Moving Day - Sarandë to Corfu 🇬🇷

A new day and a new country. We are heading to Corfu, Greece this morning. It’s a leisurely 8:45am departure from the apartment, with just a short 500m walk to the ferry port. The tickets recommended arriving 60 minutes before our 10am sailing, but we probably could have arrived much later. We had to go through passport control to exit Albania, which was straightforward—people even formed orderly queues!

There were three ferries departing at the same time, but these aren’t big boats like the ones crossing the Cook Strait. They take about 12–20 cars and 300–400 passengers. Our ferry is the largest of the three. People are still running and boarding after 10am, but at 10:15am we finally leave the dock and head off. The crossing takes about an hour and 50 minutes. The sea is very calm, and the rocking and rolling isn't too bad—unless you're trying to walk around and take photos.

Passport control in Corfu is reasonably quick, and soon we’re looking for a bus into the town centre. For those who might not know, Corfu is the name of both the island and its main town. It’s the seventh-largest Greek island.

We hop off the bus after barely 10 minutes, right in the middle of Corfu Town. We need to change buses here to get to our apartment, but first we make a quick detour to a supermarket. Sarah minds the bags while I go in looking for essentials: milk, yoghurt, cereal, crackers, cheese, hummus, capsicum, tomato, fruit, potatoes, and luncheon meat. Just enough to get us through until we can do a proper shop tomorrow without lugging our front and back packs. There are no stores near our apartment, which is about 40 minutes out of town.

Shopping is slightly challenging, as the alphabet has changed and I can’t read anything. It’s all Greek to me! 😂 Still, I manage to find most things—or at least I think I do. There may be a surprise or two when we open the packets.

It’s a short walk to the next bus stop and a 45-minute wait for the next bus—we missed the previous one by just 10 minutes. Fortunately, the bus stop has decent seats and a large shady area. When the bus arrives, it’s already full, and it continues to pick up two or three more people at each stop with hardly anyone getting off. Finally, about halfway through our journey, a few people disembark and two seats become available. It was getting very uncomfortable standing while trying to manage three bags and hold onto the handrail.

Our stop is named ΔΙΑΜΕΡΙΣΜΑΤΑ ΣΠΥΡΟΣ on Google maps, just a couple beyond a small village called Benitses. At least we can sort of proounce that to the bus driver. It’s almost 3:30pm now and quite warm. The forecast high was 27 degrees, so it’s probably got to that. The walk from the bus stop is, of course, up a steep road—about 500m to the apartment. Beside the narrow road are some very old-looking olive trees. I’ll get a picture of one tomorrow—huge trunks that could easily be 100 years old.

We’re on the top floor of a 3-level complex with 17 units in total. Somehow, they’ve squeezed in 7 on the ground floor and 5 each on levels 2 and 3. It’s a small unit, only 20sqm, but it should be fine (hopefully) for our 5-night stay.

A quick snack of cheese and crackers on the balcony with a cup of coffee—we haven’t had any lunch today. Then we head straight to the pool, which is the main reason we’re staying out here rather than in town. At $177 per night, it’s above our average so far, but there wasn’t much available anywhere here that was cheaper.

Oh—and you can’t drink the tap water here either! What the feck?! We thought we’d left that PITA behind in Albania. Never mind, it is what it is. The pool is lovely, though, and there are nice shady spots to sit and write this blog before enjoying my book.

The clocks went forward an hour coming here, so it’s 7pm by the time we’re ready for dinner. It consists of most of the ingredients I mentioned earlier. The only table we have is on the balcony, which turns out to be a great spot to sit and eat. We’re facing east, so we’ll see the sunrise from out there—not the sunset. Well l will see the sunrise, not sure Sarah will. 😉