Greece 2017 Corfian days

Hello there,

I thought it was probably about time I shared some photos from my holidays this Summer!

We were planning to journey to mainland Greece to the Vikos Gorge and it seemed that Corfu was the best place to fly to in order to get there!

Our first night, after a 1.5 hour delay, we arrived at our hotel in Hermones, The Philoxenia.  It seemed a very pleasant quiet place. Before arriving, we were worried it was too far from the airport to be arriving so late at night, but we were incredibly glad to have booked away from Corfu Town which was hideously busy!

Our first morning, after a pleasant breakfast all turned out to be a bit too dramatic!  We walked to the beach to swim and as we were walking along, a boat arrived with a panicked man shouting to the beach.  As we came closer, we saw a beach chair being used as a stretcher and a man's body was on it. We saw great bleeding gashes to the side of his head and face.  A hysterical lady was helped off the boat and then the boat full of passengers took off.  We were perplexed and traumatised to see the man.  A great crowd was nearby so we moved out of the way, not to be in the way.  CBC asked what had happened and was told that a boat propellor had hit him in the head.  We couldn't discern any other details but saw the man's face was covered up with a blanket! It was very sobering to realise you can die in paradise and we couldn't stop talking and thinking about it.  We were wondering about what had happened and later, CBC's sister found the story online. 
After this, we walked along the cliffs but it was scorching hot- still the views were amazing.  We went to buy some items in the shop and CBC discovered his money belt had gone with all his money and cards in!  He ran back to the beach as I trailed after.   He'd asked in the hotels and bar but no one had seen it. He was very cross with me because he had removed it from his dry bag and put it in his rucksack so I could use the drysack for my aquashoes so he decided that it must have fallen out then and angrily stomped home to the hotel to try and find his phone and call the card company. As you can imagine, I felt terrible and decided to go and ask people on the beach myself. I scrutinized the beach and then went to the other end of the beach near the boat hire desk where the dead man had been brought in.  I asked them if they'd found a money belt and to my utter joy, they reached under their desk and handed it to me! Apparently, when we were enquiring about the man, CBC had gone into his bag to look for a first aid kit, and had just dropped it on the beach there! I was SOOOO thankful to have found it and ran back to the hotel just in time to stop CBC cancelling his cards! Two rather horrible events that day.

I spent the rest of the day swimming in the beautiful hotel pool and reading books- it was all too much! The Philoxenia is a delightful family run hotel.

The next morning, we had to bid goodbye to sunny Hermones and head to Corfu Town via the very cheap green line bus. CBC had booked an Air BnB place in the centre of Corfu town so we could easily reach the port to get a boat to the mainland the next morning.

After being picked up by our host at the Bus station, we headed to our very central room which was totally in the centre of Corfu-Town but was in a quiet tiny street. We had a main room plus a little kitchenette and bathroom with washing machine. He'd provided us with bread, cheese, ham, wine, water and juice so we were able to have lunch there.

Heading into Corfu Town, we wandered around and saw this statue of Gerald Durrell, the writer, who had lived there for a while.

Here's the Old Fort.

I quite liked this interesting Bagel sculpture.

The weather was just so hot so we eyed up these people swimming with great envy!

Here's a cutie pigeon. I was very angry with the small boy who ran at it and tried to hit it!

There was some lovely architecture to see.

I honestly found it unbearably hot- sweating profusely.  I sat down on a bench by this graffiti for a good half an hour.

There seemed to be many adorable cats around the town.

We were delighted to go into the Corfu M&S, not because we wanted to go into M&S but because its delicious air con could be felt from outside!  We sat outside on the steps and people watched.
I have got to explain the slightly dubious picture below.  We were sitting there and a lady and her young child walked past.  They were both clutching Calippo ice-lollies. The child, in true You've been Framed fashion, lost his ice-lolly as it slipped out of the container.  I am a horrible person because this always makes me laugh lots! I saw another child do this on Saturday and equally sniggered.
Anyway, so she hauled the screaming kid off and the discarded section of the Cola flavoured Calippo sat on the ground like a cross between a large turd and a slug. I found this irrationally funny and said we had to sit there and see if anyone trod in it and what they'd do if they saw it.  We were ridiculously silly about it and sniggered every time someone came past.  There were all sorts of horrified disgusted facial expressions as people saw it or narrowly missed treading on it and what made it worse was we laughed every time and they obviously though WE had laid some sort of trap!

This is the view of the room we were staying in.

Eventually, we decided to go and sit in a lovely restaurant by the water, having missed the closing times of the museums we wanted to visit. It was perfect there- in the shade with nice views.

We decided to stay there for dinner away from the ridiculously hot and heaving restaurants in the central town.

I ordered a fish dish, CBC had Whitebait and something else and we shared another amazing Greek salad!

There was a series of adorable kittens who plagued us for food. We gave them Whitebait!

The sunset was utterly sublime where we were sitting since we were right by the water.  I took many photos.

The restaurant had this jetty coming out from it and as it reached dusk, they set out these candles in lanterns to light it. It was beautiful!

Eventually, we headed back to the apartment/room ready to go to sleep for an early start in the morning.

More anon...