For most travellers the honest answer is no. December on Corfu is not a quiet version of the season; it is the season's absence. The coast is shut, the rain is in its heaviest stretch of the year, and the island's entire visitor apparatus has stood down until spring. What remains is a Venetian town going about a normal winter, and whether that amounts to a holiday depends entirely on what you wanted from one.
What is actually here
Corfu Town, which is the point. Unlike most Greek island capitals this is a real working town — arcaded streets, two fortresses, a university, a band tradition that exists for the people who live here rather than for anyone watching. In December it is doing its own December. Cafés are full of residents, shops are shops rather than souvenir counters, and the whole place is walkable in an afternoon.
Behind it the hills are green and streaming with water, olive nets are down under the trees, and the roads through the interior belong to nobody.
What is not
| December | |
|---|---|
| Beaches and swimming | Gone entirely |
| Resort coasts, north and south | Closed — this is not a thin season, it is no season |
| Coastal boat trips | Not running |
| Flights | Seasonal international services that carry the summer are not operating; the route through Athens is the year-round one |
| Weather | The wettest stretch of the Corfiot year, mild rather than cold |
Worth knowing that the mainland is the other way in, and it does not stop for winter. Corfu sits close to the coast of north-western Greece, and the short crossing is the island's own road rather than a tourist service — used by the people who live here, in every month.
So who is December for
Three sorts of traveller, and they are narrow. Someone with a reason to be here already — family, property, work — for whom the question is what the island is like rather than whether to come at all. Someone who wants a short, cheap European town break and would rather it came with olive hills and a Venetian seafront attached. And anyone who has been here in August and wants to know what the place is underneath.
If that is you, base yourself in the town and nowhere else. Apartment Annunziata is inside the old town on a Venetian street, which in December is the difference between being somewhere and being stranded beside a closed hotel. Hire a car for a day, drive the interior in the rain, and accept that the return on this month is atmosphere rather than activity.
If the dates are still open
Take October or May instead. Both keep the sea, the coast and most of the island working, and the seasons page sets them against one another properly. December is a real trip for a small number of people and the wrong trip for everybody else, and there is no version of it that splits the difference.
More on Corfu
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