Beach Hotel

Akrotiri Beach Hotel, Paleokastritsa, Corfu

 

The Island of Kerkyra (Corfu),
Greece (1994)

Before my wife and I were married, we decided that for our honeymoon, we'd like to go someplace really special. Thinking back now, I can't remember what other places were in the running. We always wanted to go to Greece. We ended up staying for a week at the Paleokastritsa Beach Hotel. We lucked out with beautiful weather for the entire week and had a magnificent stay.

We arrived in Corfu late in the evening and we could see that it had rained earlier in the day. The previous day's weather must have cleared the haze and humidity from the sky, because the next day we were treated to a gloriously clear sunset from the terrace of the hotel. Subsequent evening produced hazy, hotter nights, but on the first night the sun was a glorious shining ball as it dipped into the Agean sea....

This picture taken in the late afternoon after most people had cleared off from the beach. It's a view of the beach, again from the terrace of the hotel, where we'd sit in the evenings, have a drink and watch the sun go down. You can get an idea of the steps we had to climb to get on and off the beach. The two platforms you see on the beach were where our friend Nikos would come during the day with his boat for people who would want to go waterskiing, parasailing or riding in back on the "hotdog" or "water cookies".

As part of my ultimate plan to conquer the world, this is me doing some aerial reconaisance of a Greek warship that was parked just behind our hotel. Unfortunately I was having too much fun during the flight to remember anything that might have been strategicaly significant....

Under the title, "What Goes Up, Must Come Down", this is a picture of Ann who, though initially reluctant to have a turn at the parasail, had a great time as I sat in the back of the boat and snapped pictures. This picture also reminds me of how buoyant the water was because of it's high salt content. Ann's wearing her lifevest, but I remember from when I was snorkelling that it took an effort to to push yourself beneath the surface.

For most of our stay, we were very happy to lie on the beach, swim in the sea, or just walk around the local area. We did take one boat tour. This picture was taken in the first area we visited, Paxos, a small island in the Agean. I was later given a book by my mother-in-law called "The Magus" which was set in Paxos. Contrary to popular opinion, the bag I'm carrying is not full of Canadian beer....

The other stop on our tour was on the Greek mainland. This is one of the beaches at Parga. We were dropped off in the town and had to scale a steep, winding path to the top of a great hill, where I stopped to take a picture of the beach on the other side. There is actually no sand on this beach; it's all tiny rocks and pebbles which accumulate in one's bathing suit, resulting in a condition that my wife and I called "Parga bum".

There were two places around the hotel at Paleokastritsa that we liked to swim: the beach shown above, and a place in behind off a rocky bluff. It was a fairly treachourous decent to get to the water, but it was more secluded than the beach, and great for snorkelling.

My first trip under water off the rocky bluff presented an incredible view of deep blue water and a number of different kinds of fish. I found at the store across the road that they carried underwater disposable cameras, so I couldn't resist. This was the best shot of the roll taken from inside a little cave under the hotel out toward the sunshine.