Tunisia - a Popular Place to Holiday?

It's no secret that the most popular places for tourists are popular because of trends. When famous celebrities are photographed soaking up the sun or sitting on a yacht in a particular place, that area immediately gains a massive leap in popularity and tourists flock to this latest fashionable holiday hot 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?

There are a diverse range of trendy holiday destinations that are constantly popular with tourists, sometimes because they offer the best of one particular thing and sometimes because they are able to combine a number of different things well. Countries around the Mediterranean Sea have always been popular tourist destinations due to the weather, the landscape and the beautiful sea, and Tunisia is no exception.

Tunisia is the most northerly country in the continent of Africa and sits on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, close to Sicily. With a population of nearly ten and a half million people it is certainly not the most populated of African countries, though it can boast an extremely high relative percentage of coastline, with a total of approximately eight hundred and ten miles. Tunisia is bordered by Libya to the south-east and Algeria, to the west.

With such a massive coastline it is not surprising that Tunisia offers some of the best beaches in the Mediterranean. Although Port el-Kantaoui is the most popular beach in Tunisia, it is actually a tourist complex that was built in 1979 and based on the French town of Port Grimaud. Tunisia is also famous for its clear waters and coral beds making it a perfect venue for scuba diving. Along with Port el-Kantaoui, another great beach to go diving is Monastir situated on the central coast of Tunisia.

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 and the help of a local guide. Guest post By Mark Walters
Source: Tunisia Holidays

Editors note: When Mark first sent me this article thought twice about posting it due to the unrest and problems currently facing Tunisia as it works to form a stable democracy. But then I thought what's this blog all about? It's about learning and sharing information about places all over the world. Sure it's easy to look at some places that hit the news and discount them completely. We write them off our list and assume we will never ever go there and worse still we paint the entire country or region with the same brush. Just start a conversation about visting Panama or one of the other Latin American to invest in Real Estate and watch the reaction you get - you'll know exactly what I mean. The reaction will likely relate to safety - dictators - and Noriega in particular. Even though that rein is decades old and Latin America now offers some of the Best Places to retire in the World. Anyhow, Tunisia, just like every other country does have some redeeming qualities and a tourist industry. Something I thought well worth sharing.