Corfu - Day 1
The weather when we arrived was hot and sunny, but as we were to discover, very cold at night as though we were in some sort of strange non-sandy desert.
The hotel we came to after a taxi ride in which we had to stop at the bakery, which was the best in the country (probably true but we had no way of finding out.) The scenery was great when looked at from afar, but the houses from up close were run-down, unfinished - with many missing roofs, doors and windows – and all painted in bright pinks and oranges.
Hotel Mitsis (or Mitosis, as its great size and spread proved) had 6 pools, many of which we were unable to find, although the main pool may have been 2 and we stayed close to this one as there was much to eat and drink nearby (meat, bread, crepes, ice cream etc.) The Buffet was good, although the orange juice wasn’t really orange juice. It was fizzy and reminded me of the drinks I had when I was younger and which my mum wouldn’t let me drink. As it turns out I don’t really want to drink it anyway. There were 3 other restaurants which needed to be booked but which were never full, so we were never hungry for the most part. There were many rooms all spread out (mine was no. 608) but it was unclear how many exactly there were. It was all inclusive, provoking such comments as: “I’ll pay,” “Can we have the bill please?” and “Mine’s the next round.”
The room had difficulties though. The air con was hard to work and was set extremely cold; the shower head fell off; when the telly was on, it was either on no channel at all, or full of black and white spots. After a while of many useless channels, we eventually found the right ones, which were spoken in French or Greek or something else, sometimes with English subtitles, but it was hard to tell which channel or language was which.
In the first evening we went into the nearest town – called Roda – to a bar which was apparently on its opening night. It was not. There were only about three other people in there; one of them was the person who recommended it to us; and the other two were from our hotel. The bar was small and the speakers were very large, which made the music quite loud, but it was good – no rubbish Greek music – and we got some free shots of local alcohol and free crisps. There was no way back but climbing up and down the nearby hills for the taxi drivers went to sleep at a normal hour. This was not too fun – the hill climb was alright – but in the dark there were many dogs, barking and glaring in a rather scary fashion by the side of the road. There were also some dogs who lived at the hotel, I don’t know who owned them but they were always there. I guess because of the amount of food available. They didn’t drink from the pools – as they were made of very salty water – and never went to the loo in my sight anyway but their presence wasn’t questioned by anybody.