Day 12: Paros Golden Beach

Thursday 30th June 2022

Another Day, Another Beach

One thing I’ll say about Paros is that it doesn’t seem to have a lot of sightseeing opportunities outside the typical churches/monasteries and a few inland villages. For the most part, exploring the island means visiting some or all of the beaches dotted around the coastline.

Caroline only has two more days here and was keen to see as much as possible before she flies home, so today we planned to tick off another beach: Chrisi Akti, otherwise known as Golden Beach, located on the southeastern side of the island. I had a work meeting scheduled for the afternoon, so we checked the bus timetable and agreed to catch the first available service which departed at 9.

Bakery Breakfast

To economise a bit on food, we returned to Ragoussis bakery just after 8 and bought the same mix of pastries, coffee and tea as we had on Tuesday. It’s much cheaper than eating in a typical cafe and has faster service, making it ideal when we didn’t want to risk missing the bus.

Golden Beach

The journey to Golden Beach was quite long, taking nearly 50 minutes as it stops at quite a few places on the way. It was worth it when we saw the beach, though:

Golden Beach might just be the nicest on Paros, though it’s a close call with Piso Aliki. The sand is soft and, yes, golden, and the sea is very clear and pretty shallow. We put down our towels and I decided to go straight in for a swim before applying suntan lotion, as I was already quite hot from the journey.

We spent the next hour or two just relaxing on the beach, then decided it was time for lunch. Considering the size of the beach, there aren’t that many dining options – we counted maybe 4 or 5 places. Checking a few menus confirmed that prices were quite high, so we chose Rebel Beach Bar as it seemed nice and not too expensive. I decided to try something different and ordered shrimp tacos, which were delicious:

Back to Work…or not

By the time we’d finished eating it was a little after 1pm. I didn’t want to be late for my afternoon meeting, so knowing it had taken a while to get here, I left Caroline at the restaurant so she could stay and enjoy the beach and began walking back to the bus stop with the intention of catching the 1:30 back to Parikia.

I was surprised when a bus turned up at 1:20 and was told it was going to Parikia, so I hopped on thinking it had just arrived early but soon realised it was a different bus that goes via Lefkes rather than the coastal route we’d taken to get here. It didn’t matter, though, as they both take a similar amount of time and it saved me waiting at the bus stop for the next service.

Annoyingly, while I was riding the bus back to the hotel, I got an email to say my meeting had been cancelled. Rather than trying to get off and return to the beach, I carried on and figured I would use the time to do some work anyway so I could keep the money coming in!

Italian Dinner

Caroline and I met up for dinner at 7. I’d been looking online for some restaurant options so we didn’t keep visiting the same places along the coastal road. I found a couple of Italian restaurants that had good reviews: Daniele Ristorante Italiano and Cuore Rosso, both of which are tucked away in the narrow streets of Parikia behind our hotel.

We walked around both places to check the menus. They seemed pretty good, but Cuore Rosso only appeared to serve pizza so we chose Daniele Ristorante for its more varied menu (though I made a mental note to return to Cuore Rosso next week as I love pizza!).

I was tempted by several pasta dishes, but ironically ended up ordering a pizza anyway – it was delicious though, so no regrets!

Caroline also went for a pizza, choosing a vegetarian one, though we didn’t realise it came with garlic on it and she’s allergic, so we had a bit of an awkward moment when we asked for them to make it again without the garlic (the waitress suggested they had told us about the garlic, but Caroline was adamant she would have told them about her allergy if they had). They were good enough to make a fresh one, though, and it turned up only a few minutes later.

Budget Dessert

The restaurant was delicious but quite expensive – my Eza beer cost €8 and Caroline had a small glass of wine for €7. To save a bit of money, we skipped dessert and decided to walk around the corner to Ragoussis bakery and get something sweet from there.

There were almost too many things to choose from, but we settled on two large bits of baklava. I managed to eat all mine while we sat outside, but Caroline was too full to manage more than a few bites, and took the rest back to her room to finish another time.

Feeling very full and slightly sick from the rich dessert, we strolled back to the hotel and retired to our rooms to sleep off the calories!