28 June 2010 YALTA – As Russian imperial residences go, Livadia is a rather small palace, even modest. Czar Nicholas II had this pretty palace of white limestone built as a family vacation residence in the sunny Crimea. Livadia overlooks one of the Crimea’s amazingly lush sub-tropical forests and the […]

21 June 2010 SEVASTOPOL, UKRAINE –Glory, tragedy, disaster. An army of ghosts haunt this great naval base that commands the Crimea and surrounding Black Sea. It is the site of two of history’s greatest sieges. This majestic city still has much of the strategic importance it did over a century […]

14 June 2010 ISTANBUL – World leaders seem to spend much of their time these days jetting from one conference to another. Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad just arrived here for a summit with Turkey’s increasing influential prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey is rapidly emerging as an […]