The travels of Tim and Megan: Tunis, Tunisia

Friday

For a change, our flight from London was at a reasonable hour, so there was no need to get up and catch a cab at 4am this time around. We had a leisurely start to the day and left home around 2pm to head for Heathrow for our 5pm flight to Tunis. The flip-side, of course, was that our flight was packed full of screaming children, some of whom liked to kick the back of the seats in front of them for two hours solid… Fun times!

After an hour’s delay in leaving London, we arrived in Tunis about 8.30pm and headed for Les Ambassadeurs Hotel. We did not have to wait long for the first attempted scam, as our taxi driver at the airport tried to charge us 20 Tunisian Dinars for the short journey. We had read that a fair price was between seven and 10 dinars, so we didn’t get in the cab until he agreed on 10. Even then he was trying to get an extra two dinars when we got out at the hotel.

We checked in to the hotel and met Kristen and Neena, who had arrived earlier, for a drink in the lobby. Everyone was pretty tired, so we called it a night pretty early.

Saturday

On Saturday morning we met the girls and had a buffet breakfast in the hotel lobby. It was pretty good, if a little odd, as they served peas and carrots as one of the options! But they also offered freshly squeezed orange juice, which was really good!

After breakfast we caught a taxi into the Medina (old town) of Tunis to explore the souqs (markets). Taxis in Tunisia (when charged the correct amount – the trick is to insist that they use the meter!) are extremely cheap. A 10 minute ride through the city cost about 4 dinars, which is roughly £2. So it was by far the most efficient way to travel!

Tunisia is the northernmost country in Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west, Lybia to the south-east and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its size is around 165,000km sq and its population is 10.5 million. The south of the country is composed of the Sahara desert, with much of the remainder consisting of fertile soil and 1,300km of coastline. The official language is Arabic, but French is very widely spoken, particularly in the north.

The earliest known history says that Tunisia was inhabited by Berber tribes. Its coast was settled by Phoenicians as early as the 10th century B.C. The city of Carthage, on the outskirts of Tunis, was founded in the 9th century B.C. Carthage was eventually conquered by Rome in the 2nd century BC, a turning point which led to ancient Mediterranean civilization having been influenced mainly by European instead of African cultures. Around the end of the 7th century the region was conquered by Arab Muslims, who founded the city of Kairouan which became the first city of Islam in North Africa. Later the Ottoman Empire ruled the area, and from 1881 to 1956 the country was under French colonisation. In 1956 Tunisia gained independence.

Once we got our bearings, we made our way to the souqs and we had a fantastic time wandering through, looking for treasures! Overall, the quality of the items for sale in the souqs looked better than what we had seen in Egypt and everything was much cheaper than in Egypt. We had been warned about the Tunisian men being very sifty and they did not disappoint. However, they were fairly harmless in Tunis; it was much worse further south in the country!

After exploring the markets and haggling over a few items, we tried to visit the Great Mosque of Al-Zaytuna. Unfortunately tourists are not allowed to go inside the mosque, but were able to go up to a viewing platform and look over the internal courtyard and the minaret (tower). It was very beautiful, as were most of the buildings in Tunis.

After checking out the mosque, we went for another spin of the souqs and then we went a little off the beaten track and explored some more narrow alleys of the Medina, including checking out the restaurant where the girls had booked us in for dinner for that night. One of the fascinating things about Tunisia is its beautifully decorated doors. The door to our restaurant was bright yellow with lovely black domed patterns all over it (see photo below). These elaborate doors are a common occurrence right throughout the country, usually in blue or yellow.

We grabbed a cold drink and sat by a beautiful water fountain and garden in the middle of several government buildings in the Medina, plotting our next move, and then we grabbed a taxi across the city to visit the Bardo Museum.

The Bardo Museum is housed in a former palace of the provincial governors. It is arranged into sections covering the Carthaginian, Roman, early Christian and Islamic eras. The highlight is the Roman section, where entire walls and floors are paved with mosaics from the 2nd century BC to the 7th century AD, many of which almost intact.

It was a lovely day in Tunis – sunny all day and it got quite hot in the afternoon. On arrival at the Bardo Museum, we grabbed some snacks and then checked out the mosaics! Unfortunately, the Islamic area and some other parts of the museum were closed for renovations when we visited, but we still got to see some really interesting stuff.

After our museum visit, we got a taxi back across town to the Nouvelle Ville (new town). It is here that the French influence is most prevalent. The main street of the Nouvelle Ville, the Avenue Bourguiba, is wide and straight and reminded us a little of the Champs-Elysees in Paris. Staying with the French theme, we wandered along the Avenue Bourguiba until we found the Café de Paris, where stopped and had a late lunch outside in the sun. Tim was tricked by the cheap prices and confusing menu. It appeared that the main dishes pretty much just came on their own, with no sides, since the sides were listed separately and the menu didn’t explain what each dish came with. So Tim ordered the grilled chicken and the cous cous fermier as a side dish. As it turns out, the cous cous fermier is a massive mountain of cous cous, with half a chicken and a whole bunch of roast vegetables on top (definitely not a side dish) and the grilled chicken comes with chips and salad (no sides required). Still, he battled valiantly through one and a half mountains of food before retiring.

After lunch, we walked/rolled down the remainder of the Avenue Bourguiba, which took us back to the Medina. We had one last wander through the souqs and then headed back to the hotel to meet up with Lauren, who had arrived from London on an afternoon flight. We had some drinks and snacks in the hotel lobby and then got ready to go out for dinner.

The restaurant was beautifully decorated inside, with patterned designs all over the walls and ceiling. The food was fantastic, but the entertainment (provided by us) was even better. After a few drinks (mainly of delightful Tunisian wine), the cameras came out and we decided to have a contest to see who could do the most ferocious tiger impersonation. Megan went first and did a very fine tiger (she has had years of practice of performing the actions to "Eye of the Tiger"). Neena's tiger was pretty good, while Kristen's was more like a friendly kitten than a tiger and Tim's was a bit too much claw-orientated. So Megan was leading the contest when Lauren returned from the bathroom (having not witnessed the previous tiger impersonations). We told her what was required and after a few seconds of mental preparation, Lauren unleashed a ferocious tiger on the table that had the waiter terrified and the rest of us laughing so hard it hurt. (See separate blog entry following this one with pictures of our tigers - you be the judge).

After dinner we visited one of the few bars in Tunis that serves alcohol after dark, a lovely hotel roof-top bar called "Bar Jamaica". Our initial reaction was that there were not many women in the bar, but after Tim popped his head in the door, he confirmed that there were actually no women at all in there. There were about 40-odd men and a thick haze of cigarette smoke. We decided to sit outside to avoid the smoke and the sifty men. Then the waiter told us that there was no beer, despite everyone else in the bar appearing to be drinking beer. Tim pointed this out and asked for a beer and the waiter scampered away to "check" and returned with five beers - it appears that men order on behalf of the women-folk in Tunisia.

As it was getting cold, we braved it and moved inside, at which point approximately 38 of the 40 men swivelled around so that they were staring directly at us, as we sat in the middle of the bar and sipped our warm beer. There is not even any subtlety; the men just stare at Western women and don't try to hide it. We were asked where we were from by about several different men, including our favourites, who were two particularly sifty men at the bar. Lauren told them we were from New Zealand and they replied, very excitedly, that they were from Tunisia. Shock horror! None of us cared anyway. After a while, we were sick of being stared at like animals in a zoo, so we headed home, sadly just as a rotund man was laying down the gauntlet on the dance floor.

Sunday

Easter Sunday did not start well, as Neena had been sick in the night and Megan was sick all morning. The plan was to head out to the seaside village of Sidi Bou Said, on the outskirts of Tunis, before heading down the coast to Port El Kantaoui in the afternoon. Megan decided to stay behind at the hotel, but the rest of us continued on to Sidi Bou Said after breakfast.

We had a really nice taxi driver, who explained to us that all taxi drivers were legally obliged to use the meter in the taxis rather than simply quote an inflated price to unsuspecting tourists. All good in theory, but most of the taxi drivers obviously don't care for the law. On the way to Sidi Bou Said we drove through Carthage, which is Tunisia's best known archaological site, with many Roman ruins scattered throughout the large suburb of the capital. We also drove past the massive Presidential Palace in Carthage, which seemed to go on and on and on, and was very heavily guarded! The president, Ben Ali, took over in 1987 following a strange sort of coup, where the previous president was judged to be "medically unfit" to continue in office. Ben Ali has been president ever since and it appears that it is an effective dictatorship, in the guise of a procedural democracy. The president has lovely banners with huge photographs of himself hung on the sides of buildings and on the roadside throughout the country. Still, his palace looked pretty nice.

Sidi Bou Said is invariably described as Tunisia's prettiest village. It somehow shrugs off its two and a half centuries as a tourist trap and remains a place of charm. It is a favourite retreat for wealthy Tunisians as well as tourists, and yet it did not seem overly crowded. The village is perched on a hilltop overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and it is packed full of white houses with bright blue doors and windows (see photos below), which all served to give it a very Greek feel.

We wandered the pretty streets of Sidi Bou Said snapping away on our cameras and gradually made our way into the centre of the village. Kristen and Lauren ventured off to visit a tiles/mosaics museum, while Tim and Neena grabbed a seat at a cafe and felt sorry for themselves (Neena was still feeling the effects of her food poisoning and Tim had started to feel sick by this stage too). We had a hilarious conversation in French with the waitress - we asked for some drinks (boissons) and she kept telling us over and over that they did not serve fish (poissons) and that we could have pizza or salad instead. The last thing either of us wanted at that stage was fish!!! We eventually resorted to following her inside and pointing to a can of lemonade in the fridge.

We met up with the others a bit later and called our friendly taxi driver to come back and collect us. Tim made Sidi Bou Said slightly less pretty (the gutter at least) while we waited, but we all managed to survive the drive back to the hotel with no further sickness. As we got back in to Tunis, our taxi driver pulled up outside a patisserie and re-emerged moments later with a box full of Tunisian sweets for us - he really was a nice guy, shame that he was the exception rather than the rule!

Megan was feeling a little better by the time we arrived back at the hotel, but Tim felt rough by this stage. We had a car booked to take us from Tunis down the coast to Port El Kantaoui (about 130km away) at 2pm, and with sick bags in tow, off we went. Luckily we had a pit stop halfway there, which came at just the right time for Megan, and we arrived in Port El Kantaoui before 4pm.