Sun Garden Hammamet

The name of my hotel in Hammamet was Sun Garden. It was kind of funny seeing some of the signs in Hammamet because of obvious typos in English: "Wellcom to British Bar," "Paradis Palace," etc. I can't criticize the Tunisian people on their language errors, however, because many of them at least speak French fluently in addition to their native Arabic. Then there are the individuals who have worked in the tourism industry a long time and also speak English, Italian, German or Russian, or all of those. Impressive!

My hotel wasn't on the beach, but across the street, so I had to walk through another hotel to get to the beach. The beach was really nice - long and flat with good white sand. Not the kind of beach I'm used to, like the steeper beaches in North Carolina with waves or the rockier beaches of France. The only thing that can be irritating about the beach there are the vendors that walk around trying to sell you stuff. They ask you when you arrived, tell you that it's okay if you don't have money, they'll give you a necklace or a bracelet free. In which case the French respond "gratuit jusqu'à la caisse" (free until the cash register). I'll talk a little more about getting hustled in another post. My hotel and the other hotel, Caribbean World, both had beautiful exterior pools that I never went in. It was really nice outside but not hot enough to make me want to jump into that freezing water. Instead I swam a few times in the interior pool of my hotel and in the ocean, which was chilly but nice once you got in.

The French resort clubs are organized, as I pointed out in the last post, to keep everyone entertained. There are animateurs who organize activities for the kids, or play other games with the older people to make them happy. Axel, Marine, and Caroline (my host siblings) joined the club, so I was left to make friends of my own and find things to do. I played volleyball and soccer with some kids and adults during the week, and led my petanque team to victory on Saturday! While playing ping pong with Philippe (host father) one of the first days, we were challenged by a guy around my age and his younger sister. We beat them 2 games to 1, but it was good because I was able to hang out with the guy, Guillaume, for some of the week. The following night, Tuesday, I ate dinner with Philippe, Laurence (host mother), Guillaume and his mother. Afterwards we went to get some mint tea from the café in our hotel and Guillaume saw a couple girls he had eaten lunch with in the café, so we sat down with them and smoked hookah and talked. Although hookah isn't the healthiest thing for you, drinking mint tea and smoking hookah is something purely North African that I had to try... But the point of the story is that I had a couple French gazelles - as the Tunisians call girls - who I could hang out with when I wasn't going on adventures, which was cool. Tunisia was my first real clubbing experience as well. I had a lot of fun, thinking about how amazing it was that I was clubbing with French girls and the Italian guys they made friends with on the beach, speaking English with the Italians who didn't speak French and drinking Celtia (Arab) beer while dancing to a mix of American, European, and Arabic club music. Hilarious, and something I never thought I would do. Check out the pictures of my new friends!





I will post again later in another sitting, possibly this afternoon. I still need to explain the food and the markets and all, so I hope nobody's getting tired with the blog, but I need to take a little break at least. Chao!