Kapadokya: Land Of Fairies
Or, as it’s Anglicized and better known, Cappadocia. Ground Zero for Instagrammable hot air balloons. If you know us you’ll be unsurprised that we didn’t go aloft. What may surprise you, and certainly surprised us,…
Strapping On The Bible Belt
Turkey has some serious Christian history. Constantine, who converted the Roman Empire to Christianity in 312, established Constantinople as the Roman capital in 330. That attracted a lot of Christians to Turkey, but there was…
Ethnosports
It’s weird to have a multicultural experience and not know which culture you’re experiencing. But that was Istanbul’s Ethnosports competition. I’ve since homeworked my way to a general idea of the origins of each of the…
… Not Constantinople
We keep going on about how the places we’ve been visiting are so old. “Ooh, Guanajuato dates to the 1500s!” “Holy shit, Marrakech was founded in 1070.” “Wait a minute, the Phoenicians lost Carthage in…
We’re Not The Only Ruins Here
Hard as it is to believe, there are ruins here we haven’t seen yet. Perhaps more surprisingly, we’re still interested in visiting them. In this case, there are a pair of locations, Dougga and Bulla…
Tunisian Arts & Crafts
Tunisia’s richest crafts traditions, in my opinion, are ceramics and carpet weaving, which I’ve covered in the posts on Nabeul and Kairouan, respectively. But that’s not all that’s going on here, so let’s take a…
Amazigh Grace: Getting A Berber Tattoo
When does enough become too much? Prior to Tunisia we’d been to Mexico, Cuba, and Morocco, and I’d gotten tattoos in two of those three locations. Worse, a lapse in judgement had the Mexican tattoo…
Tunisia Road Trip, Partie Trois: To The Desert & Beyond! Days Four, Five, & Six
Day Four started with an early morning camel ride before we left Ksar Ghilane for a different chunk of the Sahara. Camels: better than coffee to get the blood moving. This is the camel lot.…
Tunisia Road Trip, Partie Trois: To The Desert & Beyond! Days Two & Three…
We’ll be staying in the general area around Tataouine for Day Two, so not as harsh as getting down to this part of Tunisia from Sousse yesterday. Chenini Chenini is technically another hilltop Ksar, like…
Tunisia Road Trip, Partie Trois: To The Desert & Beyond! Day One…
Our new best friend, Mohamed from Nabeul, picked us up at 7:00 AM to start our trip to the Sahara. As a retired professional tour guide, Mohamed was an incredibly knowledgeable resource to have at…