2010.10.13It’s still very cloudy on our third day in Corfu. We decided to visited another nearby attraction, Achilleion Palace. Ithaca, another major island of Ionian Islands, is Odysseus’ homeland, so it’s not a surprise to see many places associated to Homer‘s poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Achilleion Palace was build in 1890 for Empress Elizabeth of Austria, Sissi, who is quite famous in China because of the movie in 50’s, in honor of Achilles. The palace is surrounded by many Greek statues. Among them, the most prominent one is a standing statue of Achilles as the guardian of the palace facing the Corfu town.
It started dribbling when we left the palace. I had been thinking of taking pictures of old Greek villages, so I made a few attempts on our way back. I am not satisfied because I don’t think I captured the atmosphere of the moment.
The rain was pouring when we passed the airport. We worried about if the plane could take off in the weather condition. However, magically, 10 minutes later when we reached Starbucks at the hotel, not only the rain stopped, but it seemed the sky could clear up potentially. We walked down the hill, passed through a causeway and reached the small convent on Vlacherna. You can see from the tree that it is a quite windy place. The wall must be flushed by the wave and the rain often, but remains picture perfectly white.
After checking out of the hotel, we still have 2 hours before our flight was supposed to take off. We went to the Corfu town again to see the Old Fortress. The Old Fortress was built on a promontory by Venetians in 1550. The top of the fortress provides a magnificent view of Corfu’s old town. There is a trench between the Old Fortress and Esplanade and they are connected by an iron bridge. At the bottom of the promontory is the church of St. George. Overlooking it from the town side is another signature view of Corfu.
We arrived at the airport at 3 pm, one hour before scheduled departure time. We would fly to Athens first then connect to Santorini from there. Because of the earlier storm in Corfu, the flight from Athens was delayed. When it finally arrived, it is 4:15 pm already. When we got to Athens, we found ourselves in the same situation as last time when we were here again – It’s only 15 minutes away from the next flight. We asked the crew members to inform the gate to wait for us and they did, and we run as in almost the same route as we run two days ago. However, this time we didn’t have the same luck. The gate had closed when we got there. Luckily, there was another flight to Santorini at 9 pm. At least we wouldn’t miss any precious day in that dreamy island.
