Corfu: South of Corfu Town

From Corfu Town, city bus no.2 from Plateía Ag. Rócco goes to Mon Repos and the garden suburbs draped over the little Kanóni Peninsula dangling south of Garítsa Bay.

Kanóni

Kanóni is named for the cannon on the bluff at the southern tip of the peninsula where two cafés now overlook the pretty bay. Two postcard islets lie below: one with the wonderfully photogenic Convent of Panagía Vlacharína, linked to the shore by a causeway; and Pondikonísi, literally ‘Mouse Island’, with its 13th-century chapel, Pantokrátor, hidden amid the cypresses.

Pondikonísi, they say, was originally the Phaeacian ship that brought Odysseus home to Ithaca, but on its way back to Corfu Poseidon smote ‘with his open palm, and made the ship a rock, fast rooted in the bed of the deep sea’, according to the Odyssey.