Corfu – second time lucky?

Around 20 years ago, my now-husband and I went to Corfu for two weeks. This was back in the days when last-minute package holidays (especially to Greece) were really cheap, when all holidays were booked in person at a travel agents and when accommodation on arrival was all the rage. Remember that? You’d specify a resort and accommodation type (always self-catering for us back then) but you’d have no idea where you were actually staying until you got there. The not knowing didn’t really bother us at the time – it’s not as if you could research reviews on Trip Advisor back in the dark ages anyway! We didn’t have kids to worry about, we were young and fit and happy to walk if the apartment was on the outskirts of a resort, and it saved soooo much money. Plus it added an element of adventure (plus a sense of dread every time the coach pulled up at a dodgy-looking hotel and you panicked that it was yours). We’d booked accommodation on arrival a few times – twice in Crete, once in Cyprus and once in Salou – and it had worked out pretty well so far. In fact, the cheap-as-chips apartment in Salou had even got a separate bedroom (we were used to basic studios), as well as a fully-equipped kitchen with fridge-freezer, oven, etc. (we were used to a mini-fridge and two hobs!). So we were fans of the surprise hotel/apartment.

It didn’t work out quite as well the time we went to Corfu. The apartment itself was fine, as far as I remember – just a typical, bog-standard self-catering studio. The location was okay – on the outskirts of Kassiopi but within fairly easy walking distance of everything. The issue was the lack of any sort of reception desk or central area. This doesn’t sound like a problem, and when we first checked in it never dawned on us that it could be. The problem is when you have to leave your apartment by midday on your last day and then you’re not getting picked up until two in the morning. And let me tell you, this is a million times worse when you’re sick. Because, surprise surprise, like so many other holidays (see Sick of holidays?) – and actually, this was one of the first – our holiday was blighted by sickness.

The holiday started well enough. The weather was beautiful, Kassiopi was a lovely resort and we booked lots of excursions – including an introduction to scuba diving – with our rep (whom we had to meet at another hotel, of course, given our lack of a base). Not ones for lying about soaking up the sun (not that we had a pool for doing so), our first few days were busy. We caught a bus to Corfu Town. We went on a glass-bottomed boat ride. We hired a motorbike and explored the mountains (my husband was a biker, so not as irresponsible as it sounds!). We went on a long walk and found a beautiful, quiet beach, where I learnt to snorkel for the first time – I figured that I should probably master that before trying scuba! And then it all went a bit wrong…

It was our first organised excursion and we were on a coach. I can’t remember exactly where we were going but I seem to remember it was evening, so I’m pretty sure it was a Greek night – you know, the sort of thing where they take you to a ‘traditional’ taverna in the middle of nowhere on a coach, where you eat Greek food, drink cheap wine and watch Greek dancing. We hadn’t got far when my husband started to feel sick. Driving along winding roads, stuck on a coach and feeling sick is never a great recipe. Neither is being stuck in the middle of nowhere, looking at food you can’t face eating and wine you can’t face drinking, with the knowledge that you have a long and twisting coach journey ahead of you to get home. To top it off, it may have been paranoia but I was starting to feel distinctly dodgy too. In the end, we had no option but to stop the coach in the next resort we came to, get off and take a taxi back to our apartment.

The next day wasn’t great. We weren’t sick but we certainly felt it, and we became very closely acquainted with the bathroom. The following day wasn’t any better and we realised that we were going to have to cancel all our excursions – we didn’t ever want to sit on a coach again, let alone be stuck in a wet-suit several metres under the sea… The remainder of our two-week holiday was spent taking it very easy. We stayed in the apartment a lot. We went for gentle walks around Kassiopi. We went back to the beach we’d found at the beginning of the holiday. We went to bars for a soft drink but we certainly didn’t attempt eating out. Basically, we didn’t want to do anything where we couldn’t ‘escape’. In hindsight, I’m not sure how much of it was about being genuinely ill and how much was psychological, but it made little difference at the time – let’s just say that it wasn’t exactly a brilliant holiday!

The final straw – and the reason why our apartment wasn’t ideal – came on the last day, when we had to pack up and leave our apartment by midday. Because there was no reception area in the hotel, we couldn’t leave our cases there. Instead, they were picked up by our tour operator and taken to a secure storage area. This was all well and good but it meant that we had no access to anything in them until we were picked up at two in the morning. We also had nowhere to go. Not only did we not have our apartment but we didn’t even have a reception area – let alone a pool – where we could hang out (and have easy access to a toilet). Instead, we had to wander around Kassiopi for 14 hours, feeling sick and carrying everything we might need for the day. There was a craze at that time for bars to show films that had only just come out at the cinema on big screens outside (totally illegally, I’m sure). This at least meant that we could work our way from bar to bar, where we could legitimately sit with a diet coke and toilet access for a couple of hours, before moving on to the next bar and the next film. It wasn’t ideal but we got through – but suffice to say that after a day of this, and with the added issue of being tired, we weren’t feeling good when the coach finally arrived to pick us up and reunite us with our cases at 2am.

It didn’t get better. Being on the coach made me feel worse, and it wasn’t long before I was being sick into a sick bag I’d conveniently picked up from the plane.* We arrived at the airport to find out that our plane was delayed. Well, to be fair, it wasn’t just our plane – forest fires meant that no planes, including the one we were supposed to be flying home on, were able to land. We spent a hellish half-hour in the queue for check-in, struggling to stand and worried that an emergency toilet trip would see us lose our place in the queue. After saying goodbye to our cases for the second time that day (although technically it was the day after by now), we settled ourselves on the floor for a long wait. The airport was packed, as you can imagine, so there was no hope of a comfortable seat anywhere. After a few hours we were told by our tour operators that we were entitled to a free meal – unsurprisingly, we didn’t take them up on it! Finally, after a four-hour wait, we were lucky to find out that our plane was the first to be able to land, and we were eventually able to board and begin our journey home. Adding to my theory that there was a large psychological element involved in our sickness, we both felt a lot better once we were on the plane and knew we were finally going home – either way, neither one of us really wanted to go back to Corfu again!

Once back home, it took a while to fully recover. My husband saw the doctor and there was talk of E.coli; whatever it was, it took its toll on us both psychologically, and we became virtual agoraphobics for some time afterwards. We were scared to use public transport, go out for dinner or go to the theatre or cinema, and even – yes, really! – scared to go on holiday. These were all things we loved doing but where we felt trapped – and this started the feelings of anxiety, along with the corresponding feelings of nausea, and on the cycle went. Eventually, of course, we picked ourselves back up. We started going out again and built up to things slowly, holidaying on the Isle of Wight before we dared to try a plane journey again. We went on planes again in the end, of course, even returning to Greece (Rhodes and Crete), but we never booked an accommodation-on-arrival deal again, we still always avoid night flights and we never returned to Corfu.

In fact, we haven’t actually been back to Greece at all since having the kids. There are a couple of reasons for this, with the main one being cost. Greece never seemed to be offered as a cheap package option when the kids were little, unlike the case 20-odd years ago. If you sorted holidays in order of price, you’d have to scroll through an awful lot of ‘Spains’ before you got to a Greece. If you book independently, it’s the same situation – it’s generally a lot cheaper to fly to Spain than it is to Greece (understandably, as Greece is further away). Another reason is that Greece doesn’t seem to cater as ‘obviously’ to children as Spain does. Spain is full of large hotels with kids clubs and loads of other child-friendly facilities, but there are far fewer of these in Greece. And when our children were little – and now too sometimes, if I’m honest – we wanted to go somewhere where we knew the kids would be catered for. Happy kids = happy parents. Another reason, and going back to Corfu, is that package deals to Greece always seem to have awful flight times. Arrive at midnight? I’d rather not. Fly home at 2am? No, thank you! So the holidays we’ve taken with the children have generally centred around France and Spain – cheap and child-friendly.

It’s all change this year. I blame my youngest son, who was studying the Ancient Greeks at school and asked to visit Greece. Given that all of our summer holidays since 2011 bar one have been to France (sometimes with added Spain), we decided that it really was about time we went somewhere else – and why not Greece? Deciding where to go was less easy. We’d never been to Kos, Zakynthos, Kefalonia or Santorini. But would there be enough for the children to do there or would they get bored? For that matter, would there be enough for us to do over two weeks?! The smaller islands also tended to be more expensive and had fewer flight options. Crete or Rhodes are much bigger, with more to do in general and more hotel choices, especially for the kids. But we’d been to them both more than once, and we’d already visited the main attractions. This left us with Corfu: a compromise in terms of size and a compromise in terms of having visited before. Because, of course, although we had been there, we had never actually had the chance to do much or see much of the island! And, as one of the bigger islands, we figured that there would be more choice in terms of flight and hotel. Hmmm. We tried package deals first but soon realised that all the flights were night flights. We then had a look at Travel Republic, where you can book separate flights and hotel but with the security benefits of it being classed a package (this came in very handy when Monarch went bust a couple of years ago – see Monarch mayhem). The flight options were great – lots of (daytime) choice and cheaper than we expected. Hotels were more of a problem. We wanted half-board ideally – as my youngest son is vegetarian and my eldest is picky as hell, going out to dinner can be tricky, particularly abroad, whereas a half-board buffet allows them to choose things they like, try things they’re not sure about and basically not starve. Unfortunately there were very few hotels available that offered half-board, and most of those that did were extortionate in price. Once I looked in more detail at the rest, most of them seemed to offer a set meal – or at least very little choice – which left us no better off than going out to dinner (and possibly worse). There was very little on offer with kids’ facilities either. We weren’t necessarily looking for the all-singing, all-dancing hotels we were used to in Spain, but we were hoping to spend at least a few days chilling out and relaxing at the hotel; however, most of the hotels we could see only had a tiny pool and no playground or area for the kids to play – let alone a kids’ club or evening entertainment. As is always the way, the few that ticked the ‘kids’ boxes were either extortionate or in a bad location. And as is absolutely always the way when you plan a holiday too early, the only one that ticked all our boxes and was in our price range – and which we set our hearts on – had no space when we finally tried to book.

Eventually, we gave up on hotels entirely and decided to go back to the good old days of self-catering apartments. As a compromise, this one (Matoula Apartments, if you’re interested!) does indeed have a pool, a bar and a reception area (not that we have a night flight this time!). We even have a two-bedroom apartment rather than a studio. Most importantly, we’ve been able to do our research and are confident that this one ticks the most important boxes. Hopefully, this time we’ll be able to experience a bit more of Corfu and get back our love of Greece – this time with no E.coli, forest fires or 2am pick-ups!

*TIP: I always pick up sick bags on planes and ferries to keep in my bag for emergencies – you never know when you might need one!