Adventures of M-Squared: Corfu, Greece

Our second port of call was Corfu. Corfu is pretty much a stones throw away from Albania, so the picture above is of Albania at sunrise.

I had searched high and low to find a place for us to go horseback riding while we were at Corfu. It turned out to be a challenge since many places were closed on Sundays, which is when we were there. But I finally found Dimitris and ended up booking with them. We had to be tendered by boats to the shore in Corfu, but the driver was waiting for us at the entrance to the port in his TINY van. I’d never even seen anything like this, let alone ridden in one, and it was a 45 min drive from the port to the stables, so we were in it for a good chunk of time. Quite an experience…

I tried to take a few pictures out the window on the way to the stables, especially since there were beautiful views everywhere, but we were on very curvy roads and it was hard to get decent shots through the trees.

The stable was kind of out in the middle of nowhere, but it was a decent little place. Definitely not a “high tech” barn, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was decent.

We paid a LOT of money to go on a private ride with a guide. It was my dream to ride a horse on a beach, so we paid over $200 for both of us. It was just the two of us and Allison, our guide.

So I will forever remember our ride in Corfu as the day of dodging spiders. In the two pictures below, those black dots in the “air” are huge spiders. They. were. everywhere. Their webs spanned across the entire trail and Allison did a good job of knocking most of them down for us, but sometimes the horses liked to get close to the brush on either side of the trail and I was terrified of one of those suckers getting on me. I’m sure I would have put on quite an entertaining show if I had come in contact with what of those spiders. I have no clue what type of spiders they were, but they were big, and I didn’t want to get too close to check them out..

The views on the trail ride were beautiful though, when I was actually looking at them instead of keeping an eye out for spiders.

The first beach we came to was gorgeous. They usually don’t take riders to this beach since you have to go down a pretty steep hill to get to it, which wouldn’t be for beginner riders. I’ve always wanted to canter a horse along a beach, but it was really rocky on this beach (and the next one), so we didn’t get to do that. Boo. But the views were amazing and I didn’t have to look out for spiders, so I was happy.

The second beach was also very pretty. I think it would be a lot of fun to be able to ride around here whenever you want and come down to one of the beaches and go for a swim and then ride home. It was really hot the day we were in Corfu, so I would have loved to take a dip in the water. I’m sure the horses would have liked it also.

After the ride, I gave our horses apples that I got from the ship, and we headed back to Corfu.

Corfu is COVERED in olive trees. I guess the Italians brought them over to the island a long time ago and now there are an estimated three MILLION olive trees there.

I managed to get these to shots on the ride back before I fell asleep. Ha!

We had them drop us off in old town Corfu, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

There were these cool shops all over the place in the old town area, that were filled with things made from olive tree wood. I loved it and bought a few things from here for myself and others.

We had a good time in Corfu. If we ever go back I think it would be fun to rent ATV’s. We saw LOTS of places that rented them. Or I would also like to go to a beach and swim in the gorgeous water. Maybe someday!