The walls of the medina of Sousse In the morning we made our way by louage to Sousse. It’s a pretty frequent route. The louage station there is huge – a cavernous warehouse.…

In retrospect, we should have pushed on past Gafsa, but we don’t like traveling in the dark. The bus didn’t end up being a good choice over the louage – even if we had to wait for the louage.…

Accommodation wasn’t a problem during the off season. We stayed at the Hotel Erriadh, which is an old funduq. A funduq is a former lodging house for travelling merchants of the camel caravans that stopped there in Ottoman times.…

Tataouine is a compact, easy city to get around in. There isn’t much in the way of nice hotels – there are a few expensive tourist hotels out of town that cater to the coach potatoes, but in town the quality goes down.…

Although we had originally planned to stay again at Marina Hotel (despite it being a dive, it was still a great location, and better the devil you know…) but the dive was full.…

International Rotana Inn, Abu DhabiInternational Rotana Inn, Abu DhabiInternational Rotana Inn, Abu DhabiIt was surprising to us that we had such a hard time, given that we were staying at a major hotel right downtown – the International Rotana Inn.…

Le Meridien Baniyas Square ViewWe had arranged through Expedia.com our first night at Le Meridien Baniyas Square. Le Meridien is a fairly high end chain. They have several expensive hotels in Dubai, but they also have one cheap location (“Baniyas Square”) in the Deira dist

Room at Allamanda Beach Club Room at Allamanda Beach Club We stayed at the Allamanda Beach Club, the only cheap option on East Shoal Bay.  Of course, cheap wasn’t really cheap – it was still $160 a night, and it wasn’t even technically on the water  It was about a 2

Walking through the streets of the old city of Akko.In Haifa we stayed at the Port Inn – fantastic location, and a super clean hotel.  Yesterday we explored Akko in the morning – it’s an old city just to the north of Haifa.  It is on a peninsula in the Medi

Crowne Plaza Resort in Wadi Musa just outside the gate to Petra.We stayed at the Crowne Plaza Resort in Wadi Musa just outside the gate to Petra. The location was fantastic and we paid only $50 a night.  The hotel itself  is more like a run down Holiday Inn than what a Crown