Parting the Water: Corfu September 18

One of the interesting things about our first experience on a cruise is that the tours that are offered as options often seem a bit vague and to be perfectly honest I didn't do much research to know what to expect. As a result I was often surprised by what we actually would be doing on any given day. All of the tours started on either a bus from the dock or a shuttle/transport boat. The tours by bus took us from the water front in-land to some site where we would go on a guided tour and then often have time on our own. I would usually try to take some pictures out of the bus window to illustrate the route we had traveled and to document the lay of the land so to speak. I'm not complaining or anything but it might help to explain why, for example, I took a picture of this cliff. Apparent there was not much to photograph from the bus window until I got to this cliff. We went through a little village and up an extremely steep and narrow road. I do recall there was a lot of groaning from some of the other passengers as we made some tight turns that made them feel like we would soon tumble off the road and down the mountain. We were actually heading to a monastery which for some reason was built up on top of an area sort of like the cliff in the picture below.

We zipped by this little lagoon (below) on the way to the steep road. You can also see in this picture that the slope of the land at the water's edge is quite steep and illustrates the grade on which the road was built.

Part way up the road at one of the many hairpin turns I got this shot back at the same lagoon from above.

The bus dropped us off at a parking parking area and we walked up a service road the last quarter of a mile to this courtyard. The bell tower is pretty typical of ones we had seen in may other place in Greece.

The group headed through this archway and turned to the right and wrapped around the church building that we would enter. I noticed that I do not actually have a picture of the church building, but as I recall there was not specific architectural features that would have made it distinctive anyway. Even when we got around to the other side of the church the only photos are of the gardens outside the church.

It was obvious that there had been a lot of time and energy on green leafy things, even some brightly colored things. The size of the grape vine in the photo below indicates that they have been at the tending of gardens quite a while.

The Grounds were quite beautiful and this time of year was the peak for some of their flowers.

We are heading around the end of the church. The white wall on the right is probably why I did not take a picture of the outside of the building. My guess is that the church had stucco walls and a tile roof just like the rest of the buildings in this compound.

The fountain above was in one of the large planting areas in the garden/plaza on the opposite side of the Church from where we had started. The view below was from the far edge of the garden and overlooking the cliff formation that I had talked about above.

In the photo above our guide is getting us ready to go in the side door of the church. Once inside you can see that the church was not all that big. Like many of the Greek Orthodox Churches in Greece they don't seem to be focused on the grand scale like the Catholic Churches in Italy. Greek churches to have a lot of ornamentation however. There are a lot of ceiling hung candle or oil lamp lighting fixtures, usually hung from long chains.

In the photo above to the left is where we had started, on the right is where we had entered the church. In the middle is what would be the front of the church.

The ceiling above is not all that different that catholic churches. The candle lighting area below is actually a hood that carries the smoke/soot out of the building through the pipe at the top of the photo

Even though the church is small there was no lack of decoration.

The white structure below highlights some of the important Biblical characters that thy recognize.

The photo above is of an alter kind of thing which is on the wall to the right of the structure in the photo above this one. As you can see by the amount of ornamentation this was an important element in the church.

Most of the art work had the same heavily ornamented and stylized look as the building itself.

The photos above and below are of items that parishioners had brought and left at the church as a payment/gift for some oath they had made. Apparently they promise something in exchange for healing or some other answer to pray and if granted they are obliged to deliver the gold watch or necklace of bracelet that they had pledged. After a while answered prayers net a lot of trinkets.

Seating along the walls is built in and permanently. Out in the middle of the floor there were not many chair or benches, but I suspect that some were brought in as needed.

Here are a couple of other painting that were in some of the other out buildings.

As we exited the church from the same side door we had entered this path led off to the right to one of the many other buildings in the complex. Below is another shot of the fountain in the garden, this time in a little better light.

As I mentioned earlier there were lots of flowers and other interesting plants on the grounds around the outside of the church.

As we exited the compound we headed to this overlook to take a couple of pictures. I assume that the cannon was to keep the Catholics and Baptists at bay. It was a great view and if someone got in the way of the view they could always fire a round over their heads and scare them away.

The other interesting feature to mention is that these cliffs and mountains are much different than the volcanic land formations that we had seen on other Greek islands.

Here is the service road leading back to the parking area and the bus.

Off to the right of the road the land fell off pretty steeply. Back in the parking area I looked out across the valley to the village that was spread across the ridge (the horizontal line in the middle of the trees).

Heading down the steep windy road again I got a couple of better shots overlooking the lagoon and village area (below).

The color of the water was quite spectacular. This would have been a nice place to spend some time on a beach chair.

Back down in the village we stopped in a restaurant for a few minutes for a break before heading to the town of Corfu.

This too would have been a pleasant place to spend an afternoon. Nice views in a comfortable setting.

Above another small church with a typical bell tower. Below a map on a towel.

On our way out of the village we passed by some residential house and what appeared to be farm fields that had been harvested.

Coming in to Corfu we began to see quite a bit of what I guessed were apartment buildings.

Once we got back to the water front we saw this massive fort looking structure. Apparently this was a middle ages fortification

The closer we got the more impressive the structure was. Although we would not be going into the fort, we did get dropped off at a parking area right in front of the fort. We would ultimately be heading into the city of Corfu which is off to the left a few block away.

The fort's defenses, at moat (now a place to park boats), the wall, the level area across which intruders would have had to pass would have made an interesting battle scene.

Here are some shots of the only bridge connection for the friendly visitors.

The City of Corfu has some very nice buildings and plazas.

The paving blocks for the plaza were marble and went not only here along this side of the building but also to the left of where we are standing. The area to the right of the plaza was outdoor seating for the restaurants there were on the left. Later in the day we would end up at the other end of this plaza. Off to the right and at the end of the plaza is the palace building. Immediately behind the outdoor seating area was a large green that is also used as a cricket field.

These photos are looking back 180 degrees from the shots above.

We headed down the plaza a ways and then turned to the left down the street below.

The building in the photo above is full of restaurants on the main floor. In the photo below you can see an arch way that is connected to the palace and through which traffic exiting the city would go.

Heading into the city we were guided on a general orientation of where things were in the city to hit a couple of highlights, then we were turned loose for a couple of hours and to meet back at the bus.

The first stop was a public building with lots of interesting architectural details.

We headed through a shopping area to a church that we would visit.

The entrance to the church is through the ornate door in the pinkish colored walls. The bell tower in the photo above and below is pretty much visible from about everywhere we walked and provided a good reference point.

The Ceiling in the church was as ornate as any ceiling we had seen.

After the church we were able to head out on our own. We headed back to the shops area.

The narrow streets here were similar to other European cities.

We also saw all the typical materials used for paving and wall construction. Most building were constructed of some kind of masonry units and then covered with stucco. Here was a play where the stucco was missing and the modification to the wall could be seen. I really liked the paving pattern.

The barber in me had to take this shot. The only problem was that after the shot I discovered that the shop was actually a beauty parlor. Oh well, maybe it might have been a barber shop at on point.

Several more turns and streets which continue to be interesting and had some of the best paving materials that we had seen anywhere on the trip so far.