Thursday, February 3, 2011

Tunisia - A Short Guide For Tourists

By Mark Walters


It is no secret that places that become popular with tourists are popular because of trends. When famous celebrities are photographed soaking up the sun or sitting on a yacht in a particular area, that area immediately gains a massive leap in popularity and tourists flock to the latest fashionable holiday spot. The question is, why? Why do the celebrities go to that particular area? What is it about the area that draws people in to begin with?

Some countries are continually popular with tourists year on year. Places such as the French Riviera, Greece and Spain and its islands in the Mediterranean Sea are continuously popular jaunts for tourists due to their widespread appeal. There are other countries, though, that are also popular for other reasons, not least of which because they offer something that nowhere else is able to offer. Tunisia is one of these places; able to provide tourists with an experience that is different from anywhere else.

Tunisia is a country of just over ten million inhabitants on the northern coast of Africa. It is actually the northernmost country in Africa and is flanked by Algeria to the west and Libya to the south-east. The Tunisian Republic, to give it its official name, boasts a massive eight hundred and ten miles of coastline and a large proportion of the south of the country is taken up by the Sahara Desert.

As expected with such a huge coastline, Tunisia is famous for its beaches, of which the most popular are Hammamet and Port el-Kantaoui. Port el-Kantaoui was modeled on Port Grimaud, situated on the French Riviera. Also at the beach, tourists like to indulge themselves in scuba diving which is extremely popular for good reason in Tunisia. With spectacularly clear waters and some fantastic coral beds the two places to go are Port el-Kantaoui and Monastir.

Tunisia has also become famous as the location in which a number of extremely high grossing movies have been filmed. The English Patient and Raiders of the Lost Ark were both filmed there, along with two Star Wars films; A New Hope and The Phantom Menace. One specific location for the movie Star Wars:A New Hope, specifically the lead characters childhood home, has now been turned into a hotel where visitors can come to stay in subterranean rooms and eat dinner surrounded by sci-fi props. Whereas the hotel previously mentioned (the Sidi Driss hotel in Matmata) is not that difficult to locate on a map, finding the different locations in which other blockbusters were filmed may prove a little more difficult without a prior internet search or a guide.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment