Tunis

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Today we arrived in Tunis early morning, after a long flight from Doha, Qatar. Our first funny experience was getting our Tourist Visa in Tunis Airport. As you can't get Tunisian Dinar anywhere but Tunisia, and we had to pay for the Visa with Dinar, Iain had to wangle his way through customs and imigration without his passport, in order to get to an ATM to get Tunisian Dinar to pay for the Visa. Then we had to wait for 1 hour to get the Visa, not that anyone tells you this at the time, but it was quite funny. Once we got our Visa, we headed outside the airport for a taxi. And the adventures of travelling began, with a driver offering us a taxi while we were walking outside to look for the taxi's and it turned out that when we got to the taxi rank, an argument began between the drivers all sitting at the rank as to who would take our fare......come on I know we are popular, but no need to argue over us :-) All was good, it was a nice drive into Tunis old town with the early morning sun and streets just starting to get busier, it reminded us of our arrival into Amman, Jordan on a previous trip. A mess of old white buildings covering the hilltops, rugged landscape, we were really excited to start our trip.

We arrived at the Dar El Medina Hotel where we were greeted by the owner (who speaks very little English) and were offerred a cold drink and a tour of the hotel before our room was ready. Absolutely picture perfect, it is a former Beys residence and has been in their family for many years and lovingly restored with loads of character with al the mod cons, we would highly recommend staying here.

As it was still early morning, we took the opportunity to head straight out into the Medina...(I was too excited to wait) we are amazed by the beautiful doorways which line the streets of the old Medina. The Markets look great too! We had a tea and coffee in a cute little cafe inside the alleyways of the Medina then headed back to check into our room. Our room "Nour" was really beautiful and where we will call home for next 3 days.

In the afternoon we walked through the medina towards the Ville Nouvelle (new town) which has lovely wide boulevards and cafe's line the streets and are filled with locals. Tunis seems very European so far, with locals wearing all the latest trends walking alongside a friend with the more traditional dress, its facinating to see the old and new blend and everyone is happy.

We are quickly discovering that Tunisians speak very little English and it reminds us that we speak very bad French. In wandering around we realised it was dinner time so started looking for somwhere for dinner. It seems that all the restaurants either close early or don't open until late 9.00pm. Most Tunisians either eat at home and then go out for coffee in the cafe's, there are so many of these cafe's and they all sell sweets, pastries, coffee, as well as pizzas and sandwiches. But we had fun trying to find a Restaurant that sold Tunisian food or specialties. But we eventually found a nice little restaurant called The Andalous Restaurant in the Ville Nouvelle where we had some delicous cous cous - with the world's largest lamb shank - yum!

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Photos

Rooftop View of Tunis
View from the Rooftop of Dar El Medina Hotel over Tunis.

Doors Galore, Tunis
Place de la Victoire, Tunis

Bab Bhar, Tunis
Porte de France (French Gate) marks the entrance to the old Medina, Tunis

Place du Government, Tunis
Beautiful architecture, which are now government building in the Place du Government on the entrance to the old city and Medina.