Corfu Seasons and Islands: October Green Season, Gardiki Byzantine Castle, Restaurant Gastronomy Evolution, Interior Village Walking, Paxos and Antipaxos Day Trips, and the Greenest Greek Island Water
The Corfu seasonal and satellite guide covers the October olive harvest green season, the 13th century Byzantine Gardiki ruin, the contemporary Ionian fine dining evolution, the Spartilas and Sokraki interior village walking, the Paxos perfect harbor and Antipaxos turquoise day trip, and the 1,300mm annual rainfall that makes Corfu the greenest of all Greek islands.
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Corfu Green Season: October and November
Corfu in autumn, when the olive harvest begins in October and the first rains turn the island green after the summer dry season, is the most beautiful month to experience the Corfu landscape with the combination of the still-warm sea, the empty beaches, the open-air restaurants serving the new season olive oil, and the philharmonic rehearsals audible through the old town windows. The Corfu autumn light, falling on the Venetian stone in the longer shadows of October, is the finest photographic light available on the island.
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Gardiki Castle: The Byzantine Ruin
Gardiki Castle in the south Corfu hills, the 13th century Byzantine fortress built by Michael I Komnenos Doukas of the Despotate of Epirus, is the most complete Byzantine military ruin in Corfu and the evidence of the Byzantine period between the Venetian occupations that the island's history tends to elide. The circular Byzantine plan of Gardiki, unusual for medieval Corfu, and the setting in the wild southern landscape provide the most dramatically isolated medieval site experience on the island.
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Corfu Gastronomy: The Restaurant Evolution
The Corfu restaurant scene has evolved in the past decade from the traditional taverna and the tourist-trap tourist menu to a generation of Corfu chefs who apply the classical Venetian-Corfu culinary tradition to the contemporary Mediterranean kitchen, producing the most sophisticated Greek island cuisine in the Ionian Islands. The restaurants of the old town lanes and the harbor front cafes of the modern town provide the spectrum from the traditional pastitsada to the contemporary Ionian kitchen that makes Corfu the finest Greek island dining destination outside Mykonos.
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Corfu Walking Trails: The Interior Villages
The Corfu interior, accessible by the network of village paths that connect the hill villages of Spartilas, Strinilas, and Sokraki on the northern plateau, provides the finest walking landscape in the Ionian Islands, with the olive groves, the cypress trees, the village churches, and the panoramic views of the Ionian Sea and the Albanian mountains creating the walking environment that Gerald Durrell described in My Family and Other Animals. The Corfu Trail passes through these villages on its north-south traverse.
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Paxos and Antipaxos: The Day Trip Islands
Paxos and Antipaxos, the two small islands 9 kilometers south of Corfu accessible by day excursion boat from the Corfu harbor, provide the contrast to the developed Corfu tourism infrastructure in the quiet olive groves and the brilliant turquoise water of the Antipaxos beaches that are rated among the finest in the Mediterranean for the water clarity and the pebble and sand combination. The Gaios village harbor of Paxos, the most intimate and most perfectly proportioned harbor in the Ionian Islands, is the finest single small town in the Ionian chain.
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Corfu Water: The Corfu Spring
Corfu, the greenest of the Greek islands for the high annual rainfall of 1,300 millimeters that falls between October and March, has the most abundant natural freshwater in the Ionian Islands, with the mountain springs, the Ropa valley aquifer, and the abundant well water of the interior villages providing the irrigation for the olive groves and the vegetable gardens that give the Corfu landscape its exceptional verdancy compared to the dry Cycladic and Dodecanese islands.