Visiting Luke's Place

Okay time for some more Stars Wars locations from Tunisia. This one is maybe the most famous of all, and certainly the one I was most looking forward to seeing. It's Luke Skywalker's childhood home. Or maybe more correctly Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru's moisture farm.

That's right - it's a real place, used in the shooting of the original Star Wars film - A new Hope. It's now a hotel, and yes you can stay there (although we did not) called Hotel Sidi Driss in the town of Matmata in Tunisia.

This is what a traditional house, buried into the ground to stay out of the heat (it was something like 40 or 42 degrees celsius when we were there so I appreciate the theory). It's is ass you remember it structurally, a sunken courtyard and a series of cave like rooms around it.

There is actually two courtyards or 'holes' one which contains the rooms of the hotel and the other which is part mueseum, part dining room, part bar, and this is the one I think actually used for most of the filming.

It is pretty cool to be here, and I imagine it would have been quite a experience for the actors back in the 1970's but I most say it's not the easiest place to photograph, unfortunately there are star wars murals on a lot of the walls which obviously weren't here for filming, as it would have been weird for Luke to have a paintings of the driods and his Dad (spoiler alert) on the walls.

What is coller is the original (or at least original looking) props of what I will call - general futuristic looking stuff which doesn't actually do anything - all of course made out of wood.

Frankly given the fanatic nature of the Star Wars fan base I'm surprised some bearded nerd hasn't bought this place and turned it into a proper mueseum, keeping it a 'original' as possible and filling the room with Star Wars stuff. If people are will to come look at this location, surely they would be happy to spend some more time here, and pay some more money.

A place to drink some blue milk

This is a example of what I'm talking about, why a picture of yoda, or C-3PO and a sign that says Bar, if this was pristine and clean can you imagine how cool it would have been