Most people, me included, don’t seem to understand the extent of Phoenician, Greek, and Roman influence along the North African coast, but especially Tunisia. A Euro-centric bias makes us forget that the Mediterranean basin, symbolically “center of the Earth”, has a southern area that was, and remains, nearly as important and advanced as its northern…
Just over the Portuguese border from Spain is a little village with a big castle called Castro Marim. Tourist season was over, so we missed the shows that they apparently put on, which include dramatizations of medieval life and fighting knights. Unlike other castles we have visited, this one does well to show what life might…
There was some sort of celebration today that involved military displays with cannon fire. These girls danced wonderfully, for whatever the purpose, and shook their shoulders like nobody’s business!
After spending a few days along the northeastern Spanish coastal region known as Costa Brava, we took the train to Barcelona for a couple days as a stopover on our way to Seville. The capital of the Catalonia region, much like elsewhere in the area, there were flags everywhere in support of seeking independence from…
Not to be confused with the city of Agadir that was destroyed by an earthquake and later rebuilt into a tourist destination, but rather, the traditional buildings that gave the city its name. Throughout southern Morocco are the remnants of what was once a thriving Amazigh (Berber) culture that extended over most of North Africa. Before the arrival…
On our way back from Spain, we stopped off to see some of northern Morocco. In part, this was to enable me to finally finish my self-appointed task of seeing every UNESCO heritage site in Morocco. We stopped in Tangier for a few days (that’ll be a post later), then headed to Chefchaouen, a small…
“If only I could be in Africa and Europe at the same time… Oh, wait! I can! I can go to Melilla!” I’m a fan of the odd, the unusual, the out of the ordinary, but when you combine that with some history, I’m hooked to the point of obsession. North Africa, or alternatively the southern…
There are trigger words on brown road signs that always spark my interest. Foremost among them is “fortification.” Anything big and old, I find fascinating. Yesterday, while driving from Sighișoara back to Brașov (this time via the highway) we past brown sign after brown sign that said “fortificata,” but we were on a timeline, so without a…
One of the definite advantages of living and working in southern Morocco is that any trip north toward greater civilization, be it for leisure or work, generates an opportunity to be creative with the route by which one arrives there. On this particular occasion, being needed in Rabat, I took the opportunity to swing around to the right…
Admittedly, I knew very little about Gallipoli (Gelibolu in Turkish). The United States played a negligible role in that particular theater during World War I, so our history doesn’t pay it much mind. Most of what I know about its significance comes from the popular Australian ballad, And the band played Waltzing Matilda. The song is…
