On Thusday of my week in Tunisia (got there on Sunday the 20th of April, so that makes Thursday the 24th), Philippe, Laurence, myself, and Laurence's new friend - who was also on vacation at our hotel and drove me crazy - went to check out the sights at Tunis. Normally, if you pay to go with the group of people from the hotel in a bus and all that it costs you around 40 Euros per person. We payed 100 Dinars for four people, which included the private taxi with a friendly guide for the whole day. The Dinar/Euro exchange rate is 1.8/1 at the moment. So it was nice to be able to spend some cheaper currency, even if the Dollar/Euro exchange rate of 1.6/1 isn't a whole ton lower at the moment. So anyways we left at 9 in the morning and first went to Carthage, the ancient Roman/Carthaginian ruins and later sites of early French colonialism, as shown with the statues of King Louis, who also led crusades from Aigues Mortes, a ramparted town half an hour from me.
Carthage was kind of interesting to see, although similar to most of the Roman ruins closer to where I live. You get spoiled by seeing the Pont du Gard and the Maison Carrée and all that stuff that a bunch of old stones can only be looked at for so long, unfortunately. However, what Carthage did have that my normal surroundings doesn't is... mosaics! Tons of them, some of them still in amazingly beautiful form. Plus some other glass and clay pottery and what not that was pretty cool to see. Thinking about some guy two thousand years ago turning a pottery wheel and making something that's still in relatively good shape is amazing, especially with how easily cheap bowls or mugs that we buy these days can break. So Carthage was kind of cool but at noon we were hungry, and headed to a restaurant in Sidi Bou Said - the new town which is mixed in with the ruins at Carthage - for lunch. Which we payed entirely too much for. Lunch was more than our whole day with the taxi, and it definitely wasn't worth it. I've had better lamb kebab in Columbia, and better couscous in France. At least the view was pretty sweet; the nice section of Sidi consists of all white-plaster houses with blue grills and terraces. Very pretty, natural Mediterranean colors (even if it's the only real "Mediterranean" place I've been).
After lunch in Sidi we checked out the medina, which was a lot less aggressive than the medina in Hammamet. I'll talk more about that later, when I post about my market experiences. After that we headed to Tunis, which is right next to it. I should mention that Sidi is the location of the president's palace and where he receives any foreign diplomats that come to visit. Tunisia is a special type of democracy, which became independent somewhere around 1957 with it's first president of Habib Bourguiba, who was the president for 30 or more years. Now the president is Ben Ali, and you see his photo often if you walk around the towns of Tunisia. The Champs d'Elysée of Tunisia is L'Avenue Habib Bourguiba, which we hung out on that afternoon. We saw the medina in Tunis, then Philippe and I drank mint tea in a café while waiting for the women, of course... 6 o'clock and back to Hammamet for dinner and all that good stuff.
That's what I got tonight. I hope I still have somewhat of a reading audience. Tomorrow night I will try to make my final post on Tunisia, so I hope everyone "tunes in" at some point. À la prochaine...
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