My wife and I visited Tunisia for two weeks during Christmas ’03. Why Tunisia? We visited Morocco in 2001 and loved it – and we thought this would be similar. Also, it’s a relatively cheap destination – during peak period, the ticket from Paris only cost $300 (and $800 from San Francisco to Paris). We were looking forward to shopping in the medinas, visiting the Star Wars Hotel, visiting the desert and the old Berber villages, and of course, Roman ruins.

We travel independently – we are backpackers, stay at cheap hotels, and eat cheap food. We had a rough idea of the route we wanted to take before we left, but nothing was set in stone. For example, when we arrived, we only had our first night of hotel booked. This, of course, is the big advantage of backpacking, especially off-peak. We ended up visiting many more cities then we had thought we would. In fact, with the exception of Tunis, we visited a different city every day. We would sometimes wake up and not even know where we’d end up that evening – depending on the transportation, weather, and sights. Tunisia has lots to see overall, but it’s pretty spread out, and there isn’t any one place (except Tunis) that has more then a day’s worth (for us) of worthwhile sights. Luckily, getting between places is exceptionally easy, with a fantastic system of Louages (communal shared taxis), with fixed prices, organized by the government.