Day 6: Lakka

We didn't have a firm plan of what we were going to do on Paxos today. As it was the first day in a while that we didn't have to be anywhere at a specific time to catch transport, we decided to have a bit of a lie in this morning and then go out for breakfast at the cafe round the corner from our apartment where we ate chocolate sorbet yesterday.

It was breakfast with a lovely view of the sea

And the breakfast itself was great too. We both had coffee with crepes.

Public transport on Paxos is quite limited, but there is one bus at 10.30 in the morning from the town of Gaios, where we are staying, to a town called Lakka which is the second biggest on the island. After a bit of deliberation we decided to catch it. A one-way ticket cost €4 each and, although Lakka is only about 5 miles away from Gaios, the journey took around 45 minutes. The roads on the island are quite narrow, so there were a few times where the bus had to pause and wait for other vehicles to reverse!

When we arrived in Lakka around 11.15, we could see that it was a pretty little place.

We walked around by the harbour...

...and then followed a footpath which climbed up alongside a church.

As we went uphill we began to have some fantastic views of the sea.

It was such a bright shade of blue that if I'd seen it in photos online, I'd think they'd been touched up!

We soon came to the main beach in the town; Harami beach.

It was a bit pebbly, but it looked like it would be easy to get in and out of the sea. It wasn't overly busy, but there were a few rows of sun-loungers and a beach bar. We decided to continue on the path for a bit to see whether we could find anywhere a bit quieter.

As the path beyond the beach continued to climb, the views were fantastic.

The path itself was quite narrow and overgrown in places though, so not the easiest of walks.

Here's me looking happier about the path than I probably felt  

Soon we'd walked far enough that we could look back to the centre of Lakka...

...as well as down to the bright blue sea.

There were several different beaches in the vicinity of the path we were following, so we decided to scope them out. The first one we came to looked beautiful.

The colour of the sea really was incredible.

Unfortunately there didn't seem to actually be any way to get down to this beach from the path. Never mind, it was worth coming this far to see the view!

We continued along the path, though it soon became quite steep. We realised belatedly that it was leading the way over the top of a headland and turned back.

There was one more beach we wanted to explore, so we turned onto another narrow path leading down to it.

As we got closer to the beach the trail widened out a bit and became easier.

First impressions were that the beach was going to be quite rocky.

It was indeed quite rocky, but so beautiful!

We sat down on a rock to admire the views. 

There was a small group of people at the beach when we arrived, but after a few minutes they left and we were on our own.

A whole beach all to ourselves!

This may be the only time in our lives that ever happens  

We decided to make the most of it and go for a swim.  The water was amazingly clear and there were no jellyfish, seaweed or other hazards.

There was a nice flat rock which we could sit on afterwards to dry off.

We'd worked up quite an appetite by this point, so once we were sufficiently dry we began the walk back towards Lakka.

We stopped at the beach bar on the main town beach and ordered two enormous pizzas.

The bus timetable is so infrequent that there wasn't a bus back to Gaios until 18.15, so we had plenty of time after lunch for another walk around the town.

This time we walked around the far side of the harbour and went a little way uphill to a viewpoint from where we could see the small headland we'd just about stopped ourselves from climbing over earlier.

The beach we swum at was just on the far side of the narrow part of the headland.

After our walk we had another iced coffee in the town, then caught the 18.15 bus back towards Gaios. It was another really fun day and Paxos is a stunning island