Paxos Day Trip From Corfu: Two Hours in Lakka

What Lakka is

A village on the northern tip of Paxos, sitting in a bay so nearly enclosed that it functions as a natural harbour. Green hills run round three sides of it and the entrance is narrow enough that the water inside stays flat in almost any weather.

That geography is why yachts fill it every summer and why the village exists at all. It has been a safe anchorage for as long as boats have worked this coast.

The tour's highlights describe it as preserving its traditional character away from mass tourism, which is a claim to be sceptical about and which in this case holds up. It is a working village with a sailing trade rather than a resort. Its position matters for the trip too. Lakka is the first thing you reach from Corfu, which is why the free time comes before the caves rather than after them.

Paxos day trip: what two hours buys you

Enough. Guests describe roughly two hours ashore and it is a good length for a village of this size: long enough to sit down and eat properly, short enough that nobody gets bored.

In practice most people do one substantial thing and one small one. Lunch at a taverna and a wander through the streets. Or a walk round to a beach and a drink on the waterfront afterwards.

What two hours does not stretch to is lunch and a beach and a walk up to a viewpoint. Pick two of the three, and pick them while the boat is still crossing rather than standing on the quay when you land.

Eating in the village

This is what most people do and it is a good choice. The streets behind the waterfront hold tavernas and garden restaurants, several of them under vines and bougainvillea with tables set out in shaded courtyards.

Food is not included in the tour, which the operator states plainly, so this is your own arrangement and there is a bar on board if you would rather not. A guest notes the trip does not include lunch, which is worth knowing rather than discovering.

Two hours is enough for a proper Greek lunch if you sit down promptly. It is not enough if you spend twenty minutes deciding where, so walk in with an inclination rather than a plan to browse.

The beaches

Small ones sit a short walk round the bay in either direction, and the tour describes exactly this as an option: a short walk to the beaches to swim and sunbathe.

They are not the reason to come. The famous water on this trip is off Antipaxos later in the day, and the Lakka beaches are pleasant village beaches rather than anything extraordinary.

What they do offer is a quieter swim in flat sheltered water, which after a morning on a boat is not nothing. If you take this option, take the towel you brought for Antipaxos and remember that it will still be damp later. They also fill up, being small and close to where several boats put people ashore at once. Walking two minutes further along than everyone else usually solves it.

Paxos antipaxos trip from Corfu: the walking paths

The tour's highlights mention discovering walking paths around Lakka with scenic views, which is the option almost nobody takes and the one that produces the best photographs of the day.

The paths climb the hills that ring the bay, and from any height at all you get the whole harbour laid out: the narrow entrance, the anchored yachts, the village along the water and the green running down to it.

Half an hour up and back is genuinely achievable inside two hours, which leaves time for a drink afterwards. It needs shoes rather than sandals and it needs you to start walking immediately rather than after lunch.

The village itself

Small, white and ochre, with narrow streets running back from the water and a church bell arch above terracotta roofs. Shops sell the things island shops sell and there are a few places to buy something cold.

It is worth twenty minutes of aimless walking even if you are eating. The streets are short enough that you cannot get lost and interesting enough that you will keep turning corners.

This is also where the trip's claim about mass tourism gets tested. In August it is busy, because a village this size receiving several boats is always going to be. In June or September it is remarkably quiet. Either way, the village rewards a slow twenty minutes more than it rewards a purposeful walk from one point to another with a plan.

Getting back to the boat

On time, and this matters more here than it does in a city. The boat has caves and a swim stop still to fit into the afternoon and it will not wait, and Paxos has no useful way to get back to Corfu independently.

Note where the boat is moored and roughly how long the walk back takes. The bay is small and the walk is short, but a village of narrow streets is a village where five minutes disappears easily.

The guides give a return time and mean it. Set a phone alarm rather than trusting a glance at a watch across a long lunch, which is the single most common way a good afternoon goes wrong.

What people want to know