A day on Laganas Beach

Our first 2 days in Zakynthos was spent inside our hotel resort, we didn’t really do much except eat, sleep, Dutchman swimming while I relax by the pool, read magazines and Stieg Larsson’s book—‘Men who hate women’, eat again, drink some spirits and go back to sleep.

Lots of vendors on Laganas Beach selling fresh fruits. They really yell, albeit very loud, FRESH FRUIT! FRESH FRUIT! in Greek accent =)

On the beach I was reading a past issue of National Geographic that I picked up at Schiphol Airport, it was a discounted bunch of older issues (past few months) for 10 Euros.

On our third day we decided to go to Laganas Beach, the famous 9-kilometre stretch beach of Zakynthos. We’ve seen the beach on our first day at the island during a walk and our initial impression was—this is not the beach for us. We don’t like crowds, especially when its full of brawly teenagers who only want to party. But we don’t really have much of a choice since we didn’t have the rental mope yet. Our plan really is to go to the small beaches and coves and spend our time there.

With the given circumstance, i.e. not much choice, we decided to spend a day in Laganas Beach. Just one day!

The plus factor with Laganas Beach is that the beach is shallow, which is great if you come to Zakynthos with the family. You can walk away further from the shore into the deep and the water is still hanging on your waist. This is probably the main thing that I really liked with Laganas Beach and which pushed me to swim as well. In fact, I swam a couple of times! Dutchman was quite surprised haha. The beach has no pebbles and stones too, just sand which is smooth on the feet.

I may have mentioned this a few times in my blog: I am not a beach person nor I am a water person. Our summer holidays which usually revolve around sun and beach is a compromise for me. In a relationship you always compromise.

So when I am with the Dutchman summer holidaying ergo beaching, I normally just sit and lie on my sun bed under a parasol with a drink in hand. Eventually to kill time, I do some reading, sleeping a bit, people watching and taking pictures of course. Everything is done slowly. Time stands still. Relaxing I suppose. I’m not complaining.

Laganas Beach is also a protected marina (Greek National Marine Park) being the birthplace and habitat of the endagered ‘Caretta-Caretta’ sea turtles. If you come here and you swim further deep, you might get lucky and see these turtles.

Some of my people watching fotos:

My beach view on the left and on the right.

My frontal beach views.

Playing beach ping-pong.

Three musketeers with their three marias.

Here are the beach vendors:

You want some massage?

Fresh fruit vendors.

This guy is selling gadgets. Nice hat though.

In certain parts of the beach it can get rowdy with wild teenagers, especially after lunch when they have woken up from the deep slumber of hangover, only to do the same week-long vicious cycle again starting at the beach.

Because we have an all-inclusive accommodation for this holiday, we strolled back to our resort hotel to have lunch which is not too far away from the beach.

Buffet lunch, nothing spectacular really.

After lunch, we went back to our sun beds on Laganas Beach. I think we stayed on the beach until 6PM. During summer the sun in Greece goes down past 8PM (sometimes longer in June and July).