Sunday, April 6, 2008 – TUNIS

We arrived yesterday after a nearly 24-hour transit from Victoria to Tunis. All of us were travel-weary but a few hardy souls – Mom and I included – went out for a walk prior to dinner. Mom and I made it as far as Le Jardin Zoologique, but decided not to enter the gardens as it was getting dark and we were too tired to appreciate it anyway. One intrepid duo from our tour group did go into the garden and said they got some terrific photos in the wildlife exhibit, but lamented that the animals were housed in such small and very public cages. Everyone in the tour had an early dinner before retreating to our respective rooms for a much-deserved rest.

We were woken at 3am by a fistfight under our window, followed shortly afterward by blaring Arab electro dance music. We all compared notes this morning and the consensus is that the fellows in the fist fight were in the hotel bar earlier, got into a fight that spilled into the street, chased off the losers of the fight, and then went back into the bar to celebrate.

Our tour group met at 8:30 this morning and traveled to Tophed, an ancient necropolis or burial site. The story perpetuated by the Byzantines is that Tophed was a place where the people of Tunis sacrificed first-born boys. However, the more accepted theory is that Tophed was a burial site for children who died very young.

In the past the Tophed necropolis covered a large tract of land, but today it’s a small memorial that barely stretches one city block. Some stelae, or stone tombstones, are arranged in rows for tourists to admire and photograph. The iconography of the stelae is interesting, though. It shows the hierarchy of the gods and people according to the ancient Carthaginians. At the top is the male god Baal. Below is the female god Tnit. People are way down at the bottom and can communicate to Baal only by petitioning Tnit to climb up through the heavens on their behalf.

A stelae:



Our next stop was the Antonine Baths, an ancient but very well preserved Roman bath site. It also happens to be right next to the compound that houses the president of Tunisia, and tourists are told not to take pictures of the compound. One of the ladies in our tour group didn’t hear – or ignored – that warning and took a picture in the general direction of the compound, which caused a guard carrying a machine gun to move close to the group and give us the hairy eyeball. Our tour guide, Mohamed, was very upset.

After a brief telling-off, Mohamed explained how the Roman bath worked. He described the different bath chambers and the system used to heat and cool the water in the baths. After that we were allowed to tour the site on our own – well, not exactly alone, because there was a large group of Romanians touring the baths at the same time and let’s just say that Romanian and North American picture-capturing etiquette is quite different.

Part of the Roman bath:



From the baths we traveled to the WWII American war cemetery, supposedly the only WWI war cemetery in Africa, which I find hard to believe. From there we visited another Roman site, but this time it was the remains of an aquaduct and a huge field of cisterns which was the principal source of water for the citizens of ancient Tunis.

Our last stop before lunch was Sidi bou Said, a picturesque village in the hills above Carthage. Some members of our tour group are quite old and therefore a bit unsteady on their pegs, so Mohamed arranged for us to ride up to the village in a mini train with several mini train cars attached. It was quite hot by then so I think everyone was relieved that we didn’t have to trek up the hill to the village.

View from Sidi bou Said:



A vendor in sidi bou Said:



Mohamed pointed out a traditional house – converted to a museum during the day – that we could tour. Mom went on the tour but I opted out and walked through the village with a couple of other women instead. We took a lot of pictures of the local houses and laneways, fended off the offers of vendors, and soaked up the heat.

We lunched at a restaurant called the Victoire, located alongside a busy roadway in the town of La Goulette. We had a set meal, which started with a Tunisian specialty which is best described as a half-moon of deep-fried phyllo pastry with a semi-cooked egg in the center. The main was spiced rice and turkey in a spicy sauce. The dessert was crème caramel.

After lunch we drove to the Bardo Museum, which houses a collection of Greco-Roman marble statues and colorful mosaics that greatly surpass anything I’ve seen in Greece or Italy. Mohamed told us more than any of us wanted to know about the statuary and mosaics in a compact 1-hour tour. After that we wandered about on our own, completely stunned.

Mom and I found ourselves downstairs and were invited by a museum employee into a small chamber that was jam-packed with statuary. He knew we only spoke a few words of French but nevertheless he tried to explain the importance of each statue. By then it was close to closing so unfortunately we had to leave after the briefest of tours.

From the Bardo Museum we drove to a spot just outside the medina, or old city, of Tunis. Mohamed advised us to leave anything of value on the bus but I opted to take a purse and my small digital camera. As we approached the medina a man stopped us and struck up a conversation. During that conversation he asked where we were staying so I told him the name of the hotel. Shortly afterwards he said he had to leave and said goodbye.

Inside the medina, which is basically a series of old winding alleys lined with tacky shops, there were a few shops open but the majority were closed. We turned around at the first major intersection, but were encouraged to continue by a man who said he recognized us from the hotel where he worked. He offered to take us to the “real” medina. We followed him for three or four small blocks but balked when he encouraged us to turn onto a very twisty alley. We told him we could not continue and turned back.

On the walk back through the alleys he said in French that I should give him 20 dinars at the hotel. I kept asking him why. It finally dawned on me – yes, I’m a trusting sort – that he and the other man we met as we entered the medina were in cahoots. Their scam was to get tourists hopelessly lost in the medina and then charge them an exorbitant amount to find their way out of the medina and back to their hotel.

We knew our way out of the medina – we’d been mentally tracking our progress – and after much begging I gave the man 2 dinars “pour votre temps” which I hope means “for your time” in French. He tried to cadge more money out of the group but couldn’t, and stomped off in a huff.

We left the medina with a deep desire to find a café where we could sit and have a coffee before the bus ride back to the hotel. The first café we passed had the typical café “barker” out front encouraging people to come in for a drink. When we did not respond to his entreaties he yelled “butches! you are all butches!” Now that I think about it, he probably meant “bitches”. We did find a nice patisserie further down the road and had no problem ordering and paying for our drinks. So, please don’t think from the previous two examples that all Tunisians are nasty to tourists.

It’s now 9:00pm and Mom and I are ready for bed. Tomorrow starts early, at 8:00am, when we depart Tunis and start our southern tour of Tunisia.