Today’s itinerary: Tosche Station, Obi Wan Kenobi’s House, and The Mos Eisley Cantina. *** For Djerba these days, the biggest business is tourism. There’s still a hue agriculture industry though. There are olive trees everywhere and Tunisian Olive Oil is a highly regarded commodity. Though I’m seeing palm trees, the country’s dates are really grown […]
My fellow AirBNB’er is still waiting for his UN visa to work on the ground in Libya. In the meantime he’s working remotely from the Tunisian office and needed a place to stay short term while he worked out a longer term plan. Fascinating guy, a shutterbug par excellence, and yet another reminder that while the […]
“Welcome to Tunisia!” It’s a phrase with at least as many meanings as the word “Aloha” has in Hawaiian. It can be sincere, sarcastic, despondent, jubilant and much more… and all at once. I got up this morning with an ear infection… or maybe that’s just a tumor rumor. I have a nasty head cold […]
So last night was the start of Shabbat and I guess I didn’t realize how much of an impact that would have on me. My AirBNB hostess warned me as I headed out at 4:30 pm that everything was already closed. I thought Shabbat started at sundown and the sun was still out… albeit setting. […]
I don’t know. Post casual. The Pre-Race Wait Around: I checked out the marathon route map. I don’t care if the map isn’t drawn to scale, there really seems to be some missing kilometer markings between 28 and 31… like, I dunno, 29 and 30? Apparently A LOT of us decided to wear the race […]
Last night, while I was held captive on a tour bus seemingly re-routed by Gilligan and Skipper of the SS Minnow (the delay stretching to three hours you see), I received a few email responses from the Tourist Israel about my real-time complaints regarding the FIRST tour I took… and responded with complaints regarding this […]
Having slept five hours, I’m back at the Grand Beach Hotel in Tel Aviv to be picked up for my second day tour by Tourist Israel. After yesterday’s C-/D+ experience I don’t hold out much hope. But perhaps lowered expectations will yield a better time. Here’s today’s itinerary. From my paper voucher however there are […]
A Dead Sea mudbath. Our Guide said I’d look ten years younger when I was finished. It was a lie, as were many things the tour company told me today. *** In a 20 passenger minibus, our driver is equal parts stand up comic and New York cabbie. You’d think with a large vehicle he would […]
When George Lucas originally conceived of “The Star Wars” (with that soon-to-be-lost definite article) there were embryonic elements that we all would come to know and love … and there were some marked differences that would be rewritten into the archives as “what might have been.” The plot was much more a translation of Akira […]
A stray thought before I begin: Israel is a nation under constant existential threat, every day, every hour, every minute. And so it shouldn’t surprise me that there is heightened security wherever I go. There are security guards outside grocery stores or mall entrances, checking bags and waving a metal detector over each person who […]