Jason Austin's Blog Life and times of a PHP Developer in Raleigh, NC

Mediterranean Trail 2010: Corfu

This is part 3 of my documentation of our Contiki trip in June 2010.  Check out the first post about Rome and the second post about Sorrento, Capri, and Pompeii to get caught up.

Day 5, 6 and 7:  Corfu baby!

When last we left, I said that the next night was one of the longest of my line.  Although day 5 started in Pompeii, most of the day was spent driving across Italy to the east coast.  Our destination was a port town where we would be catching a 7 hour overnight ferry ride to Igoumenitsa, Greece.  We were told that the original plan was to take the overnight ferry directly to Corfu, but for whatever reason we were being redirected to Igoumenitsa.  That in itself would have been fine, but the bigger problem was our accommodations on the ferry.  When I booked the trip, I was told that we would have a cabin with beds and our own bathroom while on the ferry, seeing as how it was overnight.  What we got was WAY different.

It was essentially an airline seat in a room with about 70 other airline seats.  Oh yeah, and there was no such thing as checked baggage here either.  We had to keep up with our own bags during the duration of the trip.  When we boarded the boat, there were already a few people in the room occupying our seats.  When our tour guide tried to get them to move, this woman went off on our tour guide...screaming at all of us in Italian.  Amedeo had to go get the captain to have him remove the people.  Drama!  For most of the boat ride, those same people stalked the room...walking by and peering in every so often.  It was creepy.  On top of that, random people would walk in while our group was sleeping and try to sit down with them!  Needless to say, I couldn’t sleep at all that night.

We finally got off that damn ferry at around 4am local time.  We checked into a hotel and got a whopping 2 hours of sleep before waking up to get on yet another ferry for a 2 hour ride to Corfu.  Dear Contiki, if you wanna make this trip even better, find a different ferry company.  Anyway, it was when we got to Corfu that our day started to get better.

After checking into our hotel, we all went down to the main square to have lunch.  I was very nervous about having Greek food.  I had never really had anything Greek that I liked, so I ordered a Gyro because everyone seemed to like those.  Needless to say, it didn’t take me long to change my mind about Greek food!  I LOVED it.  So tasty...mmm tatziki!

After lunch, we walked around a little bit and did some shopping.  We then caught the bus back to the hotel and chilled for a while.  Erin went to the pool and had a few tropical-looking drinks with some of the girls (she had actually managed to sleep a little the night before).  I went back to the room and crashed.  Naps are essential on a Contiki trip, because you really don’t sleep much!

That night, we had dinner in the hotel before heading out to a toga party.  That’s right.  Just like in “Animal House”.  Toga!  Toga!  Toga!  Erin and I hung out with Kat and Jonas, who we had met a few days earlier.  Like us, they were celebrating their 5 year wedding anniversary, and like us, they were awesome

After learning how to put on a toga, we headed down to the “party”.  Not only was our Contiki group at the party, but there was another Contiki group there as well.  Now at first, it was totally 8th-grade-dance lame.  But then we saw something truly amazing and gross all at the same time.

This girl from the other group was seriously trashed about 30 minutes into the thing.  While she was walking out of the dance floor room and onto the patio, she tripped and spilled her drink.  She looked at the floor, looked around, then got down on her knees and I kid you not...licked her drink off the floor.  We were shocked and amazed, but then just started cracking up.  That set the tone for the night and we sorta decided “we’re gonna act stupid and have a good time”.

We all started dancing and going nuts on the dance floor.  I broke out my serious white-boy dancing skills, which were appreciated by everyone I'm sure.  It was a great time letting loose and really not giving a crap.  As you can see  <- Jess was having a good time, along with the rest of us   It wasn’t long before the room got so hot we couldn’t stand it, so we made our way outside to the beach.  We hung out with a few folks and told our girl-licking-the-floor story.  Good times.  We wrapped it up there around midnight and headed back to the hotel exhausted.

The next day was the best day all around of the trip.  We got up early and headed down to the docks to catch a boat known fondly as “George’s Boat”.  While the name itself doesn’t exhibit much excitement, say those words to anyone who has done a Contiki in Corfu and they will surely light up and smile.

George is an awesome guy.  He’s probably in his 60’s and his job is to take all us crazy people around on his boat and show us Corfu.  George is also a dirty old man, which makes for some AWESOME commentary along the way.  Basically, George is the man.

Our trip had 3 stops planned and then a “secret” stop.  First stop was a beach where you could swim or do water sports.  Some people did parasailing, some did the banana boat thing.  We just chilled on the beach and went swimming a little.  It was really nice to just relax for a few hours.  After getting back on the boat, we had lunch on the way to stop number 2.  We had cold cuts, chips, and tatziki (good for your sex life, per George).    It was good freaking food, especially since it was crazy hot and we had been swimming all morning.  Stop number 2 was a place to go swimming and play with George’s balls (volleyballs, that is).  We dove off the boat into the clearest water I have ever seen.  You could see 30 feet down.

Stop number 3, or “skinny dippy island, hanky panky island, freaky deaky island”, was a spot to go skinny dipping.  Thank goodness skinny dipping wasn’t required, as I don’t think the word is ready to see that from me in the light of day, but we went swimming anyway.  That’s probably one regret I have that I didn’t do.  I mean, how many people can say they have been skinny dipping in the Adriatic sea?  Well, not this boy...

After that, we had a surprise stop by a stand where seals were putting on a show.  They jumped through hoops, slid around the deck, and even put a little kissing show.  It was pretty cool.  On the way back into the harbor, George made everyone from the different countries get up in front of the boat and sing their national anthem.  We represented the US well, but I think the Canadians may have had us out numbered.  We pulled back into port and thanked George for an awesome day.  Everyone seemed to have a great time, and it was one of the highlights of our trip.

That night, about 10 or 12 of us went back to the square for dinner.  It was amazing again, but this night we followed up with shots of ouzo for dessert.  Ouzo is a traditional Greek dessert liquor, and boy does it have a kick to it.  Very good, very strong, very awesome.  We finished up with dinner then did some more shopping before finally deciding to head back to the hotel.  We tried to catch the city bus back, but we couldn’t find where it picked people up so we decided to spring for a cab.  I was with Erin and two other girls in our cab, so they made me ride in the front with the driver.  I seriously wasn’t sure if I was going to make it out alive or not.  See, these roads were tiny and curvy.  And Mr. taxi man decided it was beneficial for him to go like 100km/h down these tiny little streets.  I think I closed my eyes for most of the way back.  Crazy cab drivers...

Back safely in the hotel, we packed everything up then went to bed.  The following day was full of more ferries and busses as we traveled across Greece to Athens.