Laganas bay & the Vasilikos peninsula

Laganas has the longest beach on Zakynthos and the island's entire nightlife on one street behind it. If you are twenty and that is the plan, nothing else on the island competes. If you are not, stop at Kalamaki next door — same bay, same shallow water, a fraction of the noise.

The whole bay is the National Marine Park, the main loggerhead nesting ground in the Mediterranean. That means real rules rather than signs: beaches inside the park close at night in nesting season, umbrella poles are restricted, and boats are speed-limited. Take the rules seriously; the turtles are the reason the bay still looks like this.

The Vasilikos peninsula closes the bay on the east and is the opposite of Laganas — Gerakas and Agios Nikolaos are sandy, low-built and genuinely quiet, Keri at the other horn has sea caves and the Myzithres rocks. It is twenty-odd kilometres from one end of this cluster to the other and they feel like different islands.