Paxos Island Guide: Gaios, Lakka, Antipaxos dolphins, Frescamento & Erimitis

Par Gabriel Goldberg 19 July 2026 11 min read

Some Greek islands impress you; others tame you. Paxos — Παξοί in Greek — belongs firmly to the second category. Small, almost miniature (10 km long, 4 km wide), but large enough to spend three or four days without feeling you've covered it. An island with no airport. An island reached by boat from Corfu or from Parga . An island where the sea is sometimes so turquoise it looks retouched. The harbour of Lakka, in the north of Paxos: yachts moored in water that is literally turquoise. I've been returning here regularly for twenty years. It is one of my favourite islands in the Ionian Sea — and yet, unlike Corfu, Zante or Cephalonia, it has stayed largely off the mass-tourism circuit. This is an honest portrait: what you actually find on the island, where to eat, where to taste the best ice cream in the region, why the cats of Gaios have become an attraction in themselves, and why you absolutely must take a boat to Antipaxos to watch the dolphins pass through. Where is Paxos? The geography that explains everything Paxos is the smallest inhabited Ionian island . It lies 12 kilometres south of Corfu and 8 nautical miles off Parga , on the coast of Epirus. Official population: around 2,300 . Three main villages — Gaios (the capital, south-east), Lakka (north) and Loggos (mid-east coast) — plus a scattering of hamlets in the olive groves. To the south, separated by a single nautical mile of strait, lies Antipaxos ( Αντίπαξοι ): an even smaller island, virtually uninhabited out of…