The best place to see Roman ruins is not in Rome or anywhere in Italy.  It’s in Africa – specifically on the Mediterranean coast of Libya.  This is the Roman theatre at Sabratha built in the 1^st century BC.  Over 2,000 years old, it’s still mostly intact.  Starting as a Berber village, the Phoenicians founded the city as Sabrat by 500 BC.  Then came the Greeks, then the Carthaginians, and after the Punic Wars came Rome.

The Libyan coast was a lush fertile place back then.  So much so that Sabratha and the other major Roman city nearby, Leptis Magna, produced several million pounds of olive oil per year – sale of which to Rome enabled them to achieve great wealth.  It’s a shame that Libya remains today in chaotic civil war.  Hopefully the day is not off when experiencing Rome’s most magnificent remains will be possible here again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #79 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Our Glimpse 77 yesterday (11/03) was of the Wakhan Corridor – a skinny finger of northeast Afghanistan separating Tajikistan and Pakistan extending all the way to China. Click on the link to get the photo.  Note the large alluvial fan in the center on the Afghan side of the Amu Darya.  Now look closely and you’ll see a tiny white dot on the edge of the fan next to the green of the river bank.

What could that be?  Well, here’s my photo of it close up.  Certainly no Afghan village.  It’s a modern windowless compound completely isolated with no roads, trails, or any other habitation for many miles in any direction, reachable only by helicopter.  Any guesses?  It’s a CIA interrogation center, where captured Taliban are brought for rather intense debriefings.  That’s the Wakhan Surprise.  I’ll bet many of you canny old TTPers, however, aren’t surprised at all. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #78 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is the Wakhan Corridor traversed by Marco Polo on his way to China in 1273.  The river is the Amu Darya, known to Alexander the Great and the ancient Greeks as the Oxus.  The Wakhan is the finger of northeast Afghanistan designed in the late 19^th century to prevent the Russian Empire in Central Asia from touching the British Empire in India.  It now separates Tajikistan from Pakistan with its fingertip the only border Afghanistan has with China.

Thus you’re looking at four countries.  The river forms the Tajik-Afghan border – Tajikistan is on the left, Afghanistan on the right, in the center distance are the Hindu Kush mountains of Pakistan, while in the far distance are the Karakorum mountains of China.  This is a fabulously exotic remote part of our world with people living here tracing their ancestry to the troops of Alexander.  Oh – and the surprise?  I’ll tell you tomorrow.  (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #77 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

On a mountain top on the island of Corfu in 1890, Empress Elizabeth of Austria built a magnificent marble palace called the Achilleion, dedicated to her hero, the legendary Achilles of Homer’s Iliad.  Here she retreated from the world, amidst the palace’s gorgeous gardens overlooking the Mediterranean abundant with larger-than-life statues of her ideal man, “who despised all mortals and did not fear even the gods."

All of Europe knew her as Sisi.   Adored by her husband Emperor Franz Joseph I, renowned as the most beautiful – and most beloved -- woman of her time, she was Austria’s Empress for 44 years.  Her life ended tragically, murdered at random by an anarchist who wanted to “kill a royal.”

The Achilleion today is maintained immaculately in all its original glory as a museum you can visit.  Don’t pass the chance to see it for yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #76 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

April, 1979 – on the sea ice at 90 North latitude, the North Pole.  I was one of the more unusual Profiles for Dewar’s Scotch.  It was the 3^rd of my 21 expeditions to the very top of our planet.  One thing that stood out for me was the photographer brought false ice cubes of carved polished crystal for the photo you see of a glass of scotch perched on a small pressure ridge.  That’s the way the pros do it.  One genuine item he brought was a case of Dewar’s.  We had one heck of a party on top of the world! (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #75 photo of Jack Wheeler)

In a hidden remote mountain valley there is a Christian monastery built over a thousand years ago by the students of a hermit who became the patron saint of Bulgaria, St. John of Rila.  The colonnade you see leaves you awe-struck.  Earthquakes, fire, pillaging by Ottoman raiders, all through the centuries the Rila monks would build it back ever-better and care for it immaculately.

It is little wonder that the Rila Monastery is a World Heritage Site.  The picture you see is only one small section of the magnificent frescoes of the exterior archways – and the interior is equally extraordinary.  There are nine more World Heritage sites in this Virginia-size country, like the 3,000 year-old (and still flourishing) city of Nessebar on the Black Sea.  Bulgaria is one of Europe’s true undiscovered gems. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #74 photo ©Jack Wheeler)