Blogs from Tunisia, Africa - page 17

Kairouan is an hour's ride on a louage, or shared taxi, from Sousse. It's not a particularly interesting journey but you certainly get a glimpse of the desolate countryside once you get away from the towns and cities in Tunisia. Anyway, the main thing to see in Kairouan is the Grand Mosque. It's quite impressive and for a small fee you can wander around the courtyard and glimpse into the prayer hall. It's just a shame that as infidels we cannot go inside. In Damascus (Syria) it was no problem but in Kairouan you are visiting what is apparently the fourth holiest site in the Islamic world. The rest of a trip to Kairouan is taken up by wandering around the medina, seeing some small mosques and sampling the local sweets - little biscuits made from ... read more

Merry Christmas from sunny Sousse! Well, not so sunny Sousse here on Christmas day!! It’s hard to believe we’ve only been here a month as we seem to have done so much in that short time. After blogs about our various excursions, it’s time to tell you a little about our day-to-day lives here in Tunisia. We live just a few minutes away from the teaching centre in Hammam Sousse (half way between Sousse and Port El Kantaoui) and, as we only work from late afternoon into the evening during the week, that gives us plenty of time to experience local life. One of our favourite things to do is to visit the farmers’ market in the middle of Hammam Sousse on a Friday morning. That’s where we go to buy all of our fruit, vegetables, ... read more

Arrived in Sicily late at night and found a campsite where we pitched for the night and awoke to a sunny day. Campsite turned out to be closed so we could not pay, bad weather was predicted for the next few days so we decided to head back to the Italian mainland and another stop with Aziz, our Couchsurfing friend from our trip down through Europe. Great to see him again but the weather turned out atrocious so we headed north. Our initial aim was a walk up Mount Etna but still the weather was bad with no predicted improvement for a few days so we carried on north and back to our friends in Napoli. We spent two nights in Napoli. Our hosts took us out on the back of their bikes - this has ... read more

An hour away from Sousse on the train is the small town of El Jem. Trains are not very frequent though: we avoided the 8am departure in favour of the more palatable time of 1141! We were surprised to find so many tourists joining us on our day out. After all, we’re not tourists, we live here now!!! On arrival everyone seemed to head straight towards the impressive colosseum. It was impossible to miss and looms above the centre of the town. We had a quick wander around the market area first though, and then a spot of lunch. Briq, pronounced brick, is something which Russ had heard about from his students. Essentially it is a thin sheet of pastry which is folded over to make a sandwich containing meat or fish and an egg cooked ... read more

Just half an hour by train from the centre of Tunis is the ancient Roman city of Carthage. Normally sites of antiquity are set in remote areas but here the modern city of Carthage surrounds the World Heritage Site. One ticket buys you entry into all of the Heritage Sites, but you have to pay extra to get into some of the museums. The different locations are a bit spread out but if you don’t mind a walk, it’s fine. First up for us was a climb to the top of Byrsa Hill. Up there we saw the Cathedral of St Louis. It’s extra to go in so we just visited the National Carthage Museum next door from where we got a splendid view of the surrounding countryside, the city suburbs and a close up view ... read more