sidi bou said

rather than stay in tunis, the capitol of tunisia, we opted for a beautiful seaside suburb called sidi bou said. it's on a hillside with tunis on one side and the sparkling mediterranean on the other. every building in the city is white, with a blue tile roof and blue door. it's breathtaking.

this is the view of tunis from our hotel window.

a mosque in tunis dedicated to its president.

the mediterranean from our hotel room.

we ate dinner at a restaurant that the lonely planet describes as "ridiculously romantic."

it's true-- the view was stunning and the food was delish!

the place was so pretty and the people so warm that we soon made friends with a couple of italians: this is alessandro.

the view from our table. we felt like we were in a high budget european spy movie.

we stayed a long time....

here's francesco on the right. dianna's rusty old italian came in handy, again.

these two made our night! they drove us all over, showed us tunis, the medina, the ferris wheel,

wandering around sidi bou said.

me, francesco, and dianna seeing the sights and eating donuts.

we stopped to photograph a lot of doors.

i was feeling a lot of love that night. from everyone.

the streets of sidi bou said. the blue doors and windows are so cool.

a muslim graveyard at night, with palm trees and the mediterranean in the background.

a famous door of tunisia. these guys were so awesome.

our italian friends took us to see the ruins of carthage and other tunis sights at night. they said it was "una cosa particolare" to see at night -- something special.

the views from our hotel room again.

dianna wants to be in every picture, apparently. see if you can spot our citroen.

another pretty blue door. we were wandering around sidi bou siad looking for a hamam, or bathhouse. going to the baths is an event here.

dianna's sarong, acting as a red herring when people shout: 'hello, where are you from?'

ridiculously romantic.

is that mysterious woman in the cowboy hat brazilian, english, south african, canadian or america? no one knows!!!

a store that we visited.

the owner called me "miss south africa," for obvious reasons.

on the roof of the store. the owner begged me for my cowboy hat, but i couldn't part with it: the sun was much too strong in tunisia. also it's weird that he wanted it. i guess miss south africa has to deal with these sorts of fans all the time.

we're eating at the "ridiculously romantic" restaurant again.

it was SO hard to leave tunisia. we could have flown out a day later and spent another day in tunis, but dianna gave me some sob story about how she had work.

next stop: buenos aires!