Paxi maxi taxi

Goodbye to Sokraki Villas, which we loved, and Corfu which we are fairly ambivalent about. Today was moving day, always quite strenuous and potentially stressful as we travel from one place to another. Packing was first up, it seems like we have barely had time to unpack but it is what it is. We haven’t accumulated anything more than 3 bottles of suncream so it all fit into our bags, but we were transporting quite a bit of water so that weighed us down a bit. We had a ferry booked for 2pm so we worked backwards from there, drive and drop off car, bus to town for a bit of a stroll, bus to port with time to spare , catch ferry to next island. A 10.30 departure it was to be, and we were off in time so what could possibly go wrong?
Well we were never actually running late but it always felt like we were. We got to the car hire place and did all the checks and they handed me the paperwork to sign when I told the guy about the screw in the tyre, we had discussed it beforehand and decided that it would be morally wrong not to say something, what if it caused someone else a problem.? Then I was told I could take it and get it fixed for €15 or go through their system which would cost maybe 5 times more. They offered to drive me to the place to get it done so that’s what we did. On the way he told me I really shouldn’t have said anything, they would have picked it up later. I tried to explain morals but he just looked at me with pity. He also explained that if we went through their system it would have cost about €120. It took about 10 minutes or so to fix and in the end they only charged €10, so I felt like that was a small price to pay for my moral superiority. Once that was done, they took us in the shuttle so we could catch a bus to town, and during this ride he explained to Jess that if we had gone through their system it would have cost about €250, I did not want to find out how high it might have gone if he had kept talking.
This had all slightly delayed us so the stroll about town was aborted, it was hot and we thought it best just to get to the port. The bus dropped us and the rest of the passengers off, and not knowing where to go we just decided to follow the crowd as everyone was going the same way. Unfortunately this was towards the ferries for Italy and Albania, not what we wanted at all. We had seen a boat from the same company we were travelling with so headed towards that and asked someone on board where we should go. He knew nothing and pointed us further around so we kept going. We saw a ticket office so asked there, they knew nothing and pointed us further around. We saw the port authority… I think you probably have the gist by now. We walked all the way to the other end of the port and saw what we thought was our boat so Jess went to check, only to be told our boat had broken down and been cancelled but that we could catch the later one at 3pm. We weren’t filled with confidence so managed to find the offices of our ferry company across the road and went and asked there. They told us we would be put on a bus at 2.30 to take us to a port on the south of the island and we would go with another ferry company from there. It’s always good to get two different stories in a situation like that, that way you can never be sure if either of them know what the hell they are talking about. We actually had quite a bit of time to kill, as I said we never were actually running late, it just felt like we always were. None of us had any inclination to do much though so we just hung around waiting.
At 2.30 the bus turned up as promised which I never doubted for second, and although it had definitely seen better days, a bit like a lot of Corfu, it got us to the other ferry port and the ferry turned up after a bit and it was all good, we were off to Paxi. We rocked up about 5pm and needed to get to our accommodation, and as we are not hiring a car here we thought we could catch a cab, but as there are 5 of us a small one just wouldn’t do, unfortunately there was no Paxi maxi taxi waiting so we decided to walk. Apart from the walking part, none of that is true, our accommodation is only a 10 minute walk from the port. 11 minutes later we were in the swimming pool cooling off. This villa is the only one we are staying at on our trip that has a pool so we want to make the most of it. We chatted to Lily who told her work today that she was going to stop working there which had been a little stressful but it sounds like she handled it pretty well.
As we had no food we had to wander down to the town to pick some up so it was just a short swim. The town is very different from Corfu, there are plenty of yachts moored up and a lot of money around I think. We found a bakery and picked up some spinach pies and cheese pies, I hadn’t eaten since a bit of yogurt and fruit for breakfast almost 10 hours earlier, I was starving. Then a shop was found, supplies were acquired and it was back to the villa for another swim. It was almost 10pm by the time we had dinner and we were all pretty knackered, though a couple of beers had taken the edge off for me. Not sure what adventure tomorrow will bring but it is definitely time for bed.Read more