Autumn in Corfu - Meet You At The Cemetery Gates

For us, a trip to Corfu's premier town, Kerkyra (aka Corfu Town) is a must. A designated UNESCO World Heritage Site, wandering aimlessly and getting lost amongst the labyrinthine Venetian-era alleyways of the atmospheric Old Town is one of our favourite things to do.

The bus from Paleokastritsa to Kerkyra costs 2.50€ (cash only!) and takes around 40 minutes. Unlike the UK where there's always someone guzzling a stinky burger or chomping on greasy deep-fried chicken, the consumption of food and drink on board buses in Greece is prohibited and the conductor had to tell a British woman off for eating crisps and dropping crumbs on his clean seats. 

First task of the day was to stock up on olive oil soap. The oldest soap factory in Greece and said to be one of the few remaining soap factories in the world, the Patounis family have been making hand-crafted soap on Corfu for five generations. Established in 1850, the company moved to its current premises in 1891 and most of the original equipment remains in use today. The factory is listed with the Greek Ministry of Culture as a monument of industrial archaeology and the Patounis soapmaking technique inscribed on the National Inventory of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Greece. We toured the factory last year HERE. Their soap is AMAZING! You can buy it in the UK HERE  and HERE but I like using it as an excuse to keep going back to Corfu!

Time for al fresco frappe....

A short walk from the bus stop, on San Salvatore Hill, is the Corfu British Cemetery. Founded in 1814, when the island became a British Protectorate (1814-1864), it was used to intern British officials, soldiers and residents and, after the departure of the British from the island, the cemetery served as the graveyard for those families who stayed on. There are nearly five hundred graves in the cemetery with the earlier legible headstone dating to 1817. It is still being used as a cemetery for the Anglican residents of Corfu. Among the most notable graves are John Connors’ grave, died in 1857, a private in the 3rd Regiment of Foot, who was awarded the Victoria Cross during the Crimean War, and the monument to the seamen of the Royal Navy destroyers HMS Saumarez and HMS Volage, which ships were mined by the Albanians in 1946 (The Corfu Channel Incident).

More like a garden than a burial ground, the cemetery has an impressive variety of flowers, bushes and trees as well as a small pond complete with goldfish and water lilies. Be warned though, it's a haven for mosquitoes and clouds of the bloody things descended on us within minutes of entering the cemetery gates, cutting short our visit.  

I've never seen an ossuary before (there's only two left in the UK) so I couldn't resist posing in the doorway for a photo. 

We wandered down to the harbour to gaze upon the New Fortress and the impressive views of Albania.

 

We'd not visited the fort for a few years and quite fancied taking another look but we got there just a coachload of cruise shippers arrived so decided to leave it for next time.

    

After a couple of hours of sunshine, the threatened rain made an appearance but having visited Corfu in September before I'd remembered to pack my brolly and with temperatures hovering around the high twenties, the downpour was quite refreshing. 

Oh, The rain falls hard on a (not so) humdrum town....

We ended up in the town's old Jewish Quarter. Although records show Jews living in Kerkyra as far back as the 12th Century, hundreds more settled here between 1493 and 1549 after escaping persecution elsewhere in Europe, eventually settling in the area of the old town known as Ovriaki. Before WWII, about 5,000 Jews lived here but when the Italians surrendered to the Allies in 1943, Germany occupied Corfu and deported the Jews to Auschwitz. Only 180 of Corfu's Jewish population survived. 

We found ourselves back on the Listón, the elegant terrace of shady cafés bordering the Esplanade and reminiscent of Paris's Rue de Rivoli , the intention of the French architect who designed the area.

After a brief respite, the rain returned so we made our way to our favourite taverna where for the first time in seven years, we eschewed the outside tables for a table indoors. The food at Aegli, the oldest restaurant in Corfu Town and this year's winner of the TripAdvisor Travellers Choice Award, was up to its usual deliciously high standards. This time we shared a blue cheese, beetroot and walnut salad with pitta bread and a carafe of the house red.

A long and lazy lunch with this charming man...

As always we paid a visit to the statue commemorating Kostas Georgakis (1948 – 1970)  a Greek student who studied geology in Italy. On 26 July 1970, while in Italy, he gave an interview denouncing the dictatorial regime of Georgios Papadopoulos. The junta retaliated by attacking him, pressuring his family, and rescinding his military exemption. In a protest in the early hours of 19th September 1970, Georgakis set himself ablaze in Matteotti square in Genoa. He died later that day, an estimated 1,500 people attended his 22 September funeral, with hundreds of anti-junta resistance members leading a demonstration. 

A tribute to Francesco Morosini (1618–94), the Italian Commander-in-Chief during the island's period of Venetian rule.

A few weeks ago I'd scored an amazing purple and orange handwoven Haris Cotton off-the-shoulder top on Vinted for a tenner. I popped into their Kerkyra branch hoping to find a matching maxi skirt but it wasn't to be. I fell in love with several of their dresses but at €500 each I left empty-handed! 

We were luckier in Thrift, a proper old school secondhand shop on the way back to the bus station, snaffling two 1960s psychedelic dresses and a 1970s dagger collar shirt for a song!

And now we're back to more current affairs, namely more of what I've been wearing this week. Nothing new, just different combinations of old favourites.

Thanks for reading, see you soon!