Frank's Christian Thoughts: Travel Biography Photo Extravaganza

Saturday, 22 November 2025

Travel Biography Photo Extravaganza - Part 49.

How Marriage Changed Travel, and our Honeymoon in Rhodes.

The day we stood at the front of the church to exchange our wedding vows, a change of destiny took place. And this in front of a sanctuary filled with people. Among them was a young family whose bored son was fidgeting, causing a level of distraction. There was another couple who were my window cleaning customers, and there were relatives and friends of both our families present. Among them sat Alex's late grandmother. While we were waiting for the bride to be escorted in by her dad, Derek (a very tense moment!), she looked across the room at me, looking very forlorn.

I already knew what she was thinking. She never approved of our nuptials. However, her husband, Alex's maternal grandfather, had passed away some years earlier. Otherwise, he would have put a stop to her coming around to my apartment in the first place, let alone allow the wedding to take place. The reasons weren't difficult to fathom. First of all, there was a massive age difference between us. Literally, I was old enough to be Alex's father. Secondly, and more relevant, was that Alex could have chosen a younger, better-educated individual who held down a professional career and guaranteed a good income.

This was further endorsed by the dear lady herself, who had actually created her granddaughter's wedding dress. The reception venue was the church's social hall, located separately from the sanctuary but within the same building. Therefore, there were no rental fees. The cake was baked by Derek's mother, and the photographer, who sat with us at the reception, was a friend of my brother, who was our best man.

With the groom unable to afford to pay for the wedding, as tradition demands, little wonder that the bride's maternal grandmother had reservations about the bride's choice of groom!

Over 26 years have elapsed since our wedding day. We passed through challenging times, but I'm happy to say that to this day, our marriage is strong and robust, with my window cleaning business having sustained both of us without the need for her to work for a living. That is, until I retired from paid work in 2015 due to poor health. I have cardiac failure to this day, according to the medical team.

As already mentioned last week, we chose Rhodes for our two-week honeymoon. Rhodes is one of the archipelago of Greek islands known as the Dodecanese (meaning twelve). As I said already, our 1999 honeymoon was a package holiday, the first since 1972. There we were, about to take off from London Gatwick. But this time, all seemed strange. I no longer sat alone. And unlike the 1997 scheduled British Airways flight from London Heathrow to Singapore, where the aeroplane was nearly empty of passengers, this Thomson flight was packed full, and after arriving at Rhodes, a bus took us to our pre-booked hotel. And next to me, Alex sat. All these, to me, defined the difference between backpacking and a beach vacation.

Oh, the joys of our new life together. Alex wouldn't go near a backpacker's hostel to bed down among females. In turn, spending an entire vacation lying on a beach was a sacrilege, especially when the island had much to offer for sightseeing. No hiking trails? That didn't matter too much. The 10 km roadside hike from our hotel at Lardos Bay to the medieval town of Lindos, with its Acropolis, was an adventure in itself, as I showed her the ins and outs of hiking, including drinking an adequate amount of water and the on-route consumption of the right foods.

The Acropolis was built on a hill overlooking the town. However, the pinnacle of the Acropolis, the 2nd-century BC Temple of Athena, was wrapped in modern scaffolding as it was under restoration. The ugliness of the building site has kept the one photo of it out of last week's digital album.

During the first week, we spent a day at Faliraki, a diving resort in the district of Kalithea. It was a 20-km sailing from Mandraki Harbour in Rhodes town. After arriving at Faliraki, we split into several groups. I was in the first group to scuba dive, while Alex sat nearby and watched. I never had air cylinders donned on my back before. It was a new experience, but our supervisors were experts in ensuring that the balance between the air tanks and my weight was exactly right, allowing me to glide through the water.

We sailed from Mandraki Marina to Faliraki.

This was quite different from coral reef snorkelling. Here, we were tightly supervised, both by the dive leader and a staff member who was floating on the surface above us. Hence, the division into different groups. They could keep an eye on a limited number of people at a time. However, the sea floor lacked any form of life, although one may encounter a lone cuttlefish. This site for scuba diving was purely for the experience rather than underwater photography.

Rhodes Town was the capital city of the island. It consisted of the Old City and was surrounded by the urbanisation of the modern city. The Old City was built mainly by the Knights of St John, and had a Medieval character. We saw that the Old City was walled, with a dried-out moat surrounding the inland side, and separated from Mandraki Marina by the twin towers of Sea Gate. The main centre is Hippocrates Square, a lively shopping mall dominated by the towers of Sea Gate. Just north of Hippocrates Square lies the ruins of the Temple of Aphrodite, and Alex and I joked about whether the goddess of love would have any effect on us. Walking through Sokratcus (Socrates Street), one of the city's main thoroughfares, we arrived at the Palace of the Master of the Knights, although, due to our budget, we didn't enter the museum.

The mouth of Mandraki Harbour and Marina is said to be the site of the ancient Great Colossus, a 33-metre-high statue which was erected in 280 BC, and was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It collapsed from an earthquake which struck at 226 BC. Hence, it stood for just 54 years, well within a human lifespan. After its collapse, it was never rebuilt, and its broken parts were sold off. In its place are now two pillars, one on each side of the harbour mouth, and displaying two deer, one male, and the other, female.

In all, our honeymoon was a never-to-be-forgotten experience marking a new start in life. Forever gone is solo independent travel, backpacker's hostelling became a thing of the past, as with buying groceries and cooking meals whilst travelling.

But my travel bug remained alive during the early years of our marriage, before the children were born. Therefore, in 2000, we were able to go on our final independent backpacking trip to Israel as a couple. This includes coral reef snorkelling at Coral Beach in Eilat, far from the Israeli/Arab unrest in Jerusalem.

As these are pictures of our Honeymoon, we will appear often in this album.

Click here for the Index to the main Biography covering our Honeymoon, Week 121.

Photos of Our Honeymoon in Rhodes - Section II.

Faliraki Diving Platform and Beach.

We left Manraki Harbour for Faliraki.