When lunch arrives, I begin talking to a sun-kissed Englishman who used to work in publishing. A donkey roams on a hill in the distance and the outline of a motorised skiff from Antiparos starts to appear. He wears a navy-blue wool sailor's cap and could pass for a Homeric sea god. The restaurant is run by an old sea captain with a mop of yellowed curls weathered by the sun and salty air. Plates of vivid-red stuffed tomatoes and clouds of feta mixed with olives and onion cover the rickety little tables, while octopus dries outside in glass display cases.

A small taverna sits above the shore, its terrace shaded by grapevines. There are no umbrellas or sun loungers, just a stretch of pale smooth stones, palm trees and turquoise waters. The beach is wide and, but for one family, deserted. In the distance is a funky campground with tie-dyed tents, neon-bright dune buggies, and a pirate flag flapping in the breeze. On the final day of my trip each year, I sit in a spectacular cove at the foot of a plunging ravine, one flanked by windswept olive trees that look like they belong in a Dr Seuss storybook. The island burns on like a piece of Murano glass. Its low coastline looks almost porous - so pocked with natural pools and cavernous cliffs that it resembles a slice of Swiss cheese.īut the rest of my time is spent on Paros, and whenever I return I notice, as if for the first time, how in the rosy satin dusk everything is electrified by the white candescence of the sinking Mediterranean sun I watch the town's domed churches, Frankish castles and Venetian palaces gild in the late-afternoon light. Toward the end of my stay, I always make a day-trip to the Caribbean-blue waters around Pano Koufonisi - a small island just off Naxos that's so undeveloped it may have been what Paros looked like when Capote and Beaton visited. Many have bamboo-thatched umbrellas, little chapels and sleepy tavernas where roasting spits of souvlaki slowly pirouette. They come in endless varieties: on the northern tip of the Greek island there's Kolymbithres, famous for bizarre rock formations rubbed so smooth by the sand that they're almost lunar or the windsurfing haven at Chrissi Akti on the south-eastern side, where kiteboarders' colourful sails fly across the sky in arching swoops. Each is a bather's paradise I have now been to about 30 beaches on Paros alone. There were hardly any smart shops, boisterous restaurants or nightclubs - and yet there seemed to be no end of whitewashed hillside towns and hidden swimming caves to discover and explore. Here were islets that surrendered themselves much more slowly. All three were islands whose charms, I found, revealed themselves rather quickly - and perhaps a bit too generously.īut in 2008, I made my first trip to the lesser-known central Cyclades, including Paros, Antiparos, Naxos and Pano Koufonisi. The first time I visited the 220-island-strong Cyclades - the most frequented and most famous of the Greek archipelago's seven island groups - I traced the tourist's trilogy of Mykonos, Delos and Santorini, spending a few nights among the crowded bars and beaches of Mykonos a day walking around the sacred ruins of Delos and another few lounging by the infinity pool that overlooks the caldera and the dizzying jumble of cliffs on Santorini. They shouldn't try too hard, but they should have enough to keep you from growing bored. My islands need to have all the right proportions.

Since birth I have been an islomaniac, but I am a picky one. The restaurant at Beach House, Antiparos Danai Issaris

Paros vs naxos