Larnaca

We hadn’t planned to go to Cyprus, in fact we booked it Saturday morning and flew on Monday. I spent Saturday cancelling my weeks appointments and making sure mum would be OK for a week, but Matthew had messaged on Friday night and invited us to his wedding.

Cyprus makes a business out of marrying people who for one reason or another can’t or don’t want marry in their country of birth or residence. For Matthew and Anya the situation is complex. At the time of booking the flights Larnaca town hall had provisionally approved the marriage and offered them an appointment, but due to weekend closure that appointment hadn’t been confirmed. So we booked the flights and airbnb anyway. That appointment did get confirmed but in the mean time they had found another office in a different region that needed less formality and could do the marriage a day earlier. It all seemed hit and miss, you turn up and hopefully they marry you. On the Tuesday we drove to Nicosia, we were held up on the motorway, but we had allowed a fair bit of contingency, but as a result the wedding bouquet remained unpurchased. We arrived at the town hall and found the locked room for civil marriages. Nerves were to say a little tense but at main reception they phoned the registrar and soon Matthew and Anya were handing over all the paperwork and paying their money. The bureaucracy out of the way we were taken into the marriage hall, Mendelssohn’s wedding tune was played, vows were exchanged, Matthew and Anya were declared man and wife. The paperwork still not totally complete, we had to go to the Post Office for some stamps and then to the Court of Justice to get the wedding certificate apostiled. By 12:30 all was complete, the process had been so easy and so much quicker than we expected. We went for lunch, I played “their tune” on my phone and they danced in the street next to where we ate. A slice of cake with a candle became a wedding cake.

The rest of the days no longer needed to be spent doing bureaucracy so we threw ourselves into tourist mode. Nicosia has some nice little old streets to wander around, but we didn’t venture across the border into Turkish Northern Cyprus. The salt lake birding reserve in Larnaca was devoid of flamingos, but the old mosque was interesting. The hill villages were pretty. Pafos tombs and sea front worth a wander. The weather was hot, but the days hazy due to the dust from the Sahara. We ate out every day, the food in Larnaca was very good, average in other towns . The restaurant we went to on the night of the wedding was outstanding. Cyprus will now always hold a special place in my heart , but I’m not sure it’s my sort of place, I will not be quick to return.

Oh and if you have read to the end of this, Matthew and Anya’s wedding celebration will be in Heidelberg, Germany in June, with a white dress and guests and wining and dining on a large scale will take place.