Corfu Town and a visit to the Durrells

We’ve enjoyed the last few days exploring Corfu Town (largest/main city on Corfu island). It’s a beautiful town that reminds us a little of Italy. The old town is filled with little narrow streets and a nice mixture of locals and tourists. Buildings must meet a special criteria for color (limited pallet to choose from) and historic features (eg shutters that must be green). So it is very quaint and beautiful to see as you walk the cobblestone streets.
One of the things that inspired this trip was the tv show The Durrells of Corfu which came out in 2015. We loved what we saw of the scenery and the way of life. So when we started planning our first trip to Greece, Corfu was at the top of our list of places to visit. Because of the show we decided to do a Durrells tour which would take us to places on the island that were where the Durrell family actually lived or where the tv show was filmed. We were lucky to have a guide that had worked on the set of the TV show (as a costume designer) and knew the locations well and many behind the scenes stories, Our guide had hutzpah and was able to get a Gardner at the main Durrell filming location to let us into the grounds. Then the owner of the house (villa) came out, remembered our guide and invited us into the house for a tour! It was amazing to see inside the house, much of which has been changed as it is now a high end vacation rental (20k will get you a week for 10 people). The only thing that looked familiar was the kitchen. The owner was super friendly and happy to show us around and tell a few stories (her family had owned the house for 6 generations and she worked with the producers on setting the show at the house). We also saw other key locations from the tv show- Sven’s house, the market square, the cafe where many scenes occurred. It was a fun experience.Read more