A Place to Go

The NY Times just released its 53 Places to go in 2008, and coming in at #3...

3 TUNISIA

Tunisia is undergoing a Morocco-like luxury makeover. A new wave of stylish boutique hotels, often in historic town houses, has cropped up alongside this North African country's white-sand beaches and age-old medinas, drawing increasing numbers of well-heeled travelers. The Villa Didon (www.villadidon.com) in Carthage, for one, has a restaurant originally run by Alain Ducasse. Indeed, TripAdvisor ranks Jerba, a resort island off Tunisia's southern coast, as the No. 1 emerging spot in 2008.

I'll be honest, often the NY Times travel section is wayyy to bourgeois and trend-conscious for me. Here, you see what they decide to reference, for example. Villa Didon is the see and be seen of Tunis, even more than the Plaza. I always kidn of shiver a bit when I hear references to Jerba in travel articles. Tourism there is supposedly just killing that place, everything from the water quality to the native coral to the traditional way of life and property prices for locals. I have yet to go because it's quite a haul from Tunis and normally I don't have more than 2-3 day off at a time. I'll make sure to get to there and Tozeur this spring, however.

Poor timing on the Times' part for putting in Algeria at #43, considering today's attacks in Algiers. What a sad event.

#49 Goes to Essaouira. Very cool old town far down on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. I went to the summer music festival there back in 2005 and had quite a good time, besides all of the Euro-hippies and pickpockets.

Not bad, there are four references to North Africa - Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and Essaouira, Morocco. All of the Maghreb gets a shout-out.

edit: in browsing the Villa Didon's English version of their website, I couldn't help noticing that they have something called the "Gold Dido." I choked on my cafe direct.