Tunisia on the Telly Tomorrow

I’m going to be taping Floyd around the Med on Channel Five tomorrow at 12:50pm.
He went to El Djem, and apparently sampled tuna omelette and beef stew with ground coffee in Tunisia – is that all on one plate, do you think?
http://www.tvguide.co.uk/detail.asp?id=51960847
(The programme was made in 2000 – of course he died a few days before our Tunisia trip started.)

El Djem 21/09/09

El Djem had a pretty amazing amphitheatre – the Rough Guide is not wrong when it says it is the single most impressive Roman monument in Africa. (I originally read this without the ‘Roman’, and did wonder about the pyramids…)

We had a good scramble around, and I used a cool free iphone app m.osaica to take this and this – click on the different pictures in the image to make them the focus, and use the scroll bar (left hand side) to zoom in to see the people on the opposite side of the amphitheatre.

To create it, you stand in one spot and take overlapping photographs, and it magically stitches them together. Shame the iphone camera doesn’t support zooming (yet) – you can do ‘manual zoom’ by walking towards your subject, but this works less well when at the top of an amphitheatre.

After the amphitheatre we headed to the excellent Archaeological Museum in town. Loads more mosaics – I couldn’t resist making a m.osaica mosaic of a mosaic.

The Amphitheatre at El Djem

Inside El Djem’s Amphitheatre

President Ben Ali. And my ferry on the bottom left

The child Dionysius riding a tiger

Kairouan 21/09/09

Kairouan is the 4th-holiest place in Islam. Which I’m afraid reminded me of the Flight of the Conchords “Formerly New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo”. But back to Kairouan – 0ne more factoid:In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the street scenes in “Cairo” were filmed in Kairouan. Well at least it sounds a bit similar.

Click on the images below for more information. Click again on the larger image to see it full-screen.

The Aghlabid Pools – an early water storage system

The Courtyard of the Grand Mosque

Great Mosque’s Water Filtration system

Minaret of the Great Mosque

Ouled Farhane Cemetery

The Barber Mosque Intricately patterned ceiling

Everywhere in the Barber Mosque was beautifully tiled

 

Carthage 20/09/09

Probably much more impressive from inside the gate

Today we headed to see the ruins of Carthage, which is just to the east of Tunis, on the coast. Sadly there’s not much to say about it, except that the amphitheatre was closed due to Ramadan. Actually it was now Eid, but in any case, the security guards wouldn’t let us in. Anyway not to worry – the amphitheatre at El Djem that we saw a few days later was much more impressive. This photo is to prove I’ve ‘done’ Carthage in any case.

another new layout!

Yes ok, this is all style over content. But I do think this one looks better. What do you reckon?

Bardo Museum 19/9/09

So intricate!

Next stop was the Bardo museum, which contains scores of mosaics from the Roman and Byzantine periods. All a bit overwhelming – it was hard to appreciate it all properly, especially as much was in narrow corridors where you couldn’t step back from the mosaic to appreciate it properly. But it was really amazing, especially when  you  consider some are 2000 years old.

Such life-like faces!

There were also some beautiful sculptures.

I really liked how this was displayed, on a black background

Sidi Bou Said 19/9/09

Typical door - they love this shade of blue

We caught the TGM (light rail) to the costal suburb of Sidi Bou Said. Sadly it was raining (something I was completely not expecting, given I understood Tunisia was mostly desert) which did detract somewhat from the beauty of the place. As did all the coach-loads of other tourists, and the tat-stalls on the road up the hill. I should be the ONLY tourist when I’m travelling – somehow this message has not reached the rest of the world’s population. Ok, they rest of my group can come along, so long as they don’t get in the way of my photos.

Sadly people snaffled some of the cakes before I could photograph them

We stopped for a nice cup of tea at a cafe overlooking what would be a beautiful harbour and beach, if it hadn’t been raining. The addition of pine-nuts to the sweet mint tea was inspired!

A New Look!

As you’ll have noticed, this blog’s gone from black to white…this is mainly to try to make it a bit easier to arrange the photos on the page without ugly white rectangles appearing. Overall not as elegant I think, but it should make things quicker for me, so maybe I’ll get this finished before I’m old enough to retire. Let me know what you think!

Exploring Tunis 18/9/09

Snack manufacture

I headed towards the medina, but stopped en route to watch the manufacture of various snacks. Although it was Ramadan, when participating Muslims refrain from eating between sunrise and sunset, plenty of people were eating these, so I didn’t feel bad joining in. They tasted ok – predictably somewhat greasy though.

I’m not sure how they make these big ones, or indeed how you eat them – they looked rather brittle!

A snacking challenge

There were only a couple of days of Ramadan left, so people were stocking up on goodies for Eid, the festival to celebrate the end of the month’s fast.

Choosing sweets for Eid

and a close-up of the sweets

Here’s a typical Tunisian door, in the medina – they love this shade of blue all over the country.

Typical door

There was quite a bit of tourist tat in the medina, as evidenced by these quality camels. I preferred it as it began to close up for the evening.

quality camels

Alley in the medina at closing time

As things were closing up, I walked back to the hotel to meet my travelling companions for the next 12 days.

Arrival in Tunis 18/9/09

Not the original Carthage

I slept well, had a nice shower (in the rather tiny cubicle in my cabin – not for those who wish to flail their arms around while they wash), and headed up on deck to see the approach of Tunis. You’re supposed to be able to see the ancient city of Carthage: I don’t know where it went but I don’t think this was it.

We docked on time at 9:30am: rather an interesting disembarkation strategy, using a narrow gangway for people both getting on and off, so it took a while, especially with all those refugee bags. Everyone had their photo taken using an infra-red camera on entry – presumably because of Swine Flu, then we headed to immigration. It turns out I should have had a stamp in my passport – I still don’t know what for, or where I should have obtained it. Anyway I waited until the nice policeman was free – he sorted out the paperwork once he’d switched his computer on and plugged the mouse in, and I was on my way.

They’re pretty strict on the Tunisians at customs – all those refugee bags had to be untied and opened so they could check the contents. For some reason, I didn’t look like a smuggler and they just waved me through.

There’s an exchange bureau at the port, so I changed a few euros to Tunisian Dinars to keep me going. It’s a closed currency so you can’t obtain it outside Tunisia, or take it out with you when you leave. But there are ATMs all over Tunis, and also plenty in all the cities we visited. Apart from some kind of technical hiccup when no-one from our group could get any money for a few hours, we had no problems. I think we did better than those who needed to use a bank – you have to go during banking hours, and then overcome the language barrier (the ATMs all had an English option).

There's the train I could have caught, through the window

I had intended to walk the 500m to La Goulette light rail station and get a train into the city centre, as recommended by seat61. But it was boiling hot and I had a lot of luggage (I took a large rucksack – in hindsight maybe a wheelie case would have been better, although the majority of hotels that we stayed in didn’t have (working) lifts so I did win out there). So I succumbed to to the sales tactics of a taxi driver – 10 dinars (about £5) for the 10km all the way to the hotel, or 5 dinars to the train station (plus 2 dinars for the train ticket, then a tram or a 15 minute walk the other end).

I checked into the hotel, had a siesta (luxury to be able to!) then went to explore the medina – more on that in the next post.