Day 3 - Tunisia

Day three when we awoke there were still miles of blue Mediterranean in one direction, but in the other direction we had arrived at a Port. It was so exciting! Our first port was Tunisia. I had been really looking forward to Tunisia. To be in Northern Africa with more than a hint of Arabia seemed so exotic. All the reviews I had found of Tunisia were written by English people and all of them were quite derogatory suggesting that Tunisia was tacky hole. I was certain that this couldn't be right and that they must just be being snobbish in favour of places like Italy. However, unfortunately after visiting Tunisia I felt that I had to side with them.

Tunisia played a very important role in ancient times, first with the famous Phoenician city of Carthage. Later, Tunisia was occupied by the Vandals during the 5th century AD, Byzantines in the 6th century, and Arabs in the 7th century. Under the Ottoman Empire, Tunisia was known as "Regency of Tunis". Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, is home to the ancient ruins of Carthage.
Despite being incredibly important historically, it was a bit of a dump. The ruins of Carthage were quite amazing, but are just slightly fenced off and have very little information about them except that they are a UNESCO World Heritage site. Compared with some of the Roman ruins in Rome such as the Colosseum which are so venerated it almost seemed as though no one really cares about Carthage.
We spent about half a day in Tunisia, so it is quite possible that we didn't get a totally accurate perception. It did seem to us though that Tunisia had gained the worst parts of western society and culture and had probably lost a lot of itself in the process.


We hired a taxi for the morning and first went driving around some of the ruins of Carthage. We then went to Sidi Bou Said which is a town that is built almost entirely of white and blue buildings. It was picturesque, but felt quite empty, so we didn't get out to wander but just had a look from the windowss of the taxi. Then we went into Tunis, the capital city, to the market. The market, or 'medina' is found at the centre of the city and is a tight maze of stone covered alleys full of intense scents and colours. It was difficult to feel that we could wander leisurely as we were obviously tourists and therefore harassed to buy things and come into stores. It would have been really nice to feel that we could take our time to look, but we really felt that we could not linger otherwise the shopkeepers would feel that we were interested and we may therefore be committed to purchasing. We did buy a few things, but apparently most of the 'local' art is actually imported from China and a lot of the things that were for sale did not look well made or handcrafted.
After a nervous half hour when we could not find our taxi driver and were concerned that we would be stranded in Tunisia while our boat left for Italy, we finally found him and were able to get back to the ship. When we got back to the port where the ship was docked, the gates into it were closed to the taxi, and he would not let us out (although he was quite polite about it) even though it would have been a short walk for us. Papa Bear said that he was pretty sure that the taxi driver may not be allowed back in at all without passengers, so he was trying to keep us in while he was convincing the guards to let the car through. It took about 15 mins, but they finally let us in. It was important for the taxi driver to get back in as the highest paying customers go for the taxis nearest the ship. In Tunisia it is part of the culture to bargain for everything. We had negotiated 50 euro for our taxi trip in the morning, which was half the price that the first taxi driver had suggested, so we were quite happy with this. We met an English family in Tunis who were very proud that they had managed to bargain their driver down to 50 euros, but their trip was just to the market and back where we had been to Carthage and Sidi Bou Said as well.
It was a relief when we were finally back on the ship and it was nice looking down from the ship to the port where there were some camels giving people from the ship some rides up and down the side of the ship.Also on Day three was a performance for children of Bagpuss (picture above) who apparently is a famous children's character in England, along the lines of Paddington Bear. We had never heard of him before. It seemed like a nostalgia trip for many of the older people on board the ship, but the boys still thought it was fun.