[simage=285,160,n,right]Since yes­ter­day, I am back from a great vaca­tion. The two weeks in Cor­fou have been mar­vel­lous, even if the weath­er did­n’t always play along.

Well, we’ve been vis­it­ing friends who emi­grat­ed to Cor­fou a few years ago and who built a house there on their own piece of land. This time, we decid­ed take the trip with the fer­ry from Venice, instead of using a plane and ret­ing a car on the island. We want­ed to save on the rental fees.

The out­ward trip turned out to be quite a jour­ney. We hit the road sat­ur­day very ear­ly in the morn­ing, at 5am, and drove south through rainy weath­er. The ride as such was uncom­pli­cat­ed and with few traf­fic jams. We went past Pad­ua at around 12pm. After that, things went hairy. When pass­ing over the big bridge con­nect­ing Venice to the main­land, the rain came pour­ing down so strong that one could bare­ly see beyond the wind screen even with the wipers going at full speed, and the road sur­face was cov­ered with water, so we had to find our way to the fer­ry har­bor at walk­ing speed. Then we had to wait sev­er­al hours until we were per­mit­ted to roll aboard the ship. The ride aboard the ship was rather bor­ing, since, due to the bad weath­er, peo­ple staied inside almost all the time. We felt sor­ry for all those pas­sen­gers that had booked an on-deck pas­sage. Dur­ing the ride, access to the cars was not pos­si­ble, the park­ing decks were locked as a mea­sure of anti-theft. We had booked so-called air-type-seats. Those are seats just like those in an air­plane, that can be pushed back a lit­tle, but which had slight­ly more leg free­dom. Cab­ins are avail­able too, of course, but at much high­er rates. Sleep­ing in those ATS is not for every­one, though. My wife said she bare­ly closed an eye in it, I was a lit­tle bit bet­ter off. I felt rest­ed enough, and the next day, there was­n’t any­thing to do than hang­ing around the bars and restau­rants. First land­ing place was Igoumenitza at 8pm, then 9:30 at Cor­fou. Luck­i­ly, we knew our way around the island a lit­tle bit from our last trip there two years ago, and thus we found our friends house almost at first go. The sis­ter-in-law, who arrived there the day before by plane, had pre­pared the apart­ment we were to stay in nice­ly, and so we only had to drink a wel­come Ouzo and then sink into the beds.

[salbum=10,y,y,right]As it turned out, the weath­er was chang­ing con­stant­ly between rain show­ers of dif­fer­ing dura­tion and inten­si­ty, and whole after­noons of nice and warm sun­shine. The morn­ings used to be quite fresh, but rarely below 18 degrees Cel­sius. All in all, we spent only about four after­noons lay­ing at beach­es. The rest of the time, we’ve been vis­it­ing the rest of the island or just lazy­ing around.

We like Cor­fou a lot. The island has lots of water, which is why every­thing is green, except dur­ing the hottest sum­mer months. I was explained that Cor­fou is tec­ton­i­cal­ly linked to the alban­ian main­land right across. Thus, most of the water, that can be pumped out of the ground almost every­where on Cor­fou, stems from the alban­ian moun­tains. The preva­lent agri­cul­tur­al cor­fiot prod­uct is the olive. We have seen huge, almost nev­er-end­ing olive groves. The high­est moun­tain is the Pan­tokra­tor, around 1000 meters high, whom we did­n’t pay a vis­it this time, because its top was over­cloud­ed most of the time.

Being wel­come on our friends prop­er­ty was a priv­i­lege again. Their premis­es mea­sure around 100 x 100 meters. On that prop­er­ty, there are two hous­es, one built by our friends, and the oth­er one built from anoth­er Swiss tak­ing part in that prop­er­ty, who also lends his house to tourists because he does­n’t live there all the time. Our friends are hav­ing 2 dogs, 3 cats, 2 don­keys, and about a dozen chicken.

The return trip was much more com­fort­able than the out­ward trip. We had to be at the port at 6am to be ready to get on board. With a lit­tle delay we left at 7:30, head­ing for Igoumenitza over on the main­land. Then through the Adri­at­ic sea to Venice. The after­noon in the mid­dle of the ocean was nice­ly warm and sun­ny. The swim­ming pool onboard was filled with water, and a few peo­ple actu­al­ly took a swim in it, many just enjoyed the sun and deep­ened their tan. When arriv­ing in Venice the next morn­ing, we had a great view, from the huge ship down to the city. The mar­cus place, for exam­ple, was in plain view. At around 9am we cleared the ship, got on the high­way, to Milano, Chi­as­so, and then back home.