Avoiding the possessive form of words ending with "s"

This question deals with the proper possessive for words that end with s.

I am wondering how common it is to restructure a sentence as to avoid the awkward possessive form. For example:

I visited Paros' lighthouse.

appears less attractive than:

I visited the lighthouse of Paros.

I am particularly interested how this affects spoken English.

Answer

I think this kind of avoidance technique appears more often in written English, where people are unsure of how to mark possessives. In spoken English you constantly hear constructions like "Dennis's zucchini" and "Lois's sister" and "the buses' scheduled downtime", etc.

That said, I think the lighthouse of Pharos just sounds better than Pharos' lighthouse.