The Barker Five: Day 8--Korfu

When we ported at Korfu it was kind of a race again. We had limited time and we knew we wanted to go to the beaches which were clear on the other side of the island. When we first got off the ship there was a line of taxis that would take you to the beaches, but for a cost J Because there was no taxi service near the beaches, the taxi drivers would take you to the beach and then wait around for you for a couple of hours and then take you back to the ship. We started off being adamant that we didn’t want to pay for a taxi, but still ended up in a bartering match with one of the drivers. For 80 euro he would take us to the beaches and then wait around for us. Not a bad deal, but we were hoping to rent a scooter for about 30 euro and so we kindly turned him down. Prior to getting off the ship we had been told where the best place was to rent a scooter and exactly where to go to get it. Once again, we were lead astray and were wandering around aimlessly trying to ask people who didn’t know English where we could rent a scooter from. The whole time we are arguing and blaming the other person for telling the taxi driver no. After a very stressful amount of time, we stumbled upon a rental place. We were short on time so we immediately paid and took off. The scooter we received was definitely not high-class, but it did get us to our destination!

The guy from the rental shop gave us some directions on how to get to the beaches. He told us that the good beaches were clear on the other side of the island and that we wouldn’t have enough time to make it to those, but there were some other beaches close by. Well, we decided we wanted to make our trip worth it and so we set off on an adventure to the other side of the island to find the good beaches. The drive was beautiful and it took us only about 20 min. to get to a beach.

When we reached the beach, it was amazing. The water was this turquoise color and the beaches were just a great accent to it. Due to the time restraints we were only able to layout and get in the water for a little while. When we were swimming we noticed how boyant we were. I guess because of the density of the salt it caused you to float more.

On our trek back to the city we pulled over a couple of times and took pictures of other beaches and sites on the way. There was also an olive wood shop on the way that we stopped at and purchased a cutting board and ring from.

As we were getting back into Korfu I was commenting to Caleb about how much better he had done driving the scooter and how impressed with him I was. We were sitting at a light and were noticing how many scooters were driving around and how unsafe they were with the way people drove. We had pulled up next to another couple that was on a scooter while we were waiting for the light. All of a sudden we heard a crashing sound and looked next to us. The scooter beside us had just been hit by the car behind them. It knocked the scooter over and a lot of their luggage had fallen off. The car behind must have thought the light was still green or something and had just pulled forward too far. Everyone appeared to be o.k., but we definitely realized how lucky we were that the 2 times we had driven our scooters nothing major had happened.

When we got back to Korfu we had some time to look through their shops and tour the city. The city was really pretty and everyone was just so laid back. We bought a few more souvenirs and actually found some jerseys for the boys that we had been looking for at every stop. The hard thing with the cruise was that you stopped at a different place each day and you weren’t ever able to go back to a specific place to pick up souvenirs. We were always questioning whether we would find a better deal on one of the other islands, but knew we wouldn’t ever be back to that spot again.

Once back on the ship we, again, got dressed up and went for dinner and the show.