The sea was flat as a mill pond this morning but a little colder than yesterday. It was a relief to get into the water as my legs, arm and back are now a mass of swollen, blistered 'pustules' of mosquitoes bites and they are incredibly painful.
We decided that today we would visit the monastery at Paleokasritsa and the castle at Agelokastro as they are reasonably close together. Usually Chris is a big fan of the Rough Guide series but the Corfu one has little useful information and was obviously written by someone who didn't want to be here. We decided we would be on the lookout for a Tourist Information place to get some details of places to visit. In the meantime, we stopped at the local garage and bought a map.
I had read somewhere that Corfu is one of the most poorly mapped of the Greek islands – whoever wrote that has definitely tried to read the map I had. Most signposts have place names in Greek and English but they are not always spelled the same as those on the map. There were loads of turnings with no signpost and we had no idea really where we were going. We gradually reached the monastery town, more by luck than judgment. The road to it was very long, thin and full of sharp bends. There was loads of traffic with coaches and cars fighting for roads spaces against hoards of inexperienced moped and quad bike riders.
The town wasn't a large place but was full of bars offering full English breakfast, fish and chips etc. The beach was jam packed with people frying in the sun. Not our sort of resort at all. We eventually managed to park and walked up the steep hill to the monastery just as it shut its doors for a 2 hour lunch break.
Still, the Rough Guide had said the best thing about it was the views and they were spectacular.
It was far to hot and busy to hang around so we decided to head of to the castle 6km away and stop on the way for lunch. Finding a taverna which you can park outside without your car being rammed is a problem. We eventually came across a big restaurant/cafe with its own parking bay so we pulled in the for lunch. There was a glass lift up the front and all the tables looked out over the bays. The menu was so appetising we decided to have a proper meal rather than just a snack (thank you George and Joan – it was a fantastic meal!). The food was superb.
We set off back the way we had come this morning to find the castle, stopping on the way for the children to buy presents for their friends and for us to buy locally grown oregano and home made wine. When we reached the castle, we were pretty annoyed to find the sign said it closed at 15.00 – it was already 5 to. We were just getting back into the car when a lady intercepted us and told us the castle was actually still open. It was a steep, and very hot, climb to the top but the views where amazing. Alex managed to find a leaflet that someone had dropped telling the history of the castle.
We were very glad to get into the sea when we got back given the heat and the ongoing issue with the car aircon. Even at this time of day, there were hardly any people on the beach. We definitely picked a good spot.
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