Corfu Revisited (Part 4): Benitses

My first visit to the coastal village of Benitses was way back in 2005, during my first visit to the island of Corfu. As the hotel I stayed at was located outside of the village of Benitses, I became kind of familiar with this place after a few days, as the regular municipal bus pass by this village on its way to and from Corfu Town.

For some unknown reasons, I did not take my camera with me during my first visit to Corfu, and my impression of Benitses was a little seaside village with a small town square, a small church, with plenty of cafes, restaurants, and beautiful seaviews, and a lot of English tourists. It was not until much later that I realised Benitses is actually a popular resort on Corfu favoured by the British holidaymakers.

This time round, I decided to take a bus and visit this little village again, to see if my memories correspond to current reality. Interesting enough, not much has changed in this town in the last six years; the small Orthodox church still stand by the roadside, the bus still stops at the same place, and the little town square still has the same benches. There is one huge improvement though: instead of relying on the unreliable local bus timetable, and waiting at the roadside bus stop for the bus that never seems to come, there is now an electronic display at the bus stop, indicating the estimated time of arrival of next bus into Corfu Town, so that tourists can turn up at the bus stop a few minutes prior to the bus' arrival instead of waiting for the bus in vain under the burning sun.

Actually the beaches at Benitses are not the best on the island of Corfu; but due to the presence of several hotels and resorts nearby, the little beach near the village centre is often full during the high seasons.

The cute little church and the bar street lined with cafes and restaurants are still the same :)

Of all the places on Corfu, for some reasons this nice little village square facing the sea in Benitses actually left a deep impression on me. I am not sure why, but there is something serene and sweet about it, which reminds me of one of those small rural village squares in Provence and Languedoc, which were lined with several village cafes where old pensioners from the village spend their afternoon chatting to one another, reading local newspapers, and drinking aperitif before dinner. There is not so much Greekness about the village square in Benitses if the term 'Greekness' means stone houses painted white and blue with lazy cats lying atop the roof and the stairs. Just like almost the rest of Corfu and the Ionian Islands, this village has a distinctive Franco-Italian feel all around it, and that is exactly what makes Corfu and the other Ionian Islands so attractive and special when compared to the tourist meccas in Greece known as the Cyclades. 

Frequent local buses connect Benitses with Corfu Town. Bus tickets can be bought from the ticket machine located at the bus stop opposite the village square. It takes about 40 minute by bus to travel to Corfu Town.

Copyrights@2012. All text and photos by YC Cheng. All Rights Reserved.