The Seven Wonders of the World

This is the view from the Basilica of Saint John in Selçuk. The single column that you can see on the left-hand side is most of what remains of the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Looking at this picture made me realize that on this trip I saw the locations of three of the seven wonders: the Temple of Artemis, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Statue of Zeus at Olympia.

They're always coming up with new versions of Seven Wonders, but the original is the only one I ever remember. I've seen the Great Pyramid, the only one of the wonders still standing, and I've seen where the Lighthouse of Alexandria was, so that's five of seven. I'm almost certainly never going to Iraq and no one knows whether the Hanging Gardens of Babylon even existed, so unless I happen to find myself in Bodrum, Türkiye, where the omnipresent Knights of St. John used stones from the famous Mausoleum to fortify their castle, five of seven is all I'm going to be able to check off. And that's fine with me.