The Pink Palace

Just another one champion sound, me and you about to get down, who the hottest in the world right now, just touched down in Corfu Town!

My travel mates had a few bucket list items and one was to go to Corfu and stay in the Pink Palace. The name preceeds itself, and as you can tell by the connotations from the name, this hostel is the hook-up spot of Greece (or so they thought).

After taking an overnight ferry to Corfu we arrived and were shuttled to the Pink Palace. Upon arrival, we were greeted by a fellow Canadian (staff member) who gave us a brief orientation about the hostel and started the morning off right with pink shots of ouzo. The triple-occupancy rooms were fairly nice and for 25 euros a night, this hostel was a great deal. Each morning we were served eggs, ham, bread, cheese, coffee and tea and each evening we were given a three course meal. All of the meals started with a chickpea soup, salad and then a main course. Over the 4 nights we stayed there we ate a Chicken Dinner, Bangers and Mash, Spaghetti and a Meat Cassarole type thing.

On to the more exciting things - drinking. There was A LOT of it... the bar was open essentially 20 hours a day and drinks were no more than 3 euros each during the non-happy hour times. Because the weather was lousy and therefore there was not a lot of opportunity to go to the beach, all we did was sit around playing cards or drinking games in the main lounge and let me just tell you that there was only one day that I did not puke or dry heave. For some reason, the daytime bartender Richard took a liking to me and I did not have to pay for any shots the entire time I was there. Richard played movies during the daytime and would have "cinema shots" periodically throughout the movies.

During happy hour, which ran from 6 to 8 every night, cocktails and beer were one euro each which made all of us get a bit out of hand. Buying rounds for under 10 euros was a common occurence. The night time bartender Peter was a a "love/hate" sort of guy. A native Brit who pretended to be Australian, he was vicious with insults but at the same time, he received a lot of flack as well. For whatever reason, this guy was absolutely obsessed with his hair. We started up a drinking game based on his hair; anytime he touched it you would have to drink and everytime he wetted it down, you would have to chug the rest of your drink (he probably wetted his hair 5 times on average per night).

Thoughout the four days we did a number of memorable things but none that I could cross off my bucket list. We rented quads for one day and went into Corfu Town on a epic mission to find our first McDonalds in Europe. After much driving around and asking for directions, we finally sunk our teeth into some delicious CBOs (Chicken Bacon Onion Burgers) at McDonalds. Apparently they sell beer at McDonalds in Europe which is pretty awesome! We finished off the quad safari by going to a random bar/lounge at the top of one of the highest peaks in Corfu for some Happy Horny Cocktails. Allegedly these cocktails (which I believe consisted of Metaxa, Coca Cola and perhaps a bit of Cointreau) also were laced with Viagra. The bartender told me that he made my drink "extra horny" but I think that these drinks were nothing more than a myth because none of us felt anything afterward (or so the boys claimed).

On Wednesday nights at the Pink Palace it is cross-dressing night. It was pretty disgusting but amazing at the same time. Pictures to come. Two of my travel mates decided to dress like twins in short shorts and pink beaters while I dressed like a "dirty Mexican" and by the end of the night everyone was calling me Carlos.

Thursday night was our final night and we wanted to make it fun so instead of hanging out at the Pink Palace nightclub called Palladium, we went into the small town at the bottom of the hill near the Pink Palace to a bar called Robins. It had a "tickle trunk" full of costumes and the cross-dressing continued. Myself and this guy Devon decided to head back to the Pink Palace and on the way went to "Mikes Music Bar" that had approximately four people in it. Sitting at the bar, we chatted with the bartender/owner and as a ploy to try and get free shots we pretended that we had just been engaged and were on a trip together. After a ten minute story on how we met, our alleged wedding plans (which included singing a Sonny and Cher duet since we are both singers) the owner made us some absolutely rediculous drinks and gave us free shots. Mission successful.

Perhaps it was peer pressure or perhaps I am just stupid but I decided to stay at the Pink Palace bar until 4 am while knowing that I had to be checked out by 9 am the next morning. The following day was a hangover and a half but it was worth the pain and suffering to have a good night out with friends.

The next destination on our trip was Rome then Pisa and we are just headed to Cinque Terre now. You know what they say - when in Rome, do as the Romans do and we found that Rome was the perfect balance between partying (we went on 2 pubcrawls) and sight seeing (we saw the Colosseum, Vatican, St. Peter's Basilica, went on 2 tours etc.). However, I will have to save the details for the next blog post. As a cliff hanger, I will mention that I have knocked off 5 things from my bucket list in the last 5 days! I'll let you guess which ones they were...

More gory details to come soon.