Well we arrived into Corfu Town airport which was fine, as we drove away through part of the town it looked lovely which traditional Greek tavernas and tiny streets. However, Kavos is a very different story full of English bars and people it is basically a 'town' built for english youths to come and get drunk! although i enjoyed the holiday very much i would have loved some more Greek tradition and culture encorporated.  I did get to visit Corfu town one evening and I loved the culture of it even though there were tourists they were in the minority compared with the inhabitants.  The little streets filled with wooden carvings and traditional wares such as Ouzo were so colourful and vibrant to walk through. The food is a lot more varied here than in Kavos where it is catered for tourists with pizza and burgers (yukk).  The beach near to the apartment was beautiful though and i could see across to mainland Greece and even Albania!  Overall i would have loved to have stayed in a more secluded Greek village to sample local culture but the holiday was fun enough in Kavos....

It was the last day of our trip and that meant it was also the last opportunity to make sure people knew all their stuff and were going to look good at the grading in a week's time. The telling-off seemed to have worked for most, although a few people were still shaky. As we had to check out during the day there was no chance to have an afternoon session, so instead we split up to 'explore the island', as muc has that was possible without a car. For the most part it just simply meant having a look around the town and the complex, a few people went off and had a look at the forest and discovered that it would have been a reasonable place to do team games. Well, maybe next time.

After that, it became pretty much a waiting game. We went to a restaurant from where we would also be picked up to go to the airport. But we would have to stay there for several hours, and after a while it became quite difficult to keep ourselves entertained. For a while I was part of that entertainment because I had ordered a rack of ribs that was so huge people were sure I wouldn't be able to finish it. Of course I had to take it as a challenge and prove them wrong. Shockingly, after about 2 hours, I actually managed to finish. Stupid things I do sometimes just to prove that I can do them...

Me and the assistant instructor (who actually held a higher belt than me but in a different style) got together in the morning because it was time to start thinking about preparing people properly for their grading after we got back from this trip. Our main instructor can be quite harsh if things aren't right and we were aware that we would be to blame if people weren't up to standard. So instead of doing any more demanding fitness and exhausting people through endless repetitions we decided to start fine-tuning. That meant I was constantly stopping people in the middle of what they were doing and correcting them, sometimes giving them a real talking to if things weren't getting any better. I was not popular that day. But hey, that's what power is for, right? ;-) Fortunately, the assistant instructor was even worse, so I still ended up the good guy and people were still talking to me at the end of the day

Because I already had the reputation to be evil and because I had somehow managed to command a reasonable amount of respect I decided to see just how far that would go and asked people to be up at the crack of dawn for a short trainging session and photo shoot. Of course I regretted that decision in the morning, because just like everyone else I really didn't feel like it. To my surprise tough, I wasn't the only one crazy enough to get up and that ridiculous time! So about five of us were actually up when it was still dark and made our way to the beach, which by then we had found. Being May, it was absolutely freezing just in our karate Gis and barefoot, and the sand was even colder. But it was good fun and we even managed to be still for lonf enough to do a short meditation before running back to warmth and some more sleep.

After a day of training in the morning and then again in the afternoon we usually had accumulated between 4 and 6 hours of exercise, sometimes followed by a bit of beach volleyball. So we thought it would be a good idea to expend even more energy and go to the nightclubs in Kavos. The idea itself wasn't bad, even though I myself am not a huge fan of clubbing. but it wasn't really a lot of fun - see review. I personally decided not to go back to be harassed by shameless tauts or annnoyed waiters, but some of our group found it bearable enough to go back most evenings and have some fun and maybe get rid of a few frustrations that I had caused during the day.

We had obviously booked our appartments wth the idea of having a beach closeby to train at. unfortunately we couldn't find it (I know, sounds weird) for the first session so we just had a quick drill next to the swimming pool. As you can see from the photos, people weren't really warmed up properly and kicking even to stomach height was a problem. At least we didn't attract too much of an audience, because this first session was anything but impressive. Fun for me though, because I could shout at people and feel terribly important and (comparatively) competent at karate.

Well, first a confession: I am not a huge lover of nightclubs and think there's better stuff to do on your trips than doing the same thing you might do at home. With that out of the way though, I still think this is a pretty unattractive place. You get heaps of clubs right next to each other, booming out their music which mixes into a horrific cacophony so you can't really enjoy yourself no matter which one you choose. Choosing itself tends to be more an act of despair as you run from tauts with serious boundary issues, only to find there is no escape - not even during low season when we went. The only 'refreshing' difference is when a grumpy, pissed-off-looking waiter tries to get you into a restaurant that has a huge TV screen showing only the channels you're used to from home, serving food you'd also get in a pub in the UK, and bad food at that. And the walk along the main road, trying to dodge tauts, also tells you something else: during high season there must be a lot of fighting going on or at least some serious alcohol poisoning, because there are three doctors within only a few metres of each other, all with red-cross neon signs (advertising themselves just like the nightclubs)! So even if you really are into clubbing, I'm sure there is much better than this place. Only come here if what you actually want is move your living room to a sunny place but avoiding any cultural encounters and prefer being harassed by people and getting stupidly drunk so you can 'check out the doc across the road'.