A week in review, updated

A week in review, updated: visited the world's smallest country, saw the Pope talk outside the world's largest cathedral, did a walking tour of the Collosseum and surrounding area, climbed an active volcano, visited a city that said volcano destroyed in 79 AD, caught a night ferry to Greece and spent a day quad-biking (ATV Offroad Fury, yeah!!) around the island.

The 12-hour night ferry was a living nightmare. I bought an airline-type seat ticket which allowed me freedom to move between my seat and the lounge area, but everything about the trip was sub-zero, food included. Plus I'd gotten soaked while boarding thanks to the rain and wind-propelled sea-spray, so needless to say I didn't sleep one bit. But the view of Corfu and surrounding islands at 6am was definately worth it. One of those "wow, must make space on full memory sticks to take a photo" moments. I'm itching to resize & upload photos as I travel but it's proven to be impossible, i-cafe's just aren't geared up enough. The PC I'm at now doesn't even let me simultaneously open multiple IE windows. Now if they installed Firefox 1.0 with tabbed-browsing...whole different story. ;)

"Corfu with all of it's natural beauty, location, historical heritage, architecture, cuising, 5 million olive trees, crystal blue waters, secluded sandy beaches, and amazing sunsets, is truly the most unique island on all of Greece."

The hostel I'm staying at is The Pink Palace, one of Europe's 10 famous hostels. It's more like a hotel, this place offers everything you can imagine: quad-biking, deep-sea fishing, cliff jumping, island excursions, volleyball, jacuzzi, pool, table-tennis, 24h bar, PS2...

I met up with Divven (American) and Kirsten, Canadian (ehy!), at the port while waiting for the bus transfer, and we arrived at the hostel shortly before mid-day. After a late breakfast (scrambled eggs and toast with jam, fully inclusive of course) - and thanks to a day of relatively good weather - we signed up for the ATV tour. It was brilliant and the most fun I've had so far. Seeing a convoy of 14 quad bikes bouncing around their island must be a common sight for the locals. Later in the evening we had a huge meal (fully inclusive, again) and stayed up until 4am playing card games... after which point I crashed into bed for the first bit of sleep in over 36 hours.

The weather today's been rather poor - we just sat around indoors watching DVDs. Seeing Fahrenheit 9/11 for the first time post-US election 2004 is really amusing and disturbing at the same time.

I'll probably spend one more night here and then catch the ferry bus to Athens. Corfu is an amazing place but I'm wasting my time visiting during the off-season, hopefully I can visit again next year before I return home. From Greece, I'll head up north to Germany & France, and I also plan to spend one or two days in the Netherlands and Belgium each.