Beaches in Parga

Parga’s beaches are unusually good for a town beach, which is not a sentence you can write about most mainland resorts. The town sits around a small bay on the Epirus coast, and the swimming is spread over a short stretch either side of it, with a water taxi doing a lot of the work.

Kryoneri, right in front of the town. The most convenient beach here by a distance: it is where the town meets the water, with the little island of Panagia a swim offshore. Swimming out to an island from a town beach is the thing people remember about Parga, and it costs nothing.

Valtos, over the headland behind the castle. Long and sandy, and the biggest beach here. It is reached on foot in fifteen minutes or by water taxi, which is the useful detail: the walk goes over the headland past the castle, so the journey there is itself worth doing once, and the boat is there for every time after that.

Lichnos and Sarakiniko, east and west. Both sandy, and both easier by boat than by road. That last point is the planning fact: the coastline here is indented, so a beach that looks close on a map is not necessarily close by car.

Which is why the water taxi matters. On a coast like this the boat is often the direct route and the road is the detour. Treat the water taxi as ordinary transport rather than an excursion, the way you would a bus on a flatter island.

What kind of place this is. Parga’s lanes are thoroughly geared to visitors, and the beaches match: this is a working resort town rather than an undiscovered one, and the beaches have things behind them. If you want empty sand and no facilities, this is the wrong coast and there is nothing wrong with that.

Reading the water. This is the Ionian coast rather than the Aegean, so the meltemi story you may have read for the islands does not apply here in the same way, and the bays face different directions. Read the sea when you arrive rather than a description written months earlier. What the sea is like covers the mechanism.

The better water is a boat ride away. Paxos and Antipaxos are a day by boat from here, for the blue caves and the water, and that is the swimming day most visitors rate highest. Build one of your three nights around it. Paxos is the island.

Three nights covers a Paxos day, an Acheron day and the town. Our Parga guide has the practicalities, things to do covers the two forts and the river, and where to stay covers the bases.