Run for home.....

"....I've travelled the land with a guitar in my hand
And an eye ever open for some fun......"

Hello world…… after a hectic and sometimes stressful winter in the UK, we are now back on the tranquil island of Corfu.  We have been here for 10 days now and feel completely chilled, leaving all our worries from our UK winter behind us.

Our journey here was just as eventful and interesting as previous years.  Since the ferry has stopped sailing from Venice to Corfu a few years ago we have varied the route on our road trip to Corfu.  This year we sailed P&O from Hull to Rotterdam, then drove through Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia and Italy.  We have visited and explored bits of these countries before except Slovenia.  We had 2 overnight stops in Heidelberg with family; Paul & Milena, warmly welcomed us as always and treated us to a now familiar traditional meal with the seasonal asparagus washed down with German beer. Wonderful as ever!

We left Heidelberg at 9am after we stocked up in a German wholefood supermarket with enough food and drinks for our 26 hour ferry crossing.  As our ferry didn't sail to Igoumanitsa (Greek mainland) till 6am, we had plenty of time. We drove leisurely through the scenic countryside of Germany and Austria to Slovenia to visit Ljubljana for a few hours of sightseeing before a quick hop over the border into Italy to Trieste.  It was well worth the detour, the capital of Slovenia is a beautiful city on the river, with many ancient land mark buildings, beautiful shops and pavement cafes and bars.

Ljubljana

We arrived in the city just as it was going dark, managed to park in a 24 hour underground car park in the heart of the old town and walked out into a beautiful park/square surrounded on 3 sides by old buildings.  

Ljubljana

We walked to the river 100 metres away and crossed one of the 5 ornate bridges situated in the heart of the town.  On both sides of the river there were cafes/bars/restaurants and as it was going dark all the prominent buildings and bridges were illuminated to further highlight the stunning architecture.  We walked through tiny winding cobbled streets around the area, spoilt for choice of outdoor bars, which were filling up rapidly, as people settled down to watch the champions’ league semi-final between Bayern Munich and Real Madrid on the large tv’s that seemed to spring up outside every bar.  We sat down and soaked up the atmosphere, and the local wine and beers for a couple of hours.   

Ljubljana

Ljubljana

Ljubljana

Ljubljana

Then to complete the evening on the way back to the car spotted a street café that sold the most amazing chicken kebab (maybe we were just hungry) but it could have been the best kebab in the world ever!

A short 35 minutes later we were in Italy and within the hour at the port of Trieste.

Our Ferry departs from Trieste at 6.30am and we had arrived at midnight in plenty of time to get our tickets, park the car in line ready for loading (which was anticipated to be at 3.30am) and a quick snooze in the car before boarding!  We hadn’t allowed for the chaos of Greek/Italian check in and technology;  checking in was slow, but we were 3^rd in the queue …….. 12.10am now and we were next in line and as they printed off the tickets for the people in front of us the computer went into meltdown.  We waited……… the Greek staff went off for a coffee and a few fags, came back shouted a bit, went off for more coffee,  then disappeared upstairs,  away from the growing agitated queue, blaming Italian telecom for the problem.  We didn’t want to lose our place so queued patiently, as brits do. Finally at 2.30am the computers spluttered into life and we got our tickets, got back to the car and 15mins later started to board, got our cabin, poured ourselves a gin & tonic and went on deck to see some of the usual boarding mayhem, then went happily to bed.

 

A Selfie on the ferry

Trieste to Ancona

Leaving Ancona

With a police escort

May 1^st, arrived refreshed in the port of Igoumanitsa and drove to the Corfu ferry ticket office only to find it was Mayday, a bank holiday and a 1 day strike NO Ferries till tomorrow!

What do we do?  Stay in Igouminitsa? Or have an adventure and find somewhere on the mainland? …….yep adventure it is! Heading south along the coast, with beautiful scenery and empty roads we stopped at Loutsa, a small sea front of a village overlooking the island of Paxos.  We spotted a taverna that all the locals were using, which turned out to be a great choice, a swift drink with a complimentary meze of whitebait and fresh tomatoes covered in oregano followed by our order of fresh fried calamari with chips…. 17 euros the lot!

We travelled on, heading towards our chosen destination of Lefkados.  As we have discovered before, when you see a sign depicting a cow, it doesn’t mean there is a farm near by and the farmer might be crossing the road with a few cows  from field to farm.  Nope, it means there are cows grazing on the roadside or even in the middle of the road if they choose to.

A sign for cows

Actual Cows

Not actually cows

The local landscape was amazing; whole valleys flooded and a couple of serious river deltas with huge areas of land, either under water or irrigated with canals and streams.  At Prevezia, we experienced a Greek phenomenon, a tunnel under a river (can the Greeks build these?) and we emerged 3 euros lighter for the experience but it saved us a detour of 75 miles.  As we arrived at Lefkada, we were greeted by a beautiful outcrop of land overlooking the island of Kefalonia, populated and frequented by the young, rich and beautiful people of mainland Greece and a yachting fraternity.

Our hotel room

View from our hotel room

Lefkada is several miles of sea front with pavement café’s and bars, a few hotels and a main street that went on forever with shops of all types of designer goods.  We found a hotel right on the sea front 50 euros inc breakfast, with a sea view and wifi and settled into our room.   “perfect”  using our supply of duty free gin and beer we sat on the balcony and watched the world go by…..A coach driver trying to negotiate a car park with double parked vehicles and every man on or off the bus giving “expert” advice on how to manoeuvre the coach out of the space he was in.

We had a pizza in a local restaurant run by an Athens Greek and his son, who sported (much to his dad’s annoyance) a Jimi Hendrix tattoo!  We had long chats about politics/music/food; he even gave Liz a present of a miniature ice bucket and tongs, to use for ice in gin ‘n’ tonic servings.

The following day, after a reasonable continental breakfast and a Lavazza in our room (one of the delights of our trip to Corfu this year is that we brought our portable espresso coffee machine.  So on the ferries and in the hotel room we could avoid the dire Nescafé serving and have fresh lavazza  every morning)  We got on the road headed for the port and arrived in Igoumanitsa with 10 minutes to spare for the next ferry.  Keith had to climb out of the car as it loaded whilst Liz was forced to park hard up against the bulkhead of the boat (no concession made for  right hand drive cars) and had to climb over the passenger seat to get out!

1 ½ hours later and into a thunderstorm, we landed in Corfu.

1 hour later and WE ARE HOME!!!!!! Driving down the hill in San Stef to our home again for the next 6 months is one of the priceless sensations we never lose, as the village unravels before our eyes at every turn and bend till we reach the main street

...... then up the hill to our home and then ‘that’ view from the balcony Yamas!!!