Fast Forward To Rhodes

    The sun is low enough over the ocean that it falls across the shaded terrace and over the bar, but still high above the castle walls of Old Town; the same walls which held off the fleets of Egypt and the Ottomans nearly 600 years ago, before the Knights of St. John finally gave in to Suleiman the Magnificent nearly a century later. To the Southwest is the bastion of England, where the wall was blown apart by gunpowder mines, and English and German knights clashed with Suleiman’s foot soldiers throughout the siege.
    On a balcony across the street, a tanned and dark-haired Greek girl in her underwear takes down the laundry from her clothesline. She disappears inside, but the sun is still there, shining across the densely packed, ancient rooftops adorned with solar panels, while Van Morrison cries to himself on the radio, his tin guitar and wooden saxophone infecting me with a desire to spend the afternoon staring at clouds.
    Minarets, Byzantine churches, and medieval castles crowd together with palm trees and peeling plaster, all of it ringed with the crow’s nests and radio towers of nearby ships. The heat of the cobbled streets is tempered by a sea breeze, and the only thing spoiling the moment is a moderate case of traveller’s diarrhea.