A 2 day impression of Tunisia
I flew for the weekend to Tunisia ( Tunicia ) to get away from the cold in Europe and hoping to ease away the depression.
Above: view from the fort in Hammamet
Tunisia is not a country that has lots to see in a concentrated area, so sunshine and warm weather was what I was counting on the most. Yet, I got there and it was freezing cold and raining. It rained and was cold almost the entire weekend with the exception of couple of hours Sunday morning. So I am quite disappointed.
Sousse Medina at night
It is a bit more orderly than Egypt and a bit cleaner than Morocco. However the tourist brochures over exaggerate what there is to see. Carthage ruins are in terrible shape. They are almost not worth seeing. Unfortunately the brochures mix images of those ruins with images from the coliseum in El Jem which is a completely different city 4 hours away, giving the impression that they are all in the same place. A train stop later was Sidi Bou Said which is famous for those Tunisian doors. However, it is really small. It is just a short half an hour walk. Too little. In fact, the blue Kasbah area of Rabat in Morocco was more interesting.
The people in Tunis are a bit weird too. On the arrival day, I had to deal with the most stupid receptionist I have ever dealt with. During the week the city of Tunis at night is empty and feels a bit scary, then on weekend it is so crowded that it is unpleasant, plus the bazar is closed on Sunday.
I was also in Sousse . The Medina is interesting and large, though the city had absolutely nothing else. Their food crepes are very good. Three hours is enough to see Sousse. Then I took a shared taxi ( louge or lauge or laouge ) to Hammamet , which has a very cute area along the shore with pine trees and a Medina. But unfortunately the Medina was very small and it only took 5 minutes to visit. The rest of the town was not very nice. There are no stores or anything along most of the road that goes by the Ocean. Bizare. I was impressed though how great the taxi drivers spoke italian apparently because they get RAI TV and thats how they've learned since childhood.
At least at the airport I enjoyed wathching those cool arabic ROTANA videos from Lebanon and Dubai.
