passengers riding pillion (one was even side saddle).  I even saw someone balancing his computer tower on the footplate.

The atmosphere was very relaxed- almost like a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, which is not entirely unusual. People didn't seem to have anywhere important to be.  As we walked around the shopping district and around the old fort, we also noticed piles of rubbish on the footpath awaiting collection and a general tattiness in public spaces eg. fountains not working, paint peeling and plaques rusting, which is a shame.

We spotted another couple from the ship at the park and we shared a cab back to the ship and halved our expense.

We leave Greek waters tonight and head up the Dalmatian coast. Our first stop is Kotor in Montenegro and everyone has told us that the port arrival is something special.  In order to appreciate it though, we'll have to be up by 5:30am (after putting our clocks back an hour for a time zone change).  It had better be good.

We've noticed that many of the shops we've seen in Turkey and in Greece tourist spots seem to sell the same types of things.  It's a never ending string of souvenir shops followed by clothes shops, high end jewellery stores then back to the generic souvenir store selling postcards, magnets and tshirts.    I'm sure that it will be more of the same as we continue around the coast.  Despite this, we've manage to find some quirky and interesting mementoes of our first two weeks.