Sapphire Waters, Grand City Walls
Corfu, Greece

Friday, July 19, 2019
Corfu Old Fortress and Gourmet

It probably had something to do with the time change the night before, but we were a little late getting up and out this morning. Our ship was docked opposite a much larger cruise ship along a very long, extended dock. Our ship had 654 passengers when fully booked, and the larger one 2500. We breathed a prayer of thanks, unable to imagine how it would be possible to get that many people off the ship, give them a tour, then get the back on board in any sort of order or reasonable time frame. We walked along the pier, boarded a bus, and took off for our tour of the Corfu Old Fortress.

Our guide was a lot of fun, a Welshman who had moved to Corfu only a few years before. We started with a quick look at the “New” fortress from a distance as we walked through the Old Town. Philip kept up a great line of descriptions of what we were seeing at every turn, orienting us to the layout of the town while he told us some of the history of Corfu. I’m sure that I couldn’t remember which elements were Venetian, which French, which English by the next morning, but he told us everything so clearly that I at least followed the narrative while he was speaking. 

During the first part of the morning, Philip didn’t say anything about the Old Fortress, which was a little strange given the title of this small group excursion. Not that we complained or anything, mind you, it just seemed a little funny. We worked our way around a really huge park to the entrance to the Old Fortress eventually, and Philip pointed out a monument to Gerald Durrell; we hadn’t watched any episodes of the Durrells in Corfu at that point so Judy and I just smiled and nodded. In spite of our location, we didn’t actually cross the bridge and go into the Fortress at that point. Instead we had about a hour of free time to look around the town some more. 

Judy and I walked back to a shop we had noticed, where all the items on sale were made from recycled bottles. We really liked some wind chimes made from blue glass, but the price of even the smallest one didn’t appeal as much as the item did. We looked into a couple of more touristy shops, buying a T-shirt and a little trinket that had a small Greek eye on it. That and an ATM moment took up our time so we headed back to the Old Fortress entrance to meet up with the rest of the group.

Once we crossed the bridge and got into the fortress grounds, we didn’t really spend any time looking at it, and Philip didn’t tell us anything about it, other than its date of construction. We hiked along, past the Music Department of Ionian University. Someone was practicing xylophone with the windows open, and it caused a flashback to our hearing Judy Short practicing in the old Music Building at BSC. Philip told us we had to keep moving and get to the Corfu Sailing Club for our snack, so we hustled along behind him, taking some rather treacherous steps down to the water and walking along a long row of nice looking sailboats. 

We were all expecting another snack of the sort we had enjoyed several times already on these day trips, so there wasn’t a lot of excitement about that part of the day. In the back of my mind the word “gourmet” buzzed a bit, because that was part of the description of this little foray into Greek culinary treats. Hope springs eternal, you know, and this time we were not disappointed. We started with carafes of both red and white wines on the table, before we moved on to a really good Greek salad. (I know. We should have expected that.) that was followed by the main course: grilled sausages, meatballs, and souvlaki, accompanied by olives, tzatziki, and good chewy bread. The “snack” ended with a really delicious fig cake, and I’m sorry I didn’t get a recipe. Delicious. 

That was a great way to end our shortest ever shore excursion!

We made it back to the ship and spent a very lazy afternoon. I did laundry while Judy napped a little, and we both spent some time reading on the balcony. The ship set off before dinner, and we enjoyed eating at Sette Mari on the aft deck, watching the ship’s wake and the sun set ahead of us. We duly set our clocks back and headed to bed sort of early. 

Photos