Advertisement
Corfu!
Well...not quite. Jeff and I went to the airport after spending our 2nd day in Athens. We arrived expecting to leave at 7pm on a 1 hour flight. Little did we know that Olympic Airlines had changed our flight and never told us. They randomly changed it to 11:45pm. And then on top of that, it was delayed until 12:45. We found out later that this is typical.
Armed with our 6 euro meal voucher, Jeff and I found a table where we could plug in our computers and do some work. We got some airport food, and found a bottle of wine and settled in for our 6 hour delay! Well....3 bottles of wine later, we finally ended up on the plane and arrived in Corfu around 2am!!!!
You all don't yet know why we're on this beautiful island...do you? Well, Canadian Brass was scheduled to perform one concert, and we all decided to stay for 4 days on Corfu. It's the first time that so many wives have been on any tour in years! There are 4 of us and one child traveling with the guys. It makes for a very fun time!
We
woke up on our first morning in Corfu just in time to be picked up at 11am for our ride into town to practice. One of the women helping with the festival, Efy, picked us up and took us to the conservatory. There weren't a ton of rooms, so Jeff and I ended up in the same room trying to practice at the same time. Needless to say, we had a lot of people walking by and checking out what was happening in our room!!! 😉
We ventured from the conservatory to our restaurant, which as it turned out, was home for the rest of our lunches and dinners while we were on the island.
Around 1:30pm all of the faculty from the music festival gathered at this restaurant at a huge table, and ate together. It happened again usually at 10pm. The weather on Corfu is HOT! We didn't eat often times until 11:30pm or so... because that's when it finally cools off!!!
Anyway.....after lunch, we went back to the hotel to enjoy our afternoon before going to see the rest of the brass faculty do a concert in the town square. While at the hotel,
we managed to take a nap and then go to the beach, where we had a nice swim in the warm (but not too warm) water. Our hotel was on a cliff and we had to walk down hundreds of stairs to reach the water. It was spectacular!
At dinner, Chuck, MB, Willis, Barbara and Gene all arrived. We managed to arrive on the island 20 hours before they did...although the stayed an extra day...so it all worked out in the end.
Falling asleep around 2am is not unusual on the island. Jeff stayed out to hang with some of the brass faculty, and I went home to sleep! I think he got in closer to 3:30!!
The next morning was started with a 9:30am trip to breakfast with everybody. We then found a Starbucks!! Yes, there is a Starbucks on the island, and CB LOVES Starbucks!!
Most of this day was spent hanging out by the pool, eating, and drinking. It was WONDERFUL!!!!! CB had a rehearsal...and the wives met for a drink before making our way into town to meet our husbands.
Here is a funny story about our trip into town that
night. We called for a cab to bring us into town, but there were none! So, the bellman kept telling us that we should take the bus, because it was coming in 5 minutes. We decided we might as well take the bus, because it was cheap, and otherwise we might be waiting for a cab for hours. So, we all hop on the bus and we're enjoying our ride, when all of a sudden, we realize that maybe we're not in the town anymore and maybe we've somehow missed our stop. Julie goes up front to talk to the bus driver, and he tells us sure enough we've missed our stop- but the bus will be going back in about 10 minutes and he'll tell us where to get off the 2nd time around. So...we go higher up a hill...and further out of the city, when the bus driver stops the bus and tells us we must pay again, and that he is not moving the bus until we pay our fare. Of course we think that this is unfair, as we're not just joy riding on the bus (as it turns out, the bus did not go where
we were told it was going!) So...then the bus driver tells us that he's going to call the police. We tell him to call the police, because we've done nothing wrong. Anyway...he gets mad and gets on his phone. We don't know what he's saying or who he's calling...but we just sit tight. The bus starts moving, and we get scared...but Julie comes to the rescue again and asks a passenger if she'll tell us where to get off. We escaped the bus without any scrapes or bruises, but we had a nice raised heart beat.
We managed back into town about an hour late, where we found our other halves drinking beer and eating gyros. Obviously not TOO worried about us! 😉
We enjoyed another brass concert, and then went to our usual late night dinner!
The next morning Canadian Brass did a masterclass, and I decided to go watch. It's amazing to watch 5 people all teach a masterclass. Everybody has different ideas and ways of teaching...and it makes for a very action packed class!
That evening, they had their concert in front of a beautiful church as the sun set. It's a bit
strange in Greece because the concerts start later. They were scheduled for 9pm and the concert started closer to 9:30pm. The sun was just setting, and it was a bit scary, because none of the electricity was working!!! So....Chuck and Gene were speaking without a mic and there were no lights. Just as it was getting near impossible to see the music, the lights came on!! Woo hoo!!!!
We enjoyed a final dinner with the group after the concert, and I left around 1am to go to bed because we had a very important day ahead of us.
MOPEDS!
We were up at 9:30 to get mopeds for a bunch of us. As it turned out it was me, Jeff, Chuck, MB, Willis, Barbara and Gene. It was a BLAST. We had a rocky start, including the manager guy asking me if I was old enough to drive a moped...but then we were off! We stopped at the top of a gorgeous hill overlooking the ocean for food and drink. Jeff and I parted ways with the other guys to go back to the hotel in order to catch our plane to Belgium.....
It was SOOO
much fun, and we want to rent mopeds wherever we go now!
That's it from Corfu...stay tuned for Belgium!
Enjoy the pictures.
Love,
Nina (and Jeff)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.28s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0648s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
cw
non-member comment
what fun!
glad you guys are having a great summer. Looks like Greece was a blast -- especially the mopeds. CW