Istanbul - Thessaloniki - Corfu (whew)

First off, excuse any typos - half the letters are rubbed off this keyboard. I'm writing from the Pink Palace hostel on the unreal island of Corfu, where land shoots dramatically up towards the sky and the cypress trees stand straight in great groves (I've never seen a cypress forest before and let me tell you, the effect is surreal).

Our trip here is best described as an ordeal. A word of advice: NEVER take a bus from Turkey to Greece. NEVER! Nothing actually awful happened, but the constant pit stops, the bumpy Turkish roads, the narrow seats and (to add insult to severe back pain), the fact we all had to get out at the Greece/Tukey border not once but TWICE (first to get our passports stamped by the Turkish offical, again to get them stamped by Greece) - it all added up to make Max and I two very grumpy travelers. To make matters worse, it seemed as if every single old Turkish lady on the bus had her own cell phone, with irritating ring tones turned up to full volume, and these phones would go off every few minutes (who needs to call at 1 a.m? Who?). On the way out of the bus at the border I noticed that the slogan of the company was "CRAZY HOLIDAYS". How appropriate, I thought, as we stumbled up to the Greek customs.

We finally got to Thessaloniki around 8 a.m., and from there made a halfhearted attempt to wander the city before giving in to our tiredness and the heaviness of our bags and taking a (surprisingly cheap) taxi ride to the airport. We both tried to get a little sleep there, but the aluminum chairs were not at all accommodating. After many hours at the airport we walked across the tarmac and got onto the tiny prop plane that was to be our ride to Corfu. My seat looked out the window directly beside the propellor, making it quite an interesting (and loud) flight. We landed safely in Corfu after only 40 minutes in the air, got in touch with Magda, our ride to the hostel. She turned out to be a tiny Greek woman who apparently learned all her English from the young travelers she meets at the hostel, as her speech was peppered with profanity and hilariously 'hip' turns of speech.

The drive up to the Pink Palace was gorgeous - winding roads that would turn suddenly to display plunging vistas that culminated in the gorgeous blue of the sea and those incredible cypress trees sternly pointing at the overcast skies. Our hostel is interesting, in that it seems to be more of a resort-for-those-with-a-budget: 24-hr bars, a dining hall that transforms into a night club and a 5-hour happy hour, plus swarms of young people who seem to only be here to drink. Not quite my scene (and no, I'm not just saying that for the benefit of the parents and older folk reading this blog), but the place itself is beautiful and comes with both breakfast and dinner included, as well as cheap kayaking tours, so I'm not complaining.

Max and I haven't done much yet today - we walked along the beach and I found some sea glass (which I collect), then checked out the little town that's just down the hill from the hostel. We're going to catch a bus into Corfu-town in a few hours to look around, but overall today's going to be a pretty laid-back day after so much tiring traveling in the past 24 hrs.

My internet card is running out now, so I'll sign off. Hopefully the sun comes out tomorrow so I can regale you all with tales of sparkling Medditeranean waters and beautiful beaches.