The Grand Tunisian Tour: May 15-27, 2009

Narration by Kit:

Miguel and I went to Tunisia from May 15-27. I was sent there for work, and since I knew I'd be working in one place all week, it seemed a great opportunity for Miguel to tag along. It was his first visit to a Middle Eastern country, and Tunisia seemed like a pretty easy and fun place to start (i.e.: tourist infrastructure, modernized, etc.).

I hope all of you know where Tunisia is located, but just in case, this should help with your orientation:


Since Facebook only lets you post pictures, and there's limited space for narration, we thought this would be a more colorful way of sharing our trip with you and remembering all the fun we had (some moments more fun than others, as you will see...).

In a nutshell, we saw all the big sites in Tunis the first weekend, May 16-17, then I worked in Tunis during the week of May 18-22 while Miguel did a bit of sightseeing in the local area. We ended the trip with a four day jaunt to the central Tunisian city of Kairouan -- the fourth holiest city in Islam -- and then on to southwestern Tunisia (or at least as far south as you can go before hitting the Sahara) to visit the palm oases of Nefta and Tozeur.

This was the schedule:

May 15-22: Tunis
May 23-24: Kairouan
May 24-26: Nefta and Tozeur
May 26-27: Tunis

And for a visual, here was our route:


Here's the rest of the story...

Friday, May 15: Arrival in Tunisia

Narration by Kit:

We arrived on different flights (Miguel via Paris and me via Rome), and a driver picked me up and took me straight to work to meet the team I would be working with the next week. I stayed at the office for the rest of the day.

Miguel and I knew we were staying at the Ramada Gammarth and planned to meet there in the evening. Since Miguel arrived a bit earlier than me, at around 12 pm, he had time to fill after his arrival. Instead of taking a taxi to the hotel, he immediately launched himself into the masses of Tunis....

Narration by Miguel: No Arabic, No French, no problem.

For me, the best and quickest introduction to a new country is to use the public transportation system so from the airport I caught a local bus (much like the one above but with about two hundred people on board) to the TGM train station (a commuter train line) and took it to the beautiful seaside town of Sidi Bou Said, which is made up of white washed houses overlooking the Mediterranean.

I had three hours before I had to meet Kit at the hotel so I walked around Sidi Bou (luckily I only had a small backpack to carry since Kit was traveling with our luggage) and enjoyed its quaint streets...


...and wonderful views. A short cab ride later I was with Kit.

After bus, train and cab rides, I realized that as long as I kept my mouth shut, and verbal communication to a bare minimum, most people would think I was a local. Not five minutes after exiting the airport terminal, two elderly Tunisian men asked in Arabic if I could help them fill out their travel forms. They were surprised when I replied (for the first of many many times in Tunisia) with one of the few phrases Kit taught me before departing for Tunis; "la atakelem arabi," (I don't speak Arabic).


Despite both being seriously jetlagged, we went to Sidi Bou Said for dinner. Being the simple diners we are, we opted for a crowded little sandwich joint frequented by locals on the outskirts of the hillside village. We had the most amazing and simple dinner -- chicken and cheese sandwiches on hearty French baguettes with a side of fresh fruit juice, courtesy of the "juice man," above, named Shukri.

We were pretty exhausted that night so after dinner we took a cab back to the hotel and collapsed into bed.

Saturday, May 16: Funky Old Medina

Narration by Kit:

On Saturday, we decided to go see the old city (medina) of Tunis and explore the souq (market). If you know me at all, you know I love shopping, I love markets, I love Middle Eastern goods and crafts, and I love haggling. OK, Miguel doesn't like even one of these things -- in fact, I might even insert the word "hate" here -- so I just prayed that it would all work out.

After getting ripped off by our first taxi driver (always a risk on day one when you're figuring out currency rates), we finally arrived at the gates to the old city.

I kind of love that this is one of our first pictures of the trip:

This doll just freaked me out. I mean, look at all of that hair! It's also insanely expensive, especially by Tunisian standards (around $35USD). I took more photos of other bizarre looking dolls, but Miguel erased them because he thought my interest in them was lame.

Moving on... here is the Bab al Dahr, the entrance to the old city:


The souq in Tunis is huge, and we ended up spending pretty much the whole day in there wandering around the maze-like covered alleyways. It's hard to get good photos because of the tiny size of the streets and the packed crowds, especially on a weekend, but we did our best.

Here's a picture of wedding goods in the wedding area of the souq:

And here's a pretty good view of a typical souq pathway (one of hundreds):


After a several hours of unphotographed shopping, Miguel had reached his limit -- so we headed toward the center of the souq and Tunis's grand mosque. Unfortunately, you can only visit one side of the courtyard as non-Muslims so here we are perched along the courtyard and posed for some shots:

Here's the minaret, which is in a very North African style (square vs. cylindrical):

And here is the prayer hall:

Tunisia is famous for beautiful doorways. This is one of many doorway shots:

We wandered outside the market area and took some street photos

Miguel poses outside:

We spent a while trying to find three madrasas, where religious scholars would study next to the mosque. It took us forever to figure out where they were in the warren of streets so we took pictures along the way:

We ended up outside the old city area and entered a bureaucratic area of Tunis filled with ministries and government workers:

Miguel took this artsy shot of an older man wearing a chechia, a sort of fez sometimes worn by older Tunisian men:

Another particularly amazing door:

And the ubiquitous photos of President Ben Ali:

We found a delicious place to dine, a Tunisian sandwich shop going back into the souq area:

This little bugger, who we dubbed "Shwarma Cat" came up and meowed at us throughout our meal. I didn't help things by feeding her...

Once we got back in the souq, we found ourselves in the chechia making area. They let us take a few pictures of the manufacturing process:

Here's Miguel on the outskirts of the souq:

And in front of the shisha souq:

I found a great shop specializing in Berber jewelry, and I asked the shop worker, Ibrahim, to make me a Berber chain at a special length. I really underestimated the amount of time it would take to make a special order. While we were waiting, Miguel enjoyed taking snap shots of the shop, and Ibrahim and me.

Here's the store interior:

Here we are at the beginning of the process:

Here we are midway through:

And here I am getting exasperated with all the photos being taken toward the end (I edited out about three more photos of the event):

And back to shopping...

We finally found the old madrasas!!!

The interiors were pretty amazing:

Here are a few shots back outside:

Here's a local food stand:

We soon came upon a carpet shop with a rooftop that looked over the entire medina area. Of course, they tried to charge a fee (which I paid, even though the guy tried to bilk more out of me and left in a huff when I refused to give more). Here are some of the views, which were particularly good of the mosques in the old city:

And the tile work was really gorgeous:

There was a particularly good vista looking down into the grand mosque that we visited earlier:

We got creative in the archway looking out toward the old city:

Even the floors were tiled!...

Tunisia is also famous for its birdcages... we found an enormous one on the roof:

Of course, they want you to direct your gaze toward the old city, but I didn't want to ignore the views on the other side of the rooftop. Not quite as scenic:

Here is a neighboring rooftop where other people were posing and taking pictures:

Then, back we went to the market, where we found ourselves immersed in carpets:

More street views:

And Ben Ali...again:

We ended the day drinking coffee and eating ice cream on the Avenue Berghuiba in central Tunis at the Theatre Cafe, next to a beaux arts theater built in the early 20th century... very charming and great people watching. The one thing we didn't photograph (and should have) was the gathering of young men on the streets, all of whom were sporting very interesting and highly gelled mullet style hair-dos. Miguel's favorite sighting was that of the "Babylonian mullet," which featured a long, sculpted back with 90 degree hairwaves. Here's a picture of Miguel people watching:

And that was the day! We headed by the TGM train to the Marsa corniche, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, for a dinner at a Lebanese pizza place called Fairuz, which was delicious. We didn't take pictures though for some reason. We were pretty pooped and chilled out the rest of that evening.