ΣΙΔΑΡΙ

Aren't digital camera's great? Time was you would bring your camera on holiday, with your roll of 22 photos available on the film and every shot you took would have to meticulously planned, you would need to ensure all of the pieces of scenery you wanted were visible in the shot, everyone would practice the smiles they would have on their faces and you would carefully select a trustworthy looking passer-by to take the photo (this was also before the invention of the outstretched arm). Obviously it goes without saying that you would also need to make sure you had wound the camera back to take the next photo, a self winding camera being an unattainable dream achieved only by the ultra rich.

This time I am referring to is a long time ago now, it even pre-dates this blog and this blog will be celebrating it's 10th birthday next year, look back at the start, I am so fresh faced, full of hope and in need of a slap (it's so hard not to hate your younger self), over the years the destinations and the travelling companions have changed, but even back then in pre-medieval 2007 all of the photo's were digital, there was never any need for the winding and the trustworthy stranger.

The point of this is that photo taking habits have changed, rather than taking the 22 perfect photos (well 20 and the 2 that don't come out due to over-exposure) you now take hundreds of holiday photo's in the hope that a couple come out ok, the ones that you tell yourself you will one day make use of that snapfish voucher you got that time to get them printed out, but really they are just going to sit on that memory card, probably forever. If you're me, there will be a handful that you put on your blog too, but they're never the good ones, somehow I seem to be drawn almost exclusively to the worst  ones, just because they accentuate the point I am trying to make. I believe several people share pictures on Facebook too? I think I prefer the sitting on the memory card thing.

Where am I going with this? Difficult to say. The point I am slowly labouring my way towards is that of the quality of photographs, that even among those crappy photos there are some photographs that go that extra mile, that seem to directly question you as to why they are allocated any megabytes to exist in the first place (Re-insert your own reference back to this blog 2007 – present).

After all that build-up you probably expected something worse? You're probably wondering why this is the worst example of a holiday photo I could find? At least it's clear and hey, you have taken far worse photographs before, surely you have something worse than this to show us? you sicken me (Internal monologue may differ from person to person). I will defend my choice forthwith, I feel that the clarity of the photo makes this much worse, at least the blurry ones only exist as a mistake or from some attempt to capture a better photograph, someone took this photograph on purpose, the camera was switched on and pointed at a sign to capture it forever (I realise that I am the on that has ensured it's longevity by putting it here, but I will ignore that). This isn't even the best sign there was for Jim's Bikes, there was one that said "Jim's Rent Bikes" which at least conjured up some seedy imagery that I could have got some good mileage out had we photographed that one, but we didn't so I can't even do that. We didn't even rent one of Jim's Bikes, so I can't even use this as a jumping off point for that particular adventure. We did see people on their Jim Bikes riding around the place, but really, why on earth would you rent a bike, when it's also possible to rent a boat? You can drive on the roads any time, how often do you get to drive on the sea? You don't even need a boating license.

I suppose that did work as a jumping off point for an activity after all, yes we hired a boat, so obviously that is going to be the main thing I talk about, but first I suppose we should get some other things out the way, meet you after a couple of obligatory filler paragraphs for the discussion about boat rental. Also, I told you I only include the worst photo's here.

This year, our holiday was in Sidari in North Corfu (or ΣΙΔΑΡΙ if you're using the Greek Alphabet) it's not a very old town, a taverna nearby boasted it was the first and oldest taverna in Sidari, built in 1959 (again probably a better sign to have a picture of).

We stayed at the Megali Luxuries Apartments, a small apartment complex with only 10 apartments, chosen mainly due to them being maisonettes with  spiral staircases.

But this place was also very close to a beach and only about 5 minutes to the centre of Sidari so it was handy too.

If you've ever been on a beach resort holiday, you will probably be familiar with how they usually go, so I don't feel it necessary to write in any great detail about any time spent in the pool or swimming in the sea (Though actually, it could be interesting to point out just how shallow the sea is and how far out you need to go to do any swimming, but I won't), but luckily we probably did enough other things so I don't need to stop right here.

The Canal D'Amour is probably the most interesting part of the coastline, a natural rocky area, full of little rocky islands and tiny caves all still being eroded away by the sea all the time, we would later come to walk around the Canal D'amour, though having learned a lesson from Portugal, we stayed away from any coastal paths that we could not see how to progress, so there is no interesting near death experience to share this time.

The photo above was taken from a boat, not the boat we rented, but from an excursion we had gone on early in the holiday, before we had even thought about renting our own boat. Canal D'Amour means "Tunnel of Love" and here is the tunnel itself, the excursion boat  went in... then reversed back out, the tunnel part is a little bit small to pass through completely in a boat.

We took a day to go to Corfu Town itself, where we visited an old fortress and... Yea, that was about it, I mean we walked around the town a bit, watched some Turtles in a fountain and stopped for some food, it was a nice day, but there's not really much else I can say, I'm not really sure why I started talking about it, but there you go.

I've obviously become so focussed on the idea of talking about a boat, that nothing else holds enough of an interest for me now. So, Let's do that.

"Go past that big boat, when passing the beach stay on the other side of the buoys and stay about 100 feet away from the rocks. This lever makes it go faster (try not to use up all of the petrol) and there’s your steering wheel. See you in 2 hours"

That is the extent of the instruction as you are given a boat, following that intensive training, you are free to head out to sea all by yourselves.
Regular readers of this blog (who am I kidding?) may recall previous tales of rented seafaring vessels, which were all good fun, but those had pedals, this one had an engine and incredibly, we were allowed to drive it.

On the way out, we followed his instructions to the letter, we turned near the big boat and we stayed on the other side of the buoys, right next to the buoys. We were cautious, maintaining a steady speed, keeping that 100 yards from the coast, feeling every dip and rise, constantly nervous that the next wave would be a big one and would knock us out of the boat (spoilers: none did). But the nervous cautiousness soon passed, our return journey was much speedier, we were moving around the boat and swapping drivers with greater ease and we pushed the boat to it's full speed, even doing a few doughnuts (well we drove it in a a few circles).

When we were heading back to the beach, it was quite hard to tell if it was the right one, the buoys we had followed so fastidiously on the way out were impossible to see, even the big boat was a speck in the distance, we were having fun and had absent-mindedly drifted quite far out.

Since we didn't have to bring it back yet, we decided to switch off the engine and bob around for a little bit. Either that or by this point I was a bit TOO relaxed about the whole boat driving thing.

I think if this is an option on future holidays, there will be many more boat rentals in the future, it's so much fun, so I'm afraid in blog terms, this may mean future blogs will become quite samey (What do you mean it already is? Why are you reading it if you don't really like it? Oh right, because I asked you to, sorry Rachael, please still read my blogs)

I feel like this particular entry deserves an "And Finally" section to finish it off, while I talk a bit about animals. Obviously I chose some photo's that showed whatever I was talking about, but if you looked through the camera yourself, you might be forgiven for thinking we had holidayed on a farm or some sort of animal sanctuary, there were Donkeys, Ponies, Horses, Goats and obviously lots of Lizards (what's a summer holiday without lizards?), on the camera they will stay for now, but I have decided that I should share one, a picture of a puppy found down near the beach, in this particular photo, he is caught mid gambol and if it does not make you smile, you are dead inside.