Athens was a bit of a blur or more like one sleepy eye open. Arriving one day late made a short focused sightseeing expedition unrealistic. We’ve been in Athens before and are coming back here at the end of the trip, so we’ll use that time for taking advantage of the photographic opportunities.
What’s the best way to know you’re in Greece?
As I said, the Greeks have got the COVID battle well-organized. When we went to the airport to get on the flight to Corfu, they checked our passports and our vaccine certificates. When we got off the plane in Corfu, they checked our passports and our vaccination certificates again - taking thoroughness to a new level. But they seem determined to protect their tourist economy after a disastrous year last year.
Corfu, if you recall, is the northwest-most island in Greece (actually there are three little ones just a bit farther but Corfu is by far the biggest). Given its location in the entrance to the Adriatic from the Mediterranean proper, it has had a strategic role since Roman times and was once the most fortified island in the Mediterranean. Because of this it has a blend of cultures but in this entry we can focus on just one - the British.
After the defeat of Napoleon, the island was given to the British which seems a little odd but at this time Greece was not yet unified and this probably was the best way to get stable government on a strategic island. British rule lasted until the 1860s when the British gave the island back to the government of a newly-unified Greece.
Where are all the people? You don’t often see it like this.
Our rental house was in the center of the Old Town.
The streets of the Old Town are only suitable for feet or two wheels.
The footprints of the British are everywhere - Corfu has a cricket pitch in the middle of town; there is a croquet pitch (along with another cricket pitch) at the marina where we parked; English is widely spoken; and you can get a “full English breakfast” in many hotels and restaurants.
This latter development came with the blossoming of middle-class vacations (package holidays) from Great Britain in the 1960s. Before that time, and still somewhat to this day, Corfu was a vacation spot for the wealthy and sometimes bohemian glitterati. The northeast corner of the island developed to meet these, to say the least, diverse needs and it is there that we intend to spend our next few days.
But before we left Corfu Town, we enjoyed dining (twice) in one of the prettiest seafood restaurants imaginable.
Our favorite seafood restaurant in Corfu
And the best mixed seafood platters
Which Lori was fully prepared to enjoy
A feature of thenortheast coast is that the view to the east is of Albania only a few miles away. While things are said to be improving, Albania is one of the least developed countries in Europe with a rugged panorama of bleak treeless mountains. Ferries make the short trip between Corfu and Albania but they form the link between countries that are decades (if not centuries) apart.
What is generally believed to be the best way to see Albania - from a distance, at night, with a ful moon.
True Colors was delivered on time by squeezing the trip from Brindisi into an ever-decreasing weather window and we spent our first few days provisioning the boat and checking her out after eighteen months of languishing on the land. Almost everything was in good shape.
Our first night was a short trip across the bay to a small anchorage off a taverna and a little beach; the night was predicted to be calm and this would be our gentle reintroduction into our sailing world. Regular readers will know that the previous sentence has trouble written all over it. the five knot winds with gusts up to 10 turned into 20 knot winds with gusts up to 30 for five hours. It was a fairly bumpy time until about 10:30. We were just initiating an anchor-watch schedule when the winds died and we had a gentle rest of the night.
We headed north to the true northeast corner of Corfu - a beautiful bay called Avlaki. The bay is a little exposed to the prevailing northwest winds but the forecast was for only modest breezes from the south. Some of you are saying “Wait a minute. Doesn’t this sound a bit like the previous paragraph?”
”Yup!”
But this time it wasn’t s bad; our second day though was a bit bumpy and we couldn’t do the things we wanted to with our new ELECTRIC motor for our dinghy.
Ever since we bought True Colors, we have had a normal 5HP four-stroke gas outboard. It has always been heavy for us to lift onto the dinghy with much anguish and many harsh words (directed at no-one in particular). Once on the dinghy, it was a bear to start and would sometimes die in mid-trip requiring a difficult restart and many more harsh words (this time aimed directly at the manufacturers in particular). As a result our outboard became something of a hood ornament (except that it’s at the back of the boat) which had more hours running while being serviced than it did doing work for us.
An electric outboard is eerie. It makes no sound as it moves you across the water. You have this very strange sensation of not moving and yet you are. It is easy to install on the dinghy and we’ve already made successful trips for provisions and lunch. So far, a great purchase.
New (tiny and quiet) outboard safely attached to our dinghy
We stayed in Avlaki Bay for three nights and it is remarkable how quickly you become attuned to the rhythms of the life in the little village even from our slightly distant vantage point of the boat. There is the woman who walks her dog every evening along the rocky beach. The dog obviously sees many dangers lurking.at the water’s edge and barks excitedly at rocks and moves the most egregious malefactors a little out to sea with his nose. Then there is another woman who comes down to the beach with her little truck each evening and gathers rocks from the beach by hand or in plastic buckets. She loads a few dozen each time and drives back into the village. What’s she building? And, finally, there’s the guy who comes down to the beach at dusk, strips out of his work clothes and goes for his daily swim. Then he lets himself air dry before putting his close back on and, presumably, heading home.
We left the bay on a calm morning heading for the Greek mainland farther south. But as we sailed down through the channel, we passed Kalami Bay where the British author Lawrence Durrell and his family lived. Some of you may have seen the charming British TV series about their time on the island. Actually when Durrell came to Corfu first, he lived in Kontokali which is the little village where the marina we started from is located.
My own (tenuous) connection to Durrell is that for many years, he worked in the British consular service and my high school English teacher shared a posting with him on Cyprus after the Second World War. There are many rumors and some circumstantial evidence that Durrell was, in fact, a spy. So my nice, erudite English teach might also have been …. Spooky!