Paros - Parikia beach

Paros Holidays and Beaches Guide.

A Holiday on Paros is an excellent choice offering good touring and sightseeing, nice weather, many gorgeous Paros beaches to enjoy and great food.

The Holiday Island of Paros is located within the Cyclades Islands of Greece in the Aegean and since the island has no jet capable airfield generally most people going on holiday to Paros get there by ferry - in fact the ferry harbour at Parikia is said to be one of the busiest in Greece. Travelling by air from Northern Europe means you land at Mykonos and then take around a 2 hour ferry ride to Paros.
Paros beaches. The island is well endowed with beautiful beaches of all times and sizes from small affairs through to huge swathes of sandy beach as can be found at for instance Molos Bay.
Paros has many tracks and also miles of paths - however quite a few of the paved paths have been smashed up where they are close to tracks and roads making them hard to spot let alone actually access so they end up not being regularly walked on - thus the thorns etc. take over and they eventually become unusable - a vicious cycle. This is a real shame because there was obviously an extensive system of Moni-paths and other paths connecting the numerous and beautiful churches and monasteries on the Island as well as walking routes to quite a few sometimes isolated beaches - please see our Paros Beaches topic for lots of beach photos. Our various walks pages also often visit beaches some of which are only reachable on foot.

We stayed at Parikia whilst on holiday on Paros and had the benefit of the really good bus service from the port which covered just about all of the island. We could therefore do "point to point" walks using either a bus or sometimes taxi to get to or back from a particular walk rather than having to be concerned about working out circular walks. In fact the bus service was so good/reliable that we did not even have to hire a hire-car for once whilst on holiday - excellent.

Paros Wildlife: Snakes - well presumably they are around - although we walked lots of kms on paths and tracks including high up in the hills we never did see a live one - in fact we only saw two small snakes during the entire fortnight - sadly both were ex-snakes.
Lizards - were certainly plentiful but always seemed reluctant to hang around long enough to get a decent photograph - some of the lizards were quite large. Birds - the usual swallows, some herons, sea birds, the occasional hawks plus a few buzzards - probably plenty of other species but although we enjoy admiring birds we are not twitchers.. Bugs, Wasps, Bees and Mosquitoes - A few wasps and bees around especially near any water but they were not a problem - the mozzies certainly were out in force during the evenings though, some of them great big things over an inch across with huge fangs (almost).

Getting Around Paros (bus/taxi/taxis/car/scooter/quad bike-hire).

Buses. As mentioned we found the bus services were excellent value - most we payed to anywhere was about 2 Euros and the buses do cover nearly all of the island. They are not however that frequent to some destinations - though bearing in mind we were on the island end of May which means the tourist season was only just getting going the probability is they increase services as things get busier. There is a bus timetable at the bottom of this page.
Taxis. Plenty of taxis available at Parikia and several always around at Naoussa - elsewhere on the island you only have to get a tavern or shop owner to ring one up for you if you do not have your mobile with you. For being dropped off at a particular location to start a walk remember to take a map so you can show the driver where you want to go and then as always remember to agree the price. There are meant to be fixed rates for certain destinations for instance Parikia to Naoussa was meant to be 8 Euros.
Hire Cars/bikes/scooters etc. Fortunately we did not need a hire car - the bus and taxi services were much better value and got us where we want to go. Scooter hire was allegedly from 5 Euros a day but we think this could not have given you any worthwhile insurance cover. A popular hire seemed to be getting a Quad bikes - there were lots of people whizzing around on them so this must be the next "in" thing.
The Roads on Paros. The roads generally seemed to be well surfaced - in fact I nearly did hire a car just to have the pleasure of driving on a non-potholed road - something which we sadly cannot do at home in England due to our often appalling road-surfaces. The tracks vary enormously on drivability (using a car) - generally speaking if it looks pretty rough at the start of a track it will probably get much worse further in - there is an extensive network of tracks many of which are not on any of the maps and some just stop in the middle of nowhere after a few kms.

Places we visited on Paros
These are a few photos from around the island's main towns, fishing ports and villages. Lots of other photos of Paros can be found throughout our Paros walks and tours topics (see below).

Parikia.
Parikia.
Parikia.
Lefkes.
Naoussa.
Naoussa.
Naoussa.
Prodhromos
Marpisa.
Piso Livadhi
Dhrios

Paros Flora. Even by late May the sun was taking it's toll and plants were drying up - nevertheless there were still some splendid flowers and shrubs to be seen especially high up in the hills. The hillsides must have been fantastic earlier.

Walks on Paros. By the end of our 2 week long Paros holiday we had trekked more than 200km - both on paths and tracks. As mentioned many of the access points to the obviously extensive set of paths on the island have been smashed up and blocked with rocks when the bulldozers have done their work on the roads and tracks nearbye - this is a terrible shame. There are several paved paths that are clear to access and walk on and several hiking trips using these are described on several of our Paros Walks Pages. One interesting walking possibility is walking round the coastline - we walked a great deal of the island's coast and the authorities do seem to enforce the fact that the coastline must be available to anybody i.e. it cannot be blocked by hotels or private building. Coastal walking was actually quite refreshing too since although the weather was pretty hot inland the sea breezes on the coast made walking enjoyable and relaxing.. The only problem we encountered was that parts of the coast are suffering from erosion and in places we found the path had completely fallen away into the sea - some bordering properties/villas had obviously allowed access along the bottoms of their gardens but in just a few cases some had not and this meant quite a diversion to continue the walk. We gps tracked a lot of our walks and when the data was placed onto our TOPO map we found it to be very accurate.

Food and Drink. The food available from the tavernas in Parikia we found to be of really good value - big plate fulls of food, well cooked and not expensive - and of course the bonus of the always friendly taverna staff. As an example for the two of us typically - stifado, pork chops, potatoes/chips, vegetables, bread, litre of wine, water, apple pie/ice cream and a dish of 4 mixed ice-creams cost us around 25 Euros.

AntiParos - the small island of Antiparos is easily reached by small boat either from Parikia or by the normal ferry service which runs out of Pounta. Apart from the fact that it's actually there so why not, there are two main reasons to go to Antiparos - firstly to visit the fantastic caves and secondly go to the beach (including a nice naturist beach).

AntiParos
AntiParos
AntiParos
Antiparos Cave

A bus is meant to run to and from the famous caves on Antiparos however when we went over apparently the bus was broken - (we did see an AntiParos bus parked in Parikia...) so maybe the service does not start until July/August. We simply hired bicycles - it's only 7km or so bike ride but has a very steep climb over the last km.

Our Paros related topics:-
Paros Walks - Paros Naoussa - Paros Molos-Aliki - Lefkes + Marathi - Paros Monasteries + Paros beaches.

If considering a little bit of Greek Island Hopping then you may also be interested in Paros's neighbouring islands - please see our Naxos Holiday Guide and not so far away Sikinos Holiday Guide and Santorini Holiday guide.

GPS readings WGS84.
Lighthouse-Cape Korakas   N37°09'14.89 E025°13'29.72"
Beacon Cape Kratzi   N37°02'58.26" E025°16'39.54"
AntiParos FerryTerminal-Pounta   N37°02'15.00" E025°06'01.56"
Aghios Ioaiis Monastery   N37°02'39.96" E025°11'21.72"

The five bus services all start out from Parikia and below were the bus timetables during our holiday: (Local time - Monday to Friday) (weekends fairly similar times) - all this of course may well have changed a little.
No.1 Parikia-Lefkes-Prodromos-Logaras-Golden Beach-Drios
Parikia to Drios 0730 1000 1100 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000
Drios to Parikia 0900 1100 1310 1500 1700 1900
No.2 Parikia - Naoussa
Parikia 0750 0900 1000 1100 1130 1200 1230 1330 1400 1530 1600 1800 2000 2200
Naoussa 0740 0830 0930 1030 1130 1230 1300 1400 1430 1630 1700 1830 2030 2230
No.3 Parikia - Aliki
Parikia 0655 0900 1100 1215 1400 1600 1800 2000
Aliki 0715 0920 1120 1345 1420 1620 1820 2020
No.4 Parikia - Pounta (Pounta has the ferry terminal for Antiparos)
Parikia 0720 0815 0910 1010 1110 1210 1310 1410 1610 1710 1910
Pounta 0740 0830 0930 1030 1130 1230 1330 1425 1625 1730 1930
No.5 Parikia - Naoussa - Prodromos - Logaras - Pounda Beach - Golden Beach - Drios
Parikia 1130 1230 1330 1530
Drios 0710 1230 1330 1630

Other Web Resources
Paros Paradise
Paros Greece Travel Guide from Greek Island Postcards
Paros by Greeka
Walking the Greek Islands
Maps:- freytag&berndt Paros -isbn3-85084-587-7 and Anavasi-TOPO Paros -isbn960-8195-36-5