Ah, Antioch, Queen of the East! The famed Western terminus of the Silk Road! The greatest city of Roman Syria! I’ve wanted to visit it for many years. Alas, the modern city of Antakya (aka Hatay) is a pleasant provincial Turkish city, but with only glimmers of its great past. I kept a wary eye […]
Browsing Posts in Travel
Antioch
March 4, 2010
STS-129 Atlantis Launch
November 7, 2009
I had bought my “Launch Transportation Ticket” for the STS-129 Space Shuttle launch within seconds of them becoming available (at 8:59:40 EST on October 20th). This ticket gets you out to the NASA Causeway, which at six miles away is as close as the general public is allowed to a shuttle launch. I got up […]
Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley
October 8, 2009
We came down through the Salang Pass from Mazar, and then drove up a surprisingly good road to the Panjshir valley. The entry to the valley is an extremely defensible narrow gorge between steep cliffs. The Panjshir Valley was the great stronghold of the mujahideen in their battle against the Soviets, and there are frequent […]
Uzbek Customs: That Personal Touch
October 4, 2009
I crossed from Tajikistan into Uzbekistan at the Tursanzade-Denau crossing, on the road from Dushanbe to Termez. The Tajik exit formalities were straightforward, taking only about 25 minutes. On the Uzbek side, the immigration formalities were easy, but customs was a little ugly. Uzbekistan has tight currency controls. If you are carrying undeclared currency, the […]
Khojand: Alexandria-the-Furthest
September 29, 2009
Khojand (aka Khujand) is a sleepy industrial town in Northern Tajikistan. In an earlier age it was Leninabad. And in an even earlier one, it was Alexandria-the-Furthest. Yes, Big Alex was here, pursuing a Scythian army. In 329 b.c. he re-founded the existing city as Alexandria Eschate (“Alexandria the Farthest”) on the Jaxartes River. Unfortunately […]
Brezhnev's Rolls Royce & Stalin's ZiS
May 18, 2009
I took a trolleybus out to the delightful Riga Motor Museum. This hosts a fine collection of historic vehicles, but most famous is their exhibit of classic Kremlin cars, acquired back when Latvia was still an SSR. Their finest piece is probably the preserved wreckage of Leonid Brezhnev’s beloved Rolls Royce Silver Shadow. (Apparently there […]
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