The Ionian Islands in the Year 1863, David Thomas Ansted

Read Ansted's impressions of Corfu here

"The landing at Corfu is not unlike that at Gibraltar. The same low, narrow, dirty entrance, and total absence of decent accommodation. The same crowd of bipeds and quadrupeds, the same mixture of fish and oranges".

The British were always so polite! Did they have an attitude?

Ansted goes on, describing the "houses of rich Greeks, where the rooms are luxuriously furnished, but which can be visited only by entering dirty, shabby doors, and climbing dirtier and shabbier staircases; adjoining houses tumbling down, and not affording shelter enough for an English pig; churches, only differing from stables by bells placed above them; such are among the first things seen".

"Corfu is indifferently supplied with hotels. There are several inns, about equally good, but the rooms are inconveniently arranged, and the accommodation very deficient. The entrances, also, are miserably poor, shabby, and dirty; and the attendance is indifferent. It is somewhat singular that, in a place so much visited, and visited by persons who require, and would willingly pay for, the comforts and luxuries of home, no one has yet established a good hotel".