CORFU

Corfu is Ionian, not Aegean, and the difference is green. This is the wettest of the Greek islands, with more than three million olive trees planted by the Venetians, who held the place for four hundred years and never once lost it to the Ottomans.

So the architecture is wrong for Greece and right for here: tall shuttered townhouses in ochre and rose, arcaded streets, a French-built esplanade. It reads more like a corner of Italy that drifted south.

The water is clear and greener than the Aegean, the cypresses stand up hard against it, and the light is softer — filtered through more leaves. Nothing about Corfu is white cubes and blue domes, and drawing it that way would be drawing a different sea entirely. The second line is ΚΕΡΚΥΡΑ, which is what the island calls itself.