A week in northern Corfu: where to stay and what to do
Corfu is the Greek island most people think they already know. Cruise port, package coast, beach bars. That version exists and it is mostly in the south, which is convenient, because it means the north is still quiet.
We spent a week above the northeast coast and used maybe half of it. Here is how we would plan the same week again, starting with the decision that matters most.
Where to stay in northern Corfu
Everything on this island follows from where you sleep. Stay near the airport and the week becomes a series of drives out and back. Stay in the hills behind the northeast coast and most of what you came for is within fifteen minutes.
The area we would pick is Perithia, inland from the coast near the village of Vasilika. Terraced olive groves, a handful of stone houses, and views that run from the mountains down to the sea and across to Albania. After dark you hear cicadas and nothing else.
You pay for that in convenience. The airport is a solid hour away once the mountain road has its say, and Corfu Town is around forty minutes. Nobody is delivering breakfast, and someone has to stay sober to drive home from dinner.
Which is why self catering makes more sense here than a hotel, and why the better holiday villas in Corfu are concentrated in this corner. Villa Aether is a fair example of the standard: a 205 square metre stone house over two levels, four bedrooms, four bathrooms with three of them en suite, a 32 square metre private pool and a hot tub, an outdoor kitchen with a built in island and BBQ, and panoramic sea and mountain views from the rooms. It sleeps eight, so it suits two families or a group rather than a couple travelling alone.
Whatever you end up booking, ignore the adjectives and check four things. How many bathrooms, as a number. Whether the air conditioning is in every bedroom or only the living room. Whether the outdoor kitchen is a real one, because nobody in Greece eats inside at seven in the evening. And how many cars fit, since there is no bus worth waiting for up here.
Plan the beaches around the wind, not the map
This is the local habit that took us longest to learn. The northeast faces the channel between Corfu and Albania, and the wind decides which beaches are pleasant on any given morning. Locals do not have a favourite. They have two, and they check before leaving.
Almyros is the open one, roughly three kilometres from the Perithia villages, sandy and shallow far out, easy for anyone who would rather wade than dive in. When it turns choppy, Kalamaki is five minutes further and stays flat. It is smaller and plainer and it saves several days a week.
Avlaki, twelve kilometres along, is our pick when there is a breeze worth using: wide, pebbled, hills behind it instead of hotels, and clear enough that you can see the stones under you halfway out. Windsurfers have known about it for years. Take something for your feet.
Kerasia, another five kilometres on, takes a narrow lane and rewards it. One fish taverna, a curved bay, and far fewer people than the drive suggests.
Give one full day to a boat
If we could only keep one thing from the week, this would be it.
A long stretch of this coast has no road behind it. The small bays you see in photographs, the ones with two boats moored and nobody on the shingle, cannot be reached on foot or by car. Hiring a boat for the day is not a tourist activity here, it is how you see the part of the island that the roads miss.
The lower powered boats can usually be taken out without a licence, but confirm that when you book. Leave early, take shade and more water than seems sensible, and treat the fuel gauge with respect.
Break the day at Agni. It is a small bay with a short row of family tavernas, no village behind it and no road access worth mentioning, so most people arrive by water and swim between courses. Reserve in July and August. Kalami, just south, has a waterside restaurant in the house Lawrence Durrell lived in while he wrote here in the 1930s, which is worth a table if you like your lunch with a footnote.
One evening in the mountains, one day in town
Old Perithia sits high on the slopes of Mount Pantokrator, a settlement founded far from the shoreline in an era when the coast was the dangerous place to be. Most of it emptied out during the twentieth century. A few houses have been restored, a few kitchens open in season, and the remainder stands roofless among the grass. Go in the late afternoon, eat there, and drive down in the last light.
Corfu Town deserves a full day rather than a squeezed evening. Its Old Town has held UNESCO World Heritage status since 2007, largely for the Venetian layout that survives intact between the two fortresses, and the pleasure of it is walking the kantounia, the alleys, without a plan. Get there by nine. Leave the car outside the historic centre and walk in.
Keep one day for the house
We always plan one, and it is always the day we remember.
No driving, no packing a bag, nothing booked. The pool does the work, lunch is whatever came back from the village shop, and the afternoon disappears without anyone deciding anything. That is the actual reason to rent a villa in Corfu instead of a hotel room, and it is the day that makes the other six feel unhurried rather than rushed.
Seven days is right for the north. You will not see the whole island, and after a week up there you will not particularly want to.
