A Day in Verona

Saturday 8th May
A Day in Verona
To save ourselves the effort of cycling we caught a bus the 3k’s into Verona. It is very attractive. The old part of the city is very small so we had a lovely day walking around looking at several different periods of history.

At the city gates - W.S was here!

The tourist office here is very helpful and we were armed with very efficient maps and information. The oldest part of the city was built by the Romans in the first century A.D. and the Arena is every bit as impressive as the Coliseum in Rome. Typically, the Opera season doesn’t start until mid June (after Rod Stewart has been here) but it would be a great place to see a concert.

1st century Roman arena.

Outside the Arena there are the usual Gladiators and Centurions available for photographs and there were some other distractions too.

                                                                                               Pizza lunch break in the Piazza Bar.

As they seemed to be best friends with the centurions we imagined that they were all part of the act, but they seemed so authentic I didn’t enquire to find out!

In fact everywhere you look there are people in costumes

These ones had us baffled until we discovered that it was also Alpine Day.


The historical centre mostly dates from medieval times and Romeo and Juliet pop up all over the place - but no sign of the 2 Gentlemen. We thought that Romeo and Juliet was just a good plot for a play, but by the time we had been to Juliet’s house, the Romeo and Juliet Bar (very good ice creams) and passed Juliet’s grave we realised that there is a bit of historical fact to it all. It is strange to think that William Shakespeare probably never came here – or did he?

The entrance to the Capelli property.

The entrance to the courtyard which has been in the Capulet (in real life Capelli) family for the last 600 years probably looked a bit smarter in the 1300’s and we doubt Romeo would have ‘post it noted’ his love poems in the archway!

Sadly there is a lot of graffiti and people pin (mostly 'post-it notes') 'love poems' under the archway which fall off and blow across the yard!

The courtyard is a lot smaller than I’d imagined so don't know how Romeo concealed himself from his lover’s father – but it’s only a story and opera!

'The' balcony.

and looking down from the balcony!


There was a very grand wedding about to take place in St Anastasia’s church so we hung around munching sandwiches on the steps, with all the other tourists, but the bride was suitably late so we gave up waiting.

St Anastasia's church which we were made to leave because a wedding was due to begin shortly.



The number of Porsches turning up was quite impressive and the young were all beautifully turned out. Even the grandmothers and aged aunts were clad in exotic looking silk trouser suits and very high heels. The girls are very petite in this part of the world – in fact to be frank, skinny!! The young men had Vivi’s heart a flutter and if one of them could have sung opera I fear she would have been off.
We had bought the ‘Verona Card’ which comes complete with a guide to all the places to see and with one wave of this magic ticket you can wander in anywhere at will. It therefore becomes a bit of a mission to see all of the places they recommend, and we had to work very hard to do even half in the day.
We had lunch in the Erbe Square which had a flea market in progress which apart from spoiling any photo opportunities by blocking the view of the houses, was very pleasant. In the corner of the square is the Torre Lamberti, with 360 steps, mercifully there was a lift. So Whilst I went to the top, Vivi went in search of my birthday present – a wolf whistle attracted her attention, see photo of her in the square.

Vivi is down there somewhere waving!



(the whistle distracted me so much I never bought one, but I had found an excellent photo of Leonardo da Vinci’s design for the first bicycle, - made of wood- however it was on black tee shirt and wasn’t sure how well that would go with the rest of his wardrobe)

View north from the Torre Lamberti

It can’t rain much here because the houses all have the loveliest murals painted on the outside and they are still in very good condition after 500 years.

                                                                                                                 Murals - everywhere.


After lunch we followed the river westwards to the Castelvecchio Museum which didn’t have much to recommend it apart from a rather amusing 15thC painting of Orpheus and his underworld!
Eventually, exhausted we made our way back to the railway station and caught the bus home. Treading the pavements might be jolly interesting and entertaining but it’s a lot more exhausting than a day in the saddle.

Badia Polesine to San Giovanni Lupatoto

Friday 7th May
Badia Polesine to San Giovanni Lupatoto
We set off again with a very fond farewell from both of our hosts not entirely certain where we’d end up. Anyway the sun was shining and the countryside was more interesting as we are now in fruit (apples, pears, peaches, kiwi) growing country. Just when we were beginning to feel a bit weary, we found ourselves going around in a circle, as good old Michelin don’t seem to have factored in the new roads yet. However, a kind girl in a petrol station drew us a map and with a certain amount of guesswork we managed to get back on a direct course towards Verona. 40 miles after we’d set off this morning we were in the outskirts of Verona in San Giovanni Lupatoto. Usually about 10 miles outside any city you hit a few miles of industrial factories and units. However, there isn’t too much of this outside Verona and San Giovanni is pretty, if a bit on the smart side, we don’t know why.
Lunch spot- very pleasant!


There must be a crop of something in here but we can't see what it is!

The first hotel we stopped at was closed, the second didn’t look too bad until an absolute grizzly bear of a man came to see what we wanted, didn’t have wi-fi and offered us the room of a 40 a night smoker but the 3rd (sounds like Goldilocks doesn’t it) was just right!
The hotel has a meal deal with a wine bar just a 100yds away so armed with the 10% discount card we set off for some supper. Now you don’t get many 50 something year olds going into wine bars on a Friday night in the UK and the same can be pretty much be said about Italy – but we were starving so in we went. We fought our way through a crush of hundreds of yuppies hosing back Pinot Grigio and the local Valpolicella to the back where we were assured there were a few tables. Much quieter but still full of youngsters having dinner and drinking champagne, so as they say – when in Rome, and we had a very good dinner and I paid forgetting I had the discount card!

Cavarzere – Badia Polesine.

Thursday 6th May.
Cavarzere – Badia Polesine.
Our plan is to follow the River Adige up the ‘Valli Grande Veronese’ towards Verona today and for once all went according to plan. The land here is perfectly flat but about ten miles north the hills begin and look very pretty.



Valley Veronesi

The road hugs the river which is about 150 yards wide at this point, and also flowing very fast, full of fallen trees and roots. There has been some wild weather up in the hills and the water is very coloured. There wasn’t too much of a headwind the road was clear of traffic and the sun was shining. We saw a couple of golden Orioles, a Little Bittern and Black Terns catching flies on the water. The noise from the warblers in the reeds was deafening but there was hardly a glimpse of one. We found a quiet spot for lunch on the bank so caught a few rays too to keep our tans up. This was not quite as restful as it could have been as we were joined by about 1000 ants who wanted to share our picnic and liked climbing all over us. Alec was rather braver than me about this.


Lunch spot - bit noisy with all those sheep, ants, birds!




More guests!

About 3 miles short of our B and B we were treated to another thunderstorm; this seems to happen every afternoon so we took shelter again for 40 minutes. We stayed in our first Agriturismo which was really lovely. Le Clementine is about 2 miles outside Badia Polesine down a long track, near the canal.
Clementine (for that is madam’s name!) was lovely and had a menagerie of chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, peacocks, turkeys, pigeons (edible) sheep, donkeys (not edible? Pepperoni maybe) and pigs. Not to mention the first Alsatian we’ve ever met which didn’t give the impression that it would like us for his breakfast.
Dinner was in a barn (bit like ours at home), there was another couple staying and a single man – from Colombia. He spoke very good English and introduced himself halfway through dinner. Having ascertained what we were doing he said with what we thought was a little bit too much feeling – no wonder you can both eat so much, - well!! There were also 2 dinner parties of 8 but they weren’t supposed to be there, you knew that they were though as they were having a lot of fun! (Imagine having a dinner party at home and just going to someone’s barn and having it all done for you – marvellous! We had an extremely comfortable room which could not be faulted until about 4am when something upset the donkey. His ee-oaring upset the peacocks who upset the guinea fowl who upset the cockerels and from that moment on sleep was impossible! Our host and hostess made strenuous efforts to find us another Agriturismo for tomorrow night but the closer you get to Verona the more ridiculously expensive they get so we decided to see how far we could go tomorrow before making a decision. It is still fairly low season so nothing is very booked up yet.

The Lido (across the Bay of Venice) to Cavarzere

Wednesday 5th May. The Lido to Cavarzere
Villa Beatrice is a small hotel and they looked after us very well and gave us a delicious breakfast. Beatrice’s husband is an artist so the house was a bit like a gallery. He paints the most amazing huge pictures of bar room, beach, the races scenes with blousy women and dude’ish men sometimes set up as cats, badgers or something, I’m sure I’ve seen the pictures elsewhere but Beatrice was very coy about his success or lack of. It’s in a fairly quiet spot next to the Venice golf club. I can foresee a good weekend break of a combination of Venice and golf another time! We pedalled past it on the way to the next ferry to The Litorale di Pellestrina, the island to the south. It was still raining but not quite so hard. This ferry ride only took 10 minutes



Our 20th ferry of the trip.






and then we had another 8 miles down the next island. There were some old Island forts dotted along the coast as this would have been the first port of call for invaders. These are currently being repaired, some dating back 700 years or so. Pellestrina is a most attractive fishing village, the whole island is in some way involved in fishing. They have a technique for catching clams, gobbes’, nassas’ (no idea what the last two are) in things called ‘pound nets’


A pound net attached to the front of this boat - there were masses of them.




Fishing town of Pellestrina.


Which we think they must trawl through the mud and dig up anything there is to find.
We stopped for a late mid morning elevenses in the Sicilian Bar – run by guess what, a Sicilian who became quite emotional when we were able to show him our photographs of Siracuse on the camera. After the Dane in the bar the day before we wondered whether any of the local hostelries are run by locals.
The second ferry took us to Chioggia which is back on the mainland again. Whilst waiting alone and in the rain for a ferry which we weren’t too certain was going to turn up another couple of cyclists also arrived and asked (in German) if we too were going to Chioggia. Hopefully was all we could answer! They turned out to be Austrian -he was an anaesthetist and he and his wife were taking a 3 week holiday and had decided to cycle to Rome. It had taken then only 4 days to get to Venice which we thought was probably going a bit too quick for us! In three more days they hoped to be in Rome – wow!


Austrians - serious cyclists who carry rucksacks and travel very fast!



We chatted with them on the 30 minute crossing mainly about the dire state of the euro zone nations and how the Austrians and the Germans certainly were not that happy about bailing out Greece and probably Spain and maybe Portugal in the full knowledge that the loans would never be repaid. Anyway leaving that aside it was great to speak with people who had cycled in places where we had been too – the Peloponnese, Spain, Italy and Sicily.
Now Chioggia(also known as little Venice locally) is a pretty fishing town and it can also boast an enormous clock tower, the first to be designed and built by Leonardo da Vinci.



Leonardo's clock tower.





Maybe doesn’t look much but it really is an impressive spectacle!
My overriding memory of Chioggia will always be the smell of fish and not a very pleasant one either. There must be some fish processing factory somewhere because the smell of gutting fish is everywhere.
As we have already discovered, the Italians have this fixation about motorways and cars and heed little to the needs of a poor cyclist and produce no information for either in the way of ‘sign posts’. The quiet road out of Chioggia leads you directly onto a motorway so not for the first time we found ourselves unable to get out of the city and having to turn back and cast about until we found the correct route. Once on it we were laughing, we followed the river Adige on a very quiet B road all the way to Cavarzere. This route takes you over the salt marshes and flats along the edge of a canal. It was completely deserted so we whizzed along nervously watching a large thunderstorm gaining on us. Just as we were about to be soaked, lo and behold there was a wooden shack on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere which turned out to be a bar, so we took shelter in there. There were some old boys playing a very rowdy game of cards. It was a pretty impressive storm so we were very relieved to be inside. We had a glass of Prosecco to celebrate going over the 3000 mile mark on our speedometers. We have done rather more than this, as they frequently don’t work. 10 miles on we found the hotel we’d looked up on the internet without a problem.
Getting in to it on the other hand was not going to be so easy. All the way across Europe hotels advertise themselves as being Gay Friendly which we’ve always regarded as rather comical as we’ve never thought it a problem. But ‘when I enquired about a double room’ (leaving Vivi outside) madam here was most insistent that I was married to the person staying with me. I was quite surprised that she hadn’t wanted to see our marriage certificate as well!
As it was only 6pm’ish we decided to walk into the town to take a look at the huge church. 50yds short of it we spotted a barbers shop with only one man in it and he was just leaving. "Ah look" says Vivi you can get a haircut, so in we went. Why is it that you only discover that you’ve made a terrible mistake when it is too late to do anything about it. I was pushed into the chair and swaddled in towels, Vivi was handed some extraordinary ‘girls’ mags (ie mags for girls) the contents of which we didn’t know it was legal to publish. As for me I was in the company of ‘mad Edward Scissor hands’. First he pulled what hair I have out with some blunt croppers. Then he snipped and snapped all around my head, then he took a cut throat razor to the rest of the hair I have and then some other sort of scissors which he proudly said came from Germany. He then shaved my neck and returned to the top of my head with the shears and a polisher, and afterwards managed to get his scissors right into my ears, up my nose and cut my eyebrows back to a mere stubble. This has never happened to me before and I found it all most undignified!! Even Vivi was temporarily silenced and watched in what can only be described as morbid fascination. Eventually we managed to get him to stop whereupon he showed us all of his photographs since schooldays and then offered to buy us a drink in the pub opposite. Mercifully he had to lock up the shop so as soon as his back was turned I’m ashamed to say – we made a run for it!
The River Adige (just north of the more famous Po) My haircut was in the building just to the right of the church tower! Never to be forgotten.

Today Vivi whilst cycling along behind me has twice mistaken me for a taxi with both of it’s doors open! (It’s not quite as bad as he is making out, but he does look well trimmed!) Ah and a lot better than my bro in law after he’s had an Aussie No 1!! (No offence Zoom)
Back in the hotel we had an excellent dinner – one party of 8 men, a couple of men (not gay) and Vivi and me. But it was OK, she is used to being the token female. As with all Mediterranean countries the telly was on with the eternal football. They were showing the Italian grudge Derby of Roma v Inter-Milan who as everyone knows are managed by none other than ‘The Special One’, Chelsea’s old boss Jose Morinho. (and Vivi’s favourite manager) It took us until Inter scored to work out who was playing in which strip but no bother, Inter won in the end! Well, what a curate’s egg of a day.

Venice Day 2

We thought that we ought to have a look at St Mark’s Square as we had not been across the bridges over the main canal yet. It took us most of the morning walking the scenic route. Alec was in charge of map-reading and we did pretty well, but there are the most amazing number of distractions which make following a pre determined path impossible. On the way we dawdled along looking in windows, churches (which were mostly shut as it was Monday) and it was midday by the time we reached St Marks Square having pushed ourselves past the Armani, Gucci, Church’s, Valentino stores and simply masses more designer outlets. Vivi had her eye on a Valentino number for a wedding in July but was dissuaded since she has no room in her panniers – phew!
We stopped in the Campo St Maurizio because we heard strains of Vivaldi coming from a huge building. It turned out to be the Museum of Music where they had a exhibition of violins and the history of Vivaldi’s life. The instruments were all made in Venice from the 1700’s onwards. Vivi listened to 2 of the 4 seasons and then rejoined me outside.

Whilst Vivi was in the church I marveled at what was keeping the tower up!

I hadn’t gone in because rucksacks are ‘verboten’ and I was designated baggage carrier! What intrigues us is that nowhere in Venice is there anywhere to sit other than at cafe’s and bars. So I had joined some children sitting on the edge of a fountain. We think that the lack of public seating is all part of the same conspiracy which includes no free wi-fi access in the hotels and no eating of picnics in public areas (not that many people took much notice of that one). The lack of wifi is a serious irritant as we had hoped to plan our route onwards, but you have to pre-book it one week ahead at the same time as buying boat or museum tickets.
St Mark’s Square was heaving with people and street hawkers.

St Mark's square

There was a long queue to go into the church and also up the tower so we failed at that but another time we will heed the advice that you should get there early. We then came across the opera house quite by mistake which looks fabulous but there are no operas until the end of the month. We found a bench outside someone’s house and broke all the rules by eating our sandwiches and drinking some wine! It was boiling hot and very pleasant.
The Rialto Bridge was a bit of an experience

Rialto Bridge with it's shops and heaving with tourists.

too with so many people on and around it, we fled to the back streets again coming across a flea market in Campo Santo Margherita and lots of children playing football against the precious windows of various Pallazzos. We then spent 2 hours in a Blues cafe with great music and good internet connection planning the route to the Lido and beyond.
In the evening since it wasn’t raining we ventured farther afield in the search of some supper. The area around Tolentino is very pretty and we found what could possibly be described as quite a ‘local’ place and had a very good meal and then a pleasant walk home in what seemed like quite balmy conditions.

On the way out to supper.

One of the fascinating things about Venice is that everything happens from the water. So when you hear a siren wailing it will be a police or an ambulance boat going extremely fast. There are rubbish boats, ice cream delivery boats, laundry boats, beer delivery boats, hearse boats everything you can think of. In fact we think that even the sewers are emptied into some sort of a sewage bowser boat. The canal is very polluted with plastic bottles but to be honest apart from looking very green there isn’t too much else in it!

Rubbish collection boat.

Ice cream delivery boat

Death in Venice boat.

Venice

Leaving Corfu and off to Venice
1st May.

As our alarm went at 4.50 we had a text from Rosie saying that she had arrived home - a long trip for her and the start of a long day for us. We were very sad to be leaving Corfu and Greece as we have loved every minute of our 6 weeks here and have only scratched the surface of a very small part of it all.
After hanging around on the quay for about 1 hour whilst the sun rose over Corfu town, the Sophocles V arrived and aboard we went. We were very glad to have spent the extra on a cabin, as there was hardly an inch of floor space left. The ferry had left Patras the night before and several hundred young were camping with sleeping bags on every bit of available carpet, seats and doorways. We crawled into our beds and slept for a couple of hours to catch up before braving the decks which were very busy. The swimming pool deck was amazingly noisy but the sunniest part of the boat so we spent the afternoon there ‘people watching which is
Annoyingly the video of the pool area on the boat is refusing to upload!
always fun and we were almost relieved that the young from other parts of Europe drink just as much as the British. It was unnecessary to get into the pool as some of the boys were practising belly flops to impress the crowd so it was very cooling all around.
The sea was like glass so the trip was a pleasure and all too soon it was 8.30 am (still on Greek time – 7.30 Italian) and we were onto the bikes and dodging the lorries


Welcome to Venice - St George!

offloading and heading into Venice. We had set our alarm especially early in order to be ‘on deck’ as the boat came around the Lido and up the canal di Giudecca as we had been told this is a ‘must see experience’ – it lacked the wow factor I was expecting but wasn’t bad.


From the ferry which was much higher than most of the buildings.











                                  Cruise ships ahead of us full of Northern Europeans, Americans and Japanese.

Having checked the internet and found various B and B’s in downtown Venice which were reasonably priced we then discovered that bicycles aren’t allowed into Venice so in short we had to forgo the B and B plans and booked into a hotel on the Grand Canal which in fact is very comfortable and no smell of drains which we’d expected.
As it was still only 9.30am so we couldn’t get into our room and we couldn’t get breakfast either so set off in search of some fresh orange and a coffee. Several ‘wow there’s a gondolier’ moments later

So exciting, water and boats everywhere!



We had a sumptuous breakfast watching the Pope on TV in St Peter’s square blessing the masses. We are back in Italy!!
As we walked past St Nicholas of Tolentino’s church we heard some lovely organ music, so we went in and sat for a few minutes listening to the organist practising. He gave us a good concert of the Wedding March, and the Gloria amongst other pieces. We haven’t heard any live organ music for months, usually it is just a recording being played in the many churches we have visited so it was a real treat. We also pushed our way into the Jesuit’s church which is reputed to have some of the best paintings, but beat a hasty retreat as there was a service going on. We were amazed to see how full the church was.

The sky darkened and suddenly the ferry we had come in on was off on it's way back to Patras.


The rest of the day we spent just wandering about along narrow alleys full of artisan workshops repairing and making furniture, masks, costumes and shoes.

Artisan's workshop, downtown Venice.

                                                                                                      Bear made from spark-plugs!

We called into the Venice Rowing Club where they had a good exhibition of paintings and history of the club. They seem to row standing up here, rather like all the gondoliers. We had primarily went in as it was only 1euro to see the exhibition and 1.50 per person to go the public loos in Venice, a fact of which we are not proud of, but surprised ourselves by enjoying reading the history of the club which even had a picture of our Queen!
Walking along the Canal Grande our attention was drawn to a gondola steered by two men where there appeared to be a bit of a fracas. It turned out a girl had lost it with one of the gondoliers and had scratched him across his cheek. A fight had ensued with the gondolier trying to restrain her, much punching, kicking and screaming – so I took a photo!

After that we came across a man playing Ave Maria on a load of empty wine glasses – amazing achievement and he hadn’t spilt a drop! Click to activate the video.

We went into St Rocco’s church which was full of quite good paintings by Tintoretto amongst others and there are more areas of it for us to explore tomorrow, but by 4.30 we were feeling a little pavement weary and, dare one say it, cultured out so returned to the hotel where we found the bed about as comfy as can be so we fell asleep!
By 5.30 (when we awoke) the weather had changed and it was pouring with rain so we abandoned the – ‘History of Venice’ movie for some supper closer to home.

Last few days on Corfu

Friday 30th April
Leaving Paleokastritsa today

This is a Kumquat, we have wanted to taste one and drink the sticky sweet liquor they make from it for ages and so far all we've had is some of it tipped over some sliced apples with cinnamon, which was good!
We have to return to the real world today – well in our case only sort of - but Rosie flies home tonight. This is the longest we have stayed anywhere since leaving home, expect Spain over Christmas and it has been very spoiling to be based somewhere for a week. The hotel staff are very funny and hospitable and we have had an incredibly lazy week. Therefore not much to blog about except swimming and sunning and the odd trip over the island – mostly by car, cycling here is tricky.
We awoke yesterday to pouring rain which caught us out and all our washing on the line was soaked, we have also got into the habit of airing our bath towels so they were soaked too. We had arranged to hand the hire car back but decided we needed it for another day so rang Yannis the car man who was only too pleased to have another day’s rental.
We drove over to Nissaki to have a trip down memory lane. 15 years ago Alec had left his brand new swimming trunks on the wall there by mistake but sadly no sign of them today and no one was owning up to having seen them! That side of the island is so different and has a decidedly more ‘manicured’, tidy and prosperous look to it.
Very small sea plants which looked a bit like plastic bags! And a new spot on my camera lens.


Albania seems to look less barren and even closer than remembered. The only other man at lunch had arrived back after the winter away to find his house completely cleaned out of anything of value, computers, T.Vs etc and they had even taken his spectacles. The restaurateur was roundly blaming the Albanian neighbours in their boats but we don’t know if they might be just convenient scapegoats.










Father and daughter at lunch!

The sea on the Nissaki side is a good 5 degrees warmer which was a bit of a relief, as the bay of Paleokastritsa is positively numbing until you get used to it.


Alec in the sea with Albania in the distance.

Apparently there are lots of underwater freshwater springs fed by cold water from the mountains and injected into the bay which lowers the temperature. However, it is so buoyant once you are in, it is bliss.
Finance in Greece we gather from the news is pretty dire, nightly we watch riots in Athens and countless politicians all giving their own perspective. In Paleokastritsa we feel rather distanced from the emergency as the only means of payment is cash and as far as we can see people walk about with wodges of it stuffed down their trousers. Some of the locals have had trouble dealing with their banks where they don’t seem to know more than the customers about the current state of affairs.
Back to Friday!
We were sitting on the beach in front of the hotel because now the hire car has gone the choice is either here or up to the monastery. However, Quasimodo (as he’s known locally) who runs it had taken rather a shine to Rosie and had most generously not allowed us to pay for our drinks on our last visit, so we felt we couldn’t go there too often. A group of well dressed English came to the hotel having escaped from their cruise ship tour and they wanted some lunch which the hotel wasn’t really equipped to do for a few more days, so sauntered off to one of the other bars in the village. On departing they said to Craig where are you from, when he replied Nr Sherborne they admitted to coming from Bournemouth and Bishops Caundle so we threw in that we were from Bere Regis – all in Dorset, what a small world.
Anyway they were back in 5 minutes having not liked the look of the other bar (as we’d expected) so Craig knocked up some Greek concoction which appeared to go down well.


Dorset cruisers!

He is a fabulous pastry chef, it is the Greek custom to eat a pastry for breakfast every morning and each day there was a fresh warm filo pastry prepared for us to try. Sometimes filled with feta, sometimes Chantilly cream and other yummy things.


See pastry bottom right of table light as a feather and full of something very fattening!
After lunch Alec borrowed Craig’s snorkel and mask and discovered that there are some quite colourful fish out in the bay and Rosie and Vivi absorbed a little more sun. All too soon the eight days were all over and we had to start thinking about getting Rosie to the airport and us to Corfu town for the night as our ferry leaves at 7am tomorrow. Kosta had negotiated with a mate for our 3 bikes to go in a truck and us in a Mercedes Benz which made life very simple for us. Everything is good about Corfu but the willingness and kindness of everyone at the Apollon Hotel, Paleokastritsa is legendary!
We probably haven’t spent enough time in Corfu town as it is very pretty, but we explored for a couple of hours, Rosie bought a very smart handbag,

handbag shop in Corfu town.


We ate a delicious moussaka before sending her to the airport. It was a bit like the first night of the school term, and we were very sad to see her go but we were tucked up in bed by 10 pm as our alarm goes at 4.50 tomorrow morning.

Our last night on Corfu we spent in Corfu town and this yacht sailed in to park opposite just to please us!