Arriving at the port, I made my way down towards the immigration clearance but was told I had to do a luggage scan check. However after 5 mins of waiting, it appears that the luggage scanner was not working, so I was asked to proceed to the immigration counter.
The immigration officer asked if I had a visa to enter Greece, and I told her I didn't need one. She had to verify what I had told her which then took another 5 mins of delay before I was able to clear immigration.
And then while walking towards the boat, I was told to wait on the side, probably perhaps someone needed to check my ticket. Again after about 5 mins of waiting, an officer signalled to me from the distance that I can just proceed... Albania seems really disorganised today.
So I walked towards the fast speed ferry boat, which is said to take 35mins to get to Corfu. It was only at about 10.40am before the ferry started making its way.
I met a couple of travellers on the ferry - Sandi from Canada, and visiting her son Danny, who currently now lives in London. He's currently in between jobs and thus they have decided to travel around Albania for the last 2 weeks and then now heading into Greece. Sandi funnily also mentioned she and her son both got Covid when she was in London and similar to me, she was infected about 2 days after she got her booster jab. How strange!
The ferry ride went by very quickly as we spent the entire way mostly chatting.
Greece is 1 hour ahead of Albania, so by the time we arrived in Corfu it was about 12.15pm.
Immigration clearance on Corfu side was really easy, with just showing the PLF and my vaccination cert QR code to an officer at the entrance of the building, and then into the building to get my passport stamped and then to get my luggage scanned.
The guy at the luggage scanner was really nice, even wished me a nice stay just before I left.
I had booked an Accomodation located about 15 mins walk away from the port, in between the port and the Corfu Old Town. I was pleasantly surprised by the apartment as it had all I needed for a stay, including a washing machine which was going to be needed in the next couple days and a super high tech looking shower.
And even a balcony with a view of the sea!
I wasted no time in the apartment and made haste to go into the Old Town - the first thing to do was to get a Greek Sim card.
I was surprised at how expensive it was in Greece, as Vodafone wanted to charge me Euro 29 for 15 days of data only or Euro 39 for 30 days of data. Ridiculous! They also mentioned something about they have better prices during summer but not winter.
So I went to Cosmote, with a cost of Euro 12 that comes with 4GB of data for 30 days. No calls no SMS. I figured I won't be making any calls and so went ahead with the data only plan.
Unfortunately I got stuck at the telco for over an hour because the 1st Sim card they issued only showed "E" on the data signal and wasn't giving me 4G.
Despite the staff trying to troubleshoot it, they weren't able to make any progress and later issued me a new Sim that worked fine. I even managed to get a 5G signal showing on my phone! First time I see a 5G on the phone display.
Finally I can go explore old town. I was starving since I didn't really have much of a breakfast and then got stuck at the telco. I tried to find Pan E Souvlaki that was recommended by Oliver but it was closed. So I popped into the first food place I could find and bought a chicken sandwich that was really good, especially the sauce they had cooked the chicken with.
I continued to randomly walk around the Old Town and I noticed a lot of places were closed.
I got out to a main Square which according to Google indicates it to be Spianada Square.
From a distance I saw a Fort and decided to head straight for it to check it out.
There was a ticketing booth at the entrance, indicating that the opening hours was between 8.30am and 4pm, with last ticket sale at 3.30pm. It was 4.03pm when I walked in - I didn't see anyone at the ticket counter but as the door in front was still open I decided to just walk towards it.
No one stopped me so I continued on, until I came to a split road - the right points to the lighthouse which I would like to go to, and I thought to check out the left side first before heading over to the right.
When I got to the left side, I popped up the side of the fortress walls and saw a marina just behind it and just took some photos.
As I was leaving the left side, I met a guy who was walking his dog on the empty field and we chatted for a bit. I later found out that Duane had been sailing for the last 3 years and his sail boat was in the marina that I had just taken a photo of.
He arrived in Corfu last week and intend to probably stay in Corfu for the next few months until it gets warmer.
He invited me down to his boat, which I was quite keen to see and so we walked down. An unexpected 1st day in Corfu!
It was a really nice Beneteau 56 footer boat named "Grateful" and we spent the next couple hours hanging around the boat chatting. Extremely heavy gusts of winds of up to 60 knots was to be expected tonight, so it was tied and anchored down very tightly in a few different areas.
We headed back to the Old Town to grab a Souvlaki dinner before parting ways as I walked back to the apartment at about 10.30pm.
The winds were starting to howl, and as I passed the new fortress and the marina near my place, I could see all the boats rocking very strongly.
I actually woke up a few times in the night from the howling sounds and banging of things on the outside - 60 knots of wind is no joke!
