50 Euros for Vomiting

June 25 2010
I am home now, after 3 flights and 25 hours of travel to get here. However, after reflecting upon this trip, I wanted to share a few more things that I learned during the past few days. The lowest photo shows the other angle of the view from my hotel room, which directly faced Turkey. Before I went to Rhodes I never realized its strategic position in the shipping lanes between Europe, Asia Minor, and the Middle East. This is why Rhodes became so wealthy in the Middle Ages. Its proximity to the Holy Land enabled the Knights of the Order of St. John (aka the Crusaders) to conquer Rhodes. Also, in the second to the top photo is the bay where St. Paul supposedly preached. Religious history is not my strength, so I'll have to read up more on that. I also felt that I did not include enough of the beautiful pictures I took in Lindos, so here I attach one more. As a final, humorous note, on the last night when I had dinner in the Old Town with Barbara and her mother, I sat in the front of the cab on the way back to the hotel. I couldn't help but notice the sign with the charges posted in Greek and English. It is blurry because it was so dark, but perhaps you can notice in the top photo that there is a 50 euro charge for vomiting and "dirtying" the cab. I laughed and asked the driver "does that happen often enough to warrant a regular charge?" He turned to me and said yes, all of the tourists come to the Old Town to drink. Nerd alert! A final etymology note: the word in Greek for vomit is "emetos," which those of you have been hospitalized will recognize as the origin of the term "emesis" basin. I saw a sign in the airport that said that ther are 51,807 Greek words used in languages of the world. What an amazing legacy...