Corfu

Corfu takes 4–5 days: one or two for Corfu Town and the palaces around it, the rest for the coves of the north-west and a trip to Paxos. The airport is close to town and bus 15 runs to San Rocco Square for €1.30, so the island works from a single base, and the first day needs no hire car.

The walk starts at San Rocco Square, where the airport bus stops. From there you enter the Old Town, on the UNESCO list since 2007 as a fortified maritime port. Venice held it from 1386 to 1797, and the Ottomans failed to take it in the sieges of 1537, 1571, 1573 and 1716. The streets are called kantounia, they are cobbled and in places too narrow for any vehicle, so you walk.

The streets open onto the Spianada, a big square, and the Liston, a row of cafés beside it. On the Saturday before Orthodox Easter, at 11 a.m., clay pots, the botides, fly from windows around them; more on the When to go page. Beside the square stands the Old Fortress, cut off from town by the Contrafossa canal: the Venetians dug it and turned the fortress into an artificial island. The first fortification there dates from about the sixth century, and the bastions were built in 1545–1555 by Savorgnan and Martinengo. The island's western name comes from the Greek koryphe, peak, because the fortress has two. Entry is €6, and a visit takes 1 h 30–2 h.

The second loop runs on zone A of the city bus. Mon Repos is a villa built between 1828 and 1831 by the British High Commissioner Frederick Adam; it now holds the Palaiopolis museum (closed Tuesday). Kanoni is a lookout with a view of Pontikonisi, a one-hectare uninhabited islet with a Byzantine chapel of Christ Pantokrator from the 11th or 12th century, entry free. The Achilleion stands in the village of Gastouri, in zone B, €1.80. Empress Elisabeth, Sisi, built it between 1889 and 1891. In 1907 Wilhelm II bought it and replaced the “Dying Achilles” in the garden with the “Victorious Achilles”.

For beaches you head north and west. Paleokastritsa is six deep coves of pebble, about twenty-five kilometres from town; the water is cooler than elsewhere because springs feed it. Glyfada is a wide sandy beach about sixteen kilometres from town, with paid parking by the beach. Sidari is a sandy shore below sandstone cliffs, and Canal d'Amour, a set of sandstone coves, is another five to ten minutes on foot. Green Bus lines A9, B17 and A2 from the KTEL terminal reach all three; in Paleokastritsa and Glyfada parking becomes a problem in summer. Above Paleokastritsa stands Angelokastro, a Byzantine castle on a 305-metre cliff that was never taken, and the bus does not reach it: Green Bus stops in the village of Krini.