Day 7: Antipaxos

For our final day on Paxos we had another exciting trip planned: a visit to Antipaxos. Antipaxos is a small island, located about 2 miles south of Paxos itself. You can't pre-book boat tickets to get there, but a series of water taxis depart from the harbour in the centre of Gaios every morning to make the journey to the island. Information was a bit unclear about whether the first boat of the day was at 09.30 or 10.00, but we thought we'd seen a boat leaving at 09.30 while we were having breakfast yesterday, so we decided to aim for then.

After a breakfast of yoghurt and honey on the terrace outside the apartment, we strolled down to the harbour and found the first boat of the day was starting to let people board. It cost €25 each for a return trip to Antipaxos, which felt like a lot but there were no other options; the only alternative is a standard ferry between the two islands, but that doesn't run on Saturdays.

Before too long we were off!

We had a fantastic view of Gaios from the water as we left the town behind us.

As we sailed further along Paxos, the coastline became quite rocky.

We saw what looked like the remains of a windmill on the hill above us.

Then the boat, which had been going quite fast, slowed down to sail through a narrow channel.

Once we'd got through the channel we speeded up again!

Before too long the coast of Antipaxos came into view.

There is a choice of two beaches which the boat can drop you at: Vrika or Voutoumi.

We had spent some time researching this last night, trying to decide which beach would be best.

There was no clear answer, but in the end we decided to get off at the first beach (Vrika), because it looked beautiful and sandy.

We were worried that both beaches might be overrun by day-trippers from Corfu, but because we were on the first boat of the day it was very quiet. We decided to rent sun-loungers (something we've never done before!). It was €15 each for the day.

Once we were settled on the sun-loungers we decided to get in the sea while it was still pretty empty. There was a nice area roped off for swimming and we were able to swim to the edge of the ropes and back.

It was lovely to be able to swim from such a sandy beach; yesterday's beach was amazing because it was so isolated and private, but there were a lot of pebbles! It was so soft underfoot at Vrika that we didn't even need our water shoes.

Once we'd had enough of a swim we went back to the sun-loungers to relax and dry out...

...and had some iced coffee to cool down

There is a taverna right next to the beach, so at lunch time we headed up there to eat.

The food was a bit more expensive than on Paxos, but not too bad considering we were effectively a captive audience here. And it was really good! I had pastitsio and Helen had chicken souvlaki, which we could see being grilled behind us.

At the end of the meal we got some complimentary watermelon, which Helen attempted to eat. I wasn't much help!

The waitress also saw us trying to take a selfie with the view and took a picture for us.

After lunch we decided to try walking to the island's second major beach - Voutoumi - which was only about 20 minutes away from Vrika. The route initially led us uphill, on a small road.

After a while we were high enough to look down to the sea.

And we tried another selfie.

We got a glimpse of Voutoumi in the distance and the water was an incredible shade of blue.

We followed a sign round the corner...

...and soon we were there.

Wow, the water really was beautiful

This beach was a bit bigger than Vrika, but there were more pebbles.

We headed to the nearest taverna for an Aperol Spritz.

Then we sat on the beach for a while to wait for our boat back to Paxos.

It had been a really fun day, but not a very active one. When we got back to Paxos, we decided to go for a walk to get some extra steps. There was a road above the town which we hadn't been on yet, so we gave that a go to see what the views were like.