[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.