Pigadia isn't the Karpathos of postcards. It doesn't have the white and blue alleys of Olympos, doesn't have the wild beaches of the north, doesn't have the romantic isolation of Finiki. It has the harbour, the market, the pharmacies, the bank, the supermarkets. It's where you live when you live in Karpathos all year round.
The seafront of Pigadia stretches for about two kilometres, dotted with restaurants, cafés and shops selling sunbeds and sun cream. In summer it fills with tourists. But you only need to get up early, or walk towards the old quarter — Pothia — to find a different town: fishermen coming back with their nets, old men at the tables with a Greek coffee, house windows with washing hung out to dry.
Pigadia told me more than plenty of beaches did. The places where people actually live are more honest than the ones built to be looked at.
The harbour is active all year round: ferries to Rhodes, to Crete, to the Cyclades. In summer the cruise ships arrive — rare, thankfully, because the island doesn't have the infrastructure to absorb them without being thrown off balance. Pigadia is the head of the island, the place from which everything sets off and to which everything returns. Not glamorous, but necessary.