![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.runkevinrun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/IMG_5247.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI had misread the itinerary for today and would\u2019ve worn a different shirt had I realized today was the day we\u2019d be hitting the Lars Family Homestead exterior in Chott El Jerid.\u00a0 Through movie magic, this location, several hundred kilometers from the Hotel Sidi Driss, seamlessly blended in.\u00a0 But it\u2019s in the middle of nowhere at the edge of the great Tunisian Salt Lake.<\/p>\n
I continue to have WiFi issues so I\u2019m going to try and keep the photos to iconic minimums.\u00a0 Besides, I\u2019m having a personal self-consciously-awkward image day and hate just about every photo with me in it.\u00a0 I just seem so\u2026 bulbous.\u00a0 But this is literally a once-in-a-lifetime set of shots so I guess we take what we can get.\u00a0 On top of that, I\u2019m going to try not to wander into the personal reflections too much today \u2013 I\u2019m behind on getting stuff uploaded anyway so I’m opting to favor images over prose as that’s probably better time spent.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
Because of the angle, my classic Skywalker pose gazing off at the horizon made it look like I was hopping on one leg.\u00a0 So instead, here\u2019s a different pose, very much in keeping with my reshoots out at ol\u2019 Ben Kenobi\u2019s abode on Djerba.<\/p>\n
And here are the culled but still WAY too many shots of the Lars homestead.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n As we drove north into the salt lake, which by the way extends all across Tunisia for some 300 kilometers, we came to the Mos Espa Village set.\u00a0 I misunderstood Mondher yesterday in that THIS is the section of the salt lake that not only saw the space port set for that SECOND most wretched hive of scum and villainy, it was also where they shot Queen Amidala\u2019s starship and the Jinn\/Maul desert saber duel.\u00a0 The pictures reveal the truth.\u00a0 And this location was literally a dune’s walk away from Mos Espa.<\/p>\n The Phantom Menace was shot in 1997 and in the intervening 21 years, several of the facades of Mos Espa have fallen into disrepair.\u00a0 But unlike the Lars Homestead or the Cantina from A New Hope, there were greater government efforts this time around to preserve a few things in the hopes of maximizing tourism dollars.\u00a0 There\u2019s still a long ways to go but when you peek inside the buildings and see the set building meant to last only as long as filming, well, it\u2019s in pretty good shape.\u00a0 Maybe some of the nomadic traders looking to sell their pashminas with iron on images of the movies are doing a bit of upkeep now and again.<\/p>\n I\u2019m looking especially chunky in these shots but so be it.\u00a0 There is a shot of me and my shadow that I\u2019m hoping to CGI Darth Vader\u2019s image onto, a la the teaser poster for Episode I.\u00a0 We\u2019ll see if I can make that happen.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Ong Jemel or \u201cThe Neck of the Camel\u201d was our next stop.\u00a0 This was where Darth Maul released his Sith probes\u2026 and intriguingly Mondher knew it far better as where they shot The English Patient.\u00a0 In a flashback it\u2019s where Ralph Fiennes has tea with Kristen Scott Thomas.\u00a0 Mondher knew A LOT about the English Patient, way more than Star Wars.\u00a0 Just goes to show we all have movies we\u2019re passionate about.<\/p>\n I climbed the Neck (Mohammed warned me it was perhaps deceptively easy to get up; I should be very careful coming back down\u2026 and he was right.\u00a0 I slid most of the way on my butt).\u00a0 At the top, shooting some panoramas, I could feel my borderline vertigo kick in.\u00a0 On the plus side, I didn\u2019t fall.\u00a0 Apparently I only fall down one step in Tunisia.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n We took a brief stop at a small park dedicated to the famous Tunisia poet Abou Alkassem Chebbi.\u00a0 He used to come to this spot to write and meditate and be inspired.\u00a0 Those are his faces you’ll see below… not the one of the left obviously.\u00a0 That’s me.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n We also stopped at the local brick making field, a place I found hard to tell the demarcation between raw materials, finished items, and waste byproducts.\u00a0 Still, fascinating to see.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Before returning to the hotel to finish today\u2019s sites around mid-day, we went through part of the Tozeur Oasis.\u00a0 This is why this town has been here for centuries \u2013 fresh water and vegetation, now home to a massive agriculture and thriving urban scene.\u00a0 Today they estimate there are at least 400,000 palm trees in the oasis\u2026 and explains why though they grow bananas, almonds, oranges and other fruits, dates are the biggest product by far.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n And because no Tunisian blog post is complete without a photo of the ridiculous amounts of bread I\u2019m eating (That COULDN\u2019T be why I\u2019m so chunky, right?), here\u2019s a shot at lunch\u2026 a lunch wherein I had couscous with camel meat.\u00a0 It does NOT taste like chicken\u2026 it does taste like beef.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Tomorrow is the last day of the tour.\u00a0 And while there are no more Star Wars sites on the itinerary, there IS a bonus LucasFilm set visit.\u00a0 We will be visiting the marketplace of Kairouan, home to a spectacular “Cairo” basket chase in Raiders of the Lost Ark<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m having an off day and I think my tour guides can tell.\u00a0 I had some language barrier issues with this hotel and thus didn\u2019t realize breakfast was included.\u00a0 I just thought I\u2019d skip it until Mohammed and Mondher showed me where the large dining area was hidden in plain sight.\u00a0 It was behind a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a>\u00a0 <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a>\u00a0 <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> \u00a0<\/a><\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/strong> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> \u00a0<\/a><\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/a><\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n