Sousse to Tunis
Pictire: The street outside the Maison Doree was used for a few days as a set for a commercial
Click here to see our Ofoto album from Tunis
We ended up spending a second night in Susse. We got our bags as far as the train station by that evening but realized if we continued to Tunis we wouldn't get there till ten p.m. whereas there happened to be a hotel right opposite the train station in Susse that seemed ok, so we got the friendly attendant at left baggage at the Gare to open our locker for us, took out our light packs and replaced those with as much of our big bags as the locker would hold, and carted the rest across the road to the hotel.
We had been eager to get up to Tunis, thinking that the nation's capitol must hold in store all manner of delights for us, but when we finally made it there the following day we realized that Susse was in fact one of Tunisia's most delightful cities, and we were glad to have a second night there. We went for a walk in the medina at dusk. We had an odd encounter with a sweets vendor who invited us to taste his wares and then when we didn't buy after the tasting, demanded a dinar for what we had eaten, but we ignored him and moved on. Incidents like that were rare in Tunisia. Most people who said hello to us appeared to be genuinely friendly, or at least not hard salesmen.
Our hotel was right around the corner from the LPG recommended cheap restaurant street and we ended up in a local restaurant crowded with Tunisians. In some towns we had visited we sometimes wondered where Tunisians went to eat but here we were in fine company and we ordered such delights as merguez sausage and kamouia ?? stew, plus a bit of couscous and oujja. The food was good. Next night we tried a repeat meal like that at the Carcassonne Restaurant in Tunis and we all had diarrhia the rest of the night and through the next day.
Tunis turned out to be something of a disappointment considering our expectations. We found it hard to find cheap accommodation of the quality we'd been getting in the interior. We ended up in the Maison Doree, a two star hotel offering rooms with bath and fans but no toilets (and no a/c, though it was quiet and we slept well there - except not the best place to have diarrhea our first night there). The price was not a bargain but it was the best of the hotels we checked out, and near enough to the train station for us to haul our bags there.
Dusty (my son traveling with us) had a friend in Tunis whom we called and spent a Saturday with. We went with him to Carthage which we had no expectations of so we weren't disappointed. People tend to forget that the Romans destroyed Carthage and put salt in the soil, so there are not a lot of monuments there. It is a pleasant suburb of Tunis though and one town over is Sidi Bou Saeed, which has a Greek look and an italian feel, and is over run with tourists.
Click here to see our Ofoto album from Carthage
Click here to see our Ofoto album from Sidi Bou Said
Click here to see our Ofoto album from Tunis
We ended up spending a second night in Susse. We got our bags as far as the train station by that evening but realized if we continued to Tunis we wouldn't get there till ten p.m. whereas there happened to be a hotel right opposite the train station in Susse that seemed ok, so we got the friendly attendant at left baggage at the Gare to open our locker for us, took out our light packs and replaced those with as much of our big bags as the locker would hold, and carted the rest across the road to the hotel.
We had been eager to get up to Tunis, thinking that the nation's capitol must hold in store all manner of delights for us, but when we finally made it there the following day we realized that Susse was in fact one of Tunisia's most delightful cities, and we were glad to have a second night there. We went for a walk in the medina at dusk. We had an odd encounter with a sweets vendor who invited us to taste his wares and then when we didn't buy after the tasting, demanded a dinar for what we had eaten, but we ignored him and moved on. Incidents like that were rare in Tunisia. Most people who said hello to us appeared to be genuinely friendly, or at least not hard salesmen.
Our hotel was right around the corner from the LPG recommended cheap restaurant street and we ended up in a local restaurant crowded with Tunisians. In some towns we had visited we sometimes wondered where Tunisians went to eat but here we were in fine company and we ordered such delights as merguez sausage and kamouia ?? stew, plus a bit of couscous and oujja. The food was good. Next night we tried a repeat meal like that at the Carcassonne Restaurant in Tunis and we all had diarrhia the rest of the night and through the next day.
Tunis turned out to be something of a disappointment considering our expectations. We found it hard to find cheap accommodation of the quality we'd been getting in the interior. We ended up in the Maison Doree, a two star hotel offering rooms with bath and fans but no toilets (and no a/c, though it was quiet and we slept well there - except not the best place to have diarrhea our first night there). The price was not a bargain but it was the best of the hotels we checked out, and near enough to the train station for us to haul our bags there.
Dusty (my son traveling with us) had a friend in Tunis whom we called and spent a Saturday with. We went with him to Carthage which we had no expectations of so we weren't disappointed. People tend to forget that the Romans destroyed Carthage and put salt in the soil, so there are not a lot of monuments there. It is a pleasant suburb of Tunis though and one town over is Sidi Bou Saeed, which has a Greek look and an italian feel, and is over run with tourists.
Click here to see our Ofoto album from Carthage
Click here to see our Ofoto album from Sidi Bou Said
