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It’s Saturday, and the first proper day of the ski season here in the Bernese Oberland. Everyone who owns a pair of skis will be up here (and that’s basically the whole population), so it’s a good day for us to go down to the great metropolis of Interlaken and get some shopping.

We buy coat hangers and pillows, shampoo and whisky, scissors and sellotape, a yoga mat and chocolate, and of course food. It’s another lovely day – warm and sunny in the mountains but a bit colder down in the valley where the sun doesn’t shine much at this time of year.

In the village, more bars opened last night and next week should see most of the hotels opening. A few of our neighbours arrived yesterday too, so it’s beginning to feel a bit more festive.

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Lovely day today, we walk up to the village and sort out a locker for the year. Train up to Scheidegg and nice lunch at the Bahnhof.

Scheidegg is very quiet.

Val on Arven.

And on the Lauberhorn.

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Everything went smoothly with our trip today, and we arrived at 4pm. Very few people about. Went to Central Sport where Colin had our winter stuff waiting, and hauled everything home.

Civic improvements in Lauterbrunnen – new platforms at the station.

Wengen looking very snowy for this time of year.

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This morning we walked to the top of the ‘new’ fortress. New is a relative term of course, as it’s almost 500 years old. Good views.

Old Fortress in the distance.

Airport on the edge of town.

These lizards are the fort’s only residents nowadays.

Later we walk down to the old fortress. This is 1500 years old. It served the town well for 1000 years until its design became obsolete with the invention of heavy calibre firearms like naval cannon. The Corfiots abandoned it and built the new one.
True to form, the Turks amassed an army of 35,000 just off Corfu. The Corfiots, commanded by Johann von der Schulenberg, numbered just 5000. Schulenberg and his men prevailed, and he is celebrated with a fine statue down by the old fortress.

Here’s Val standing nearby.

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Last night we popped into town and had a few drinks followed by a mixed grill at a hole in the wall giros place. The food was great but it started to rain so we got a bit damp.

This morning it was still raining, but we managed to get out into town in between showers. Lots of people about, and here’s the reason.

In addition to the cruisers, high speed hydrofoils ply the route from the mainland.

In a corner of the huge harbour we find the fishing fleet. Fish is very expensive in Corfu so we tend to avoid it, having eaten our fill in Preveza and the islands.

It’s still raining, so tonight we’ll be having a sprint down the street to the nearest cluster of bars and we’ll grab whatever we can.

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We got a taxi to the airport this morning for the short hop to Corfu. The airport was closed – locked up,  nobody in sight. After a while a few staff began to turn up and eventually we got into the building. There were no other passengers at all.

Our check – in girl confirmed our suspicions – we are the only passengers today. Anyhow, our plane arrived on time and we hopped on. There were already a dozen or so passengers on board who had caught the plane at its previous stop on Kefalonia.
Bye bye Preveza.

The flight took 20 minutes. Here’s our little plane.

Corfu is nice. People have been fighting over it for the past 1500 years so it is heavily fortified.

Lots of Venetian influence, as well as British – there’s a cricket pitch on the right of the photo.

Also a popular stop for the cruise ships.

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Ok they were knocked out of the footie this week, but the Greeks are undisputed champions of. …. Nibbles.
Having done nothing all day we weren’t exactly starving tonight, so we decided to play the nibbles game where you eat for free by drinking beer. With our first round we got warm roast pork with mustard and cheese.

Next up was chicken and cheese pie.

And finally cheese and salami.

We stagger back to the hotel and have a couple of fruit croissants (rescued from the boat) for desert, and that’s dinner done for nothing. Happy days.