Corfu; Friday, 19 July, 2019

I had an early breakfast, during which I checked my baggage claim and saw that it stated my bag was being loaded onto the morning flight out to Corfu so it should be at the airport by 14:00, and delivered to my hotel some time after that. Happy that it looked like my bags would make it I wandered down through the hotel grounds to the main road and waited there for the open-top hop-on-hop-off bus.

I did two full circuits of the tour taking in the main sites of Corfu Town and the Kanoni Peninsula that the hotel was located on before heading back into the city centre. I had a wander through the old town, up through narrow lanes surrounded by small shops and cafes, heading up to the New Venetian Fortress, located high above the old town protecting the city. However, on getting there I found that the fortress was all locked up with a sign saying it was closed indefinitely due to staff shortages, so instead I started to wander back down through the old town and found a very nice looking taverna to stop at for an early lunch.

It turned out to be a very nice and very cheap taverna and by the time I left I was feeling rather full, so I headed back through the old town and down to the Old Fortress. This is located on two small hills, just on the coast of Corfu Town. I headed over the short bridge to the main complex and then spent a long time wandering around the site. Parts of the complex date from the early Venetian period, but large parts were reused by the British when they had control over the islands before they were merged into modern Greece. Consequently, there is a strange mix of buildings inside the fortress, though the importance of those two hills is not wasted once you’ve slogged up them to the stunning views from the top of the land facing one.

I slowly made my way back down deciding it would probably be wise to stop at the small café halfway down. I’d taken a litre and a half of water with me, on top of the litre of water I’d had at lunch, but by the time I was descending all that was gone, and I was starting to feel quite thirsty again. The café was a welcome pit stop and I had a nice slow cold drink before heading down to the ground level of the fortress for a quick look around the chapel of St George. This looks like an Ancient Greek Temple but was originally built by the British as an Anglican church, before being converted to Greek Orthodox after control of the islands passed to the Greek nation. Inside it’s a strange mix of High Anglican and Greek Orthodox.

From the chapel I wandered back out of the fortress and was just in time to pick up the tour bus as it was coming past about to start its last journey of the night so I was able to hop on that and catch it back round to the hotel. On arriving back at the hotel, I checked to see if my bag had arrived, as the BA website was saying it had made it to Corfu, but there was no sign of it at the hotel.

I made it back to my room only about 30 minutes before dinner started so I freshened up and then headed down.

After dinner I decided that as most other people would have headed back to the hotel for a later dinner it might be quite quiet down on the beach so I changed into swimming shorts (my second new pair in a couple of days – the pair I’d brought from Amazon a week earlier still being in my luggage somewhere on Corfu) and headed down to the private beach. When I’d looked out earlier every sun lounger had been taken and both the beach and the sea had been very busy. By now there were just a handful of people on the beach and a couple of people in swimming, so I headed into the water. I was a bit surprised at how cold the water was – I’d been expecting the Ionian Sea in late July to be a bit warmer, but it was still comfortable enough to walk into without losing sensation in my extremities or my breath.

I spent a good 90 minutes or so swimming, floating, paddling and watching the last light of the day start to die in the sky. Just before it started to get too dark, and with the last people starting to head back from the beach, I headed in (deciding that being the only person out there probably isn’t a good idea if I suddenly got into trouble) and up to my room to shower and then turn in for an early night.

I was just about to turn the light out when there was a knock on my door. I quickly wrapped myself in the damp towel and opened the door to be greeted by one of the hotel bellhops with, at last, my luggage. It had finally made it, over 30 hours after I’d arrived, but at least I had it back – and not a moment too soon as it had the battery charger for my camera batteries in it and I was on the last of the juice in the spare battery. I did a brief check to make sure everything was there, put the batteries on to charge and then turned in for the night.