Day 36: Kos Paradise Beach, Kefalos and Zia

Sunday 24th July 2022

A Busy Last Day

Today it’s my girlfriend’s last day in Kos. Her flight home isn’t until nearly midnight, though, so we had the entire day to fill and wanted to make the most of it. Much like last Sunday, I chose to hire a car to drop her off at the airport as public transport wasn’t available and taxis would be more expensive. We also had to switch hotel rooms, as part of my deal with Hotel Sonia after the booking mix-up was spending our/my last night in a different room to work around their existing reservations.

Car Hire Pickup and Paradise Beach

After a quick early breakfast at the hotel, we packed our belongings and left them in the room. I’d arranged with the reception that our bags would be moved to the new room for us so that we didn’t have to hang around.

We had organised a hire car the previous evening with ML Rent a Car – a company I’d used last year – and picked up a little Fiat Punto-sized car for €45. Our plan was to head south again towards Paradise beach and spend some time sunbathing and swimming as we’d both enjoyed it there earlier in the week.

After parking up towards the southern end of the beach, we walked to the very bottom end where there was space on the sand to put down some towels, and some rocks that my girlfriend was excited to climb…

Feeling a bit hungry, I walked over to the beach canteen and got us some Lays crisps, a Fanta Lemon and a beer for me of course! It cost €10 so rather pricey but it’s what I expected. After an hour or two, we were getting hungry for lunch so I suggested a trip further south to the resort of Kefalos.

Kefalos Lunch

I hadn’t been that impressed with Kefalos on my previous visits (including a 4-night stay last year at Chrysoula Apartments). Still, my girlfriend seemed to like it when we arrived and started walking along the seafront in search of a taverna – I suppose, compared to Kos Town, it does feel a lot more spacious. The beach is very long and reasonably sandy, so it was easy to see the appeal.

Although we’d parked close to a restaurant called Rainbow taverna, we walked past it and checked out the menu at Syrtaki first. However, the menu didn’t seem to have much in the way of smaller snack items and we didn’t want a full meal, so we backtracked and went into Rainbow taverna instead. I had a Greek salad with tzatziki and pita bread, while my girlfriend had pork gyros.

Although I was driving, we both decided to try a cocktail as they were pretty cheap. My Cubra Libre was nice, but my girlfriend’s mojito was awful – we even complained and tried to get a refund, but the staff were adamant it was correctly made and wouldn’t offer anything back just because she “didn’t like it”. Unfortunately, this left a bit of a bad taste in our mouths (quite literally for my girlfriend), so we left pretty soon after and didn’t leave a tip!

We had considered going back to Camel beach having also enjoyed it earlier in the week, but I didn’t want to drive so soon after my cocktail and my girlfriend liked the look of Kefalos beach so we decided to stick around. We grabbed our beach bag from the car and found a free spot on the sand not far from Rainbow taverna. The beach was a bit more shingle than it had seemed from a distance, but not too uncomfortable to lay on.

Back to the Hotel, Zia and Saying Goodbyes

Just after 3 pm, we got back in the car to return to the hotel so that we could shower and relax for a while. Our things had been moved to a nice superior room that was much better than the one we’d been in all week – a shame we only got to enjoy it for a few hours.

As a final bit of sightseeing, I suggested to my girlfriend that we visit Zia for its impressive sunset views, plus it’s on the way to the airport. Although she didn’t need to check in until 9 pm, I had to get the rental car back to Kos town for 8:30 pm which meant dropping her off by 8. Given the time constraints, I didn’t think we would get to see the actual sunset but it would give us somewhere to have dinner and enjoy the late afternoon/early evening views.

We set off from the hotel around 6 pm with my girlfriend’s luggage all packed and stored in the boot. The drive to Zia took about 20-25 minutes, the last section of which is on some very small and winding roads into the foothills of the mountain range. We parked up and had a wander through the village, which is quite touristy with lots of little shops and tavernas.

It was already quite busy when we arrived, but more people were turning up all the time including some tour buses, so we decided to sit down for food early as we hadn’t booked a table anywhere and didn’t want to run out of time. However, when we sat down at Olympia taverna, the high prices combined with our limited appetite meant we decided to just have a drink instead – I had a glass of white wine and my girlfriend had a Coke.

After a bit more time walking around, we spotted a crepe/churros store and decided to just get some snacks instead of a full meal. We then went back to the main viewpoint for some (almost) sunset photos:

One benefit of leaving Zia before sunset was avoiding the traffic chaos that no doubt occurs when all the vehicles parked in the large car parks try to leave at the same time. We headed off at 7:45 pm with the sun still above the horizon and made it to the airport just before 8:15. I walked my girlfriend over to the departures area, we said our goodbyes and I hurried back to the car so that I wasn’t too late returning it. I made it back to Kos town just before 8:45 pm, returned the keys and strolled back to the hotel, a solo traveller once more.