Corfu, Greece

Yikes, sorry it has taken me so long to finish this up. So Corfu was kind of a whirlwind tour. We had pretty limited time and we really wished we had time for the beach here. It was so beautiful. The first place we stopped was at a palace. It was built by a woman named Elizabeth I think in the 1700's. Funny that that seems so recent compared to the other places we have been. The 1700's is practically as old as it gets in U.S. history. Anyways Elizabeth was fleeing her mother-in-law from Italy and loved Greece and traveling. Apparently she was very adventerous and her mother and law and her differed in the way they wanted the 2 grandchildren raised.So she decided she would take the children and build a new palace on the island of Corfu. One of the two children died in an accident while they were traveling which devastated her. The mother-in-law insisted that the other son come to live with her. She didn't see much of her son after that but he did go on to inherit the palace after she died. She was kind of a Princess Diana type to the people, as the mother-in-law didn't care for the bride her son chose. She had a taste for ancient greek mythology so the house and gardens are full of greek gods and goddess statues. Everything was very beautiful.

From there we went to a monastery on one of the peaks of the island. It was a greek orthodox monastery and the grounds were amazing. When we entered the church one of the monks got very upset that some of the visitors were not dressed appropriately. Bare shoulders and knees are taboo. I could definitely understand his point. The church was a sacred place and is very much in use and should be respected. We were racing for time, due to traffic and had to travel quite a ways back to the port. Our tour guide let us stop in town for about 30 min. and insisted that everyone had to board the bus back to the boat together, even though we still had two hours before we were due back at the boat. She got a bit upset when we wanted to take a cab back to the boat, for some reason she felt like she picked us up at the boat and had to return us to the boat. Although some friends we had who took other tours said their guide encouraged them to stay. They are all so different. We told her we were staying and she could wash her hands of responsibility for us. I am so glad that we were assertive. Corfu was a very beautiful town. We had some great pork souvlaki and pitas and then wandered around the city and shopped. We found an awesome shop that had carvings made of olive wood. They had about everything you could dream of made out of wood. We bought a mask that made me think of primary. If you look at it one way it is frowning and if you turn it upside down it is smiling. We ended up just walking back to the boat we weren't far from the water, although you had to walk about a mile to get around to the dock our ship was on. We were so glad we took the extra time.
We really would have missed the feeling of the people and the flavor of the city.