If you are looking for a pretty Greek island for rest, relaxation and enjoying the scenery then Paxos might be the island destination for you. Paxos is a great place for kicking back – an idyllic and peaceful escape from daily life and an authentically Greek, Ionian paradise.
Paxos isn’t far from the crowds of Corfu and other main Greek destinations and is still very well equipped for tourists. However, you won’t find a global brand or chain anywhere on the island (in fact, you’ll struggle to find a hotel) and the offer of restaurants, cocktail bars, boat trips and everything else is truly local and independent. Paxos isn’t short on beaches and nature, but you won’t be fighting crowds to experience it. If you’re looking for a gentler pace on your travels then read on.
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Getting there
Part of the charm of Paxos is the peacefulness of the island, with all arrivals forced to reach the island by small boat. There is something therapeutic about arriving in Corfu with the usual crowds of holidaymakers, and joining a small cluster of people on a coach to Lefkimmi Port to catch a small ferry to your island escape. The 45-minute ferry journey allows for views of the southern tip of Corfu, with the hills and mountains of the Albanian and Greek mainlands silhouetted on the horizon, and by the time had reached the port of Gaios, disembarked the ferry and found our bearings we were the only two travellers walking along the waterfront into the center of Gaios. Both the port and town of Gaios are overwhelmingly charming, with a peaceful channel of mindboggling turqoise water curving around the lush forested Islet of Agios Nikolaos. Boats crawl past you at a leisurely pace as the Venetian architecture of Gaios emerges before you, your eyes feasting on every new view.
Multiple companies run ferry services to the island but (by far) the most reliable were Kamelia lines, who operate from Lefkimmi Port (on Corfu) and offer online bookings and a coach service direct to the ferry to/from the airport (€50 return (per adult) for ferry and coach combined). Services run five times a day.
Where to stay
The simplicity of Paxos extends to the accommodation options available to you on the island. If you choose not to arrive by private boat then finding a Villa or apartment on the island is likely to be your best bet. A cursory search shows that hotels do exist on the island, but we only ever found Hotel Ilios on our visit and your options will be limited.
If you want to be walking distance from cafes and restaurants then you have three main options. The towns of Gaios, Loggos and Lakka are all peaceful Venetian fishing settlements on the eastern/northeastern edge of the island. Of the three, Gaios is the largest and Loggos is comfortably the smallest, but all three are beautiful and there are no bad options. If the availability of shops and bars is most important to you then Gaios is likely the best choice, whereas the beaches close to Loggos, and to a lesser extent Lakka, were superior in our view. Alternatively, if you’re happy to drive or hike for your beaches there are many more remote villas further inland (or at the south of the island) and the village of Magazia in the centre of the island is a very underrated option with several excellent restaurants (with a view) and a convenience store in the village. Bear in mind, the island is not large and you can travel to any of these settlements in 15 minutes regardless of where you stay.
What to do
Eating, drinking, lounging on the beach and enjoying the summer sun are all major time sinks on any trip to Paxos (see more under separate sections below) but your trip to Paxos won’t be complete without a day out on the water exploring the island by boat.
The entire coastline can be explored in a few hours without stops and it’s also a quick journey from the southern tip of the island to the neighbouring island of Antipaxos, so you can fill a day exploring the beaches on both islands and enjoying being out on the Ionian Sea. Antipaxos is the place to visit for sandy beaches and beach bars and visiting with your own boat gives you all the freedom to stay as long as you like and make the most of the experience. There are skippered tour options and larger boat tours to the island from Corfu and Gaios but even in quieter parts of the season these tours are packed full of people and there is no substitute to driving your own boat, with your own music and space to lounge.
For the complete boating novice, you can find local companies offering 30HP boats for day rental in all three settlements. You can expect to spend between €70-€90 on boat hire for the day, plus €30-40 on fuel and will be given a full hands-on tutorial on driving, docking and anchoring the boat. We found Pappas Boats and Cruises in Lakka to be the best option, offering good quality, brand new boats with Bluetooth sound systems and they were reassuringly cautious about not hiring out boats on days with changeable weather conditions.
Where to eat and drink
Searching out good food is always high on our list of priorities and we were determined to find restaurants in Paxos that truly set themselves apart in quality. Gaios and Lakka are not short of options and there are many charming small family run restaurants within pretty squares or by the water’s edge that will tick boxes, but when it comes to the food itself there were three specific restaurants that stood out.
Averto, in the village of Magazia in the centre of the island, offers stunning views perched amongst the olive groves in the hills of Paxos. The restaurant itself is stylish and modern, and one of the few venues where you can find any form of nightlife – albeit only on Saturday nights. However, throughout the rest of the week the food will be the main draw and we were very impressed. We had both the lemon and parsley chicken and the black beer and carrot beef cheek mains, which combined perfectly balanced flavours with melt in your mouth textures. The fine details are all carefully considered and combine style with substance. You’ll pay marginally more than the standard fare in the main towns, but Averto is a serious step up and well worth a visit. We never made it back to Averto later in our stay but we had a wishlist of other dishes that we were keen to try – including a peach salad that is still on my mind.
In Gaios, our number one spot was Libretto – which we first visited for evening cocktails but couldn’t resist returning to for coffee and breakfast the next morning. The quality, healthy, fresh ingredients take centre stage at Libretto with a range of fresh smoothies and acai bowls leading the way, but the clever creativity demonstrated with simpler menu items also shines through. I had the fried eggs, avocado, prosciutto cotto and mango chutney on rye bread, and was combination of the fresh oregano, olive oil and mango chutney took a basic breakfast I might make at home to a different place. We also had our best coffees on the island there, and combined with the waterside location and ample people and stray cat-watching opportunities, Libretto is an easy first choice both day and night.
We spent the majority of our evenings in Lakka and took a little while to root out our favourite spot, but Restaurant Alexandros finished in the top spot once our time in Paxos was done. The service was second to none and the restaurant is family-run taverna and felt packed full of love, care and attention. We embraced vaguely translated specials such as “Lamb Tseligas in a Surprise Package” and Chicken Pandesia “with fruit and wine sauce”, unfamiliar dishes (to us) but both were delicious and packed full of flavour. The Tseligas was bundled together and roasted with feta, pepper, potatoes, garlic, butter and herbs and the Pandesia was a light and creamy white wine sauce with a mix of peach, cranberry, pear and parsley. The menu will leave you spoilt for choice and yet somehow incapable of not ordering the thing twice and all our meals at Restaurant Alexandros were a true joy from start to finish.
Best Beaches
There is nothing better to do on Paxos than find a picturesque beach and settle down under an olive tree with a book or head straight into the crystal clear waters. The good news is that there is no shortage of great beach spots on the island, ensuring that each maintains a relative level of quiet and peace befitting its tranquility. As general advice, most of Paxos’ beaches are best reached on foot and are signposted with handmade signs, and if you don’t want to be reversing back down rural tracks (or putting your 1L hire car through some intense hill climbs) I’d recommend not trusting your satnav too much and parking up and walking when you find a good opportunity to do so.
Marmari beach is a popular recommendation, a short walk from Loggos village centre and providing a picture perfect setting for any and all of the above. Small colourful fish drift around the shallows and yellow butterflies flit over the gentle waves as the water laps at the pebbles. Occasionally, a Northern Ionian Clade lizard (a subspecies of the Dalmatian Algyroides) will browse the nearby ground or scuttle up an Olive Tree, flashing its impressive turqoise head and orange stomach as it goes. Alternatively, Orkos Beach (a short hike from Lakka) provided a similar charm and ‘wildness’, as well as equally great opportunities for snorkelling.
We also ventured out to the wilder western coast of the island for a late afternoon/evening beach barbecue and swim at Erimitis Beach, a beautiful beach sat beneath a dramatic cliff face. However, be aware that the beach can only be reached by a 1km steep road track from Magazia followed by an informal footpath that you’ll want to scramble up and down in reasonable sunlight (and consider your hire car’s capabilities when choosing where to park up).
Nature – the good and the bad
The crystal clear waters in Paxos and the abundant bird life add to the enjoyment for anyone who appreciates the natural world. We enjoyed a wide variety of sealife when swimming or sitting harbourside with a coffee, including saddled sea bream, rainbow wrasse, ornate wrasse, starfish and jellyfish. Taking a snorkel out amongst the reef is highly recommended. Wherever you go, you won’t be able to avoid the pleasant sight of barn swallows and swifts flying overhead in the summer, with many nesting amongst the eaves of building after building. If you’re lucky you may also see larger sealife or birds of prey soaring overheard (we saw Eleonora’s falcons chased off by seagulls at Erimitis Beach and buzzards are common).
As a final note, when researching our Paxos trip we didn’t find a wealth of information and had to learn some things by experience. There isn’t a great deal to worry about on the island (crime is basically unheard of) but like all of south-eastern European, there are several species to be mindful of on your visit. In recent years the purple jellyfish has also been present in significant numbers (we saw several in Lakka when the breeze was blowing in from the sea) and can deliver a nasty sting – so keep a safe distance. When snorkling, avoid stepping on sea urchins (not hard to spot their black spiky outlines in the water) – we saw plenty at Marmari beach but if you wear aqua shoes or enter the sea in the centre of the beach they are less likely to be a concern. There are also native snakes on the island that largely pose little to no threat to humans, but some species will bite if threatened so take appropriate precautions when traipsing through the countryside.
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