By Lyn Funnell 
We lived in Corfu in the 80s for a while and we wanted to show it to our daughter and granddaughter.
I’ve been back twice since, once on a holiday and once on a Press Trip.
We told them how laid-back, friendly and affordable it is.
Arriving at Corfu airport late at night, we were made to queue for over an hour while the Customs played silly games to hold everyone up as long as possible.
The man in front of us was almost made to do the Hokey Kokey; left leg in, right leg in, arms out, shake it all about. It nearly took them 3 minutes to check him out, camera, fingerprints, etc.
I walked up, said Kalispera, which means Good evening. The Customs man replied Kalispera,
smiled, stamped my passport and waved me through.
So what do you make of that?
It took the last ones in the queue 2 hours to get through.
The poor coach drivers had to hang around for hours, then drive us to the hotel and drive home. They were probably starting work again early the next morning.
Imagine how it will be in the summer. They’ll be exhausted. And it’s so unnecessary.
We flew with jet2. The rep finally got on the coach and announced that we would be leaving soon but they were still waiting for some people, then she got off.
She was completely uninterested. She could have stayed for a friendly chat and given us information about the island and our hotel. But nothing.
At the hotel, we had to pay the tourist tax, which we’d been prepared for.
Last year in Majorca, we paid £31 per person for three of us when we left, but not Isabella, who was 10.
Here in Corfu we had to pay on arrival – 105 euros per room! That’s £95-24 each room.
Our daughter went white. I thought she was going to pass out.
She said, I haven’t got that much in my account until the end of the month. And if I pay cash I’ve got no holiday money left!
We paid it for them. So that made a big hole in our bank account. For what?
I’m sure that there must be tourists who are totally unable to pay that tax. So what happens to them?
It seems that these hotels can choose to charge whatever they like.
We would have had time to explore the hotel complex and gone shopping before they closed everything if we’d arrived earlier.
Leaving was painless. But in other countries people are nearly missing their flights.
They’re literally running to their departure gates, when they should be drinking coffee and doing last-minute shopping.
So these stupid people are damaging their own countries, losing them thousands in money.
Apparently this is going on all over Europe.
We will be taking our holiday out of the EU next time.
What a shame.
Incompetent idiots.
