Corfu

Well after getting back to the dorm closer to 3 am, everyone chatted for a while and then I showered, packed and had 45 minutes until I was going to get up, so I watched a House episode (I'm on season 4 now) and the "got up", go ready, and made it down to the lobby at 6am to head to Corfu. Miraculously, everyone else did too and we walked up to the hospital, which has a taxi station. Of course we had 21 people and there was only one taxi. Then a second one came. Eventually a third came... But no more. We tried calling to ask for two more but that was unsuccessful. We found some Greek speakers who helped us call two more, but the clock was definitely ticking and our bus was going to leave at 7am from the station downtown. Luckily, they came and we made it to the station with about 3 minutes to spare. There were still plenty of tickets and the bus, true to Greek time, didn't leave until about 7:10.
I would make some comment about the beautiful countryside but I passed out for the whole bus ride and woke up when we reached Igoumenitsa, where we caught a ferry right away to head to Corfu. I then took a second lovely nap for the duration of the ferry ride, as did every other person in my group.



We reached Corfu town and were met by the bus driver for our hostel. Corfu is beautiful; it's also sort of close to Italy so there is definitely an Italian influence in the architecture, although it still feels Greek. Unfortunately due to my exhaustion and the bus windows being not conducive to photography, I have no pictures.
We checked into the Pink Palace; at the high season it can supposedly handle 700 people a night, but fortunately there were only 80 or so there with us.

The location of the hostel was really nice but definitely the best part of the weekend was getting to hang out with the other kids on the program. Unfortunately not everyone was there; a few people stayed in Ioannina, a few people went to a different hostel, and two people went and stayed with some extended family on Corfu. But, we still had 16 of us. This is a few of the girls with our togas and, the next night, an attempt to fit all of us on a very small balcony.





During the weekend, we laid out on the beach a lot; you probably won't recognize me when I come home because I will look African. I was planning on going ATV riding with a group of people, but four of us got cold feet after listening to all the instructions, so we had a lovely lunch down the beach (and ON the beach) at a little restaurant with extremely nice staff.

Monday was a holiday here in Greece, which is why we had time for this trip. We had to check at out 9am, which was a challenge, but that gave us a few hours to enjoy the beach before heading home. There was a perfect blue sky which was extremely pleasant.



We successfully navigated getting back to the city, catching a ferry, and finding the bus station in Igoumenitsa. The bus took a different route and the trip was fortunately just over an hour. Even better was the fact that someone else asked the bus driver to stop near the university (which is right in between the interstate and the bus station down town) so we didn't have to deal with busing or taxi-ing back to school.

In addition to being a holiday, Monday was also my roommate's birthday, so 5 of us decided to go to the Italian restaurant just down the road. Unfortunately, it started pouring as soon as we got back to the dorms, so we decided to call a cab. Describing our location was extremely challenging, but eventually he came. But, we had 5 people, so we had to argue a little bit to have him take us. Then, we drove for THREE minutes to the restaurant, and he charged us EIGHT euros (which is almost $12, although with the current exchange rate it's better than when we first got here!). Regardless, we were not pleased. Dinner was delicious though, and we walked next door to the dessert bakery/ice cream parlor for dessert, obviously, which was similarly excellent.