We tried to sleep in this morning but couldn't. After two weeks of 6:30am wake-up calls and 8:00am departures, out bodies we trained to get up and go.
After breakfast we met with the tour representative. We provided some feedback on the trip and she gave us some suggestions about how to spend our free day at the hotel, around Yasmine Hammamet, and in the town of Hammamet.
Seven of us decided to catch cabs into Hammamet to tour the medina and the harbor. It's a good thing we'd been "in country" for two weeks because the hawkers in the medina were the most aggressive we'd encountered on the trip. We ran into an English family in one of the alleys and their two girls were clearly terrified of the hawkers. We stopped to talk for a few minutes until they'd calmed down and then ran a bit of interference as they exited the alley.
I was hoping to find a silver shop that the tour representative had mentioned. We asked a local vendor to point out the shop but she took us to a relatives' shop instead. He locked us into the tiny shop, explaining that he had fake watches and could get shut down by the police if they caught him. He tried to sell us a few things but we ended up leaving without buying anything. We literally had to unlock the door ourselves to escape.
We did find the silver shop near the end of our time at the medina. It was an oasis of calm. The owner and his son/shop assistant were there watching Tunisian soap operas. They welcomed us but left us alone to shop. If we asked for a price he provided it then went back to his desk. I wanted to buy everything I saw but couldn't afford it. I ended up borrowing some dinar from Tamara so I could buy something for my sister, but left empty-handed myself.
We had lunch at a restaurant outside the medina before catching the tourist train back to Yasmine Hammamet. The train was hilarious. We were seated in the last car and it kept swinging wildly to the left and right as the driver sped through the small streets. We'd also bounce off our seats at every speed bump. There were no seat belts or safety gear which added an element of excited fear to the trip.
We kept a low profile for the rest of the afternoon. Dinner was a low-key affair because we knew we had an early departure the next day.
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