Last week in Marsa Matruh Kimo kept telling me that we were going to 'take a plane to Neeja'. Finally I decided to correct him. "Tu-nisia", I said. He replied, "yes i know..we're going to Neeja". It took a while but finally he understood that the name of the country actually has a to sound in it.
Tunisia is a cool country. There isn't really all that much to see touristically speaking but it has a nice vibe. Although it's 98% Muslim, it's a lot more liberal than the other Muslim countries I've been to. Not many women wear a higab and they seem to be allowed to have any job unlike places like Egypt. Despite the fact that women dress less conservatively here, there is virtually no harrassment in the streets (unlike Egypt). They're also really fashionable here. My mom and I starting noticing this in the airport. We could tell the Egyptians from the Tunisians by how they dressed and wore their makeup. Egyptians try to be fashionable too it's just that they often end up looking tacky. Tunisians are really fashionable. They apply their makeup nicely, cut their hair in cute ways, wear appropriately fitting, chic clothing. Which reminds me, Tunisians seem to be a lot less brand obsessed than Egyptians. In Egypt there are fake brand name products all over the place and walking down the street you see people wearing all sorts of 'Gucci' belts, 'Prada' shirts and 'Chanel' purses. Here that's not really the case. People are comfortable wearing fashionable clothing with no visible brand name.
My dad pointed out to me on our first day here that Tunisia seems a lot less Americanized than other places we've been to. After a while, I realized how right he is. During our stay here I did not see a single McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut, Chili's or any other American restaurant. This is the first country I've ever been to without seeing a McDonald's. Maybe it's because of the heavy French influence. It's crazy how French everything here is. There are sidewalk cafes everywhere serving crepes and paninis, baguettes are basically the only type of bread people eat, everyone mixes a lot of French into their Arabic while speaking, signs everywhere are written always in French, sometimes in Arabic...Oh..and speaking of Arabic. Their Arabic here is really hard to understand. It hardly even sounds like Arabic in some regions of the country. But back to French
We flew into Tunis and drove to Hammamet on our first day here. Hammamet is basically a resort city. Our hotel had a nice pool, tons of food (all-inclusive...) and clean rooms. Oh..rooms..they didn't have tvs in the rooms. If you wanted one you could get it for 5 dinars a night. I've never seen that in a hotel before. and the bathtub. The bathtub was really high off the ground which ended up being the case at all the hotels we stayed at in Tunisia. When I was getting out the first time I took a shower I was in a rush so I forgot how high it was and smashed my knee against the rim. still hurts. The first night here we just went to the beach for a couple of hours. The second day we swam in the pool in the morning and then drove back to Tunis and walked around the market here for a while. The market, like all the markets we went to in Tunisia, is inside the ancient Medina, a big area surrounded by high walls. After walking around for a while we went to Carthage, an ancient city that was built first by the Carthagians (something like that..) and then destroyed and rebuilt by the Romans and then (mostly) destroyed by vandals. We didn't actually go in but we saw it from outside; it looked pretty neat.
On our third day we drove to Gabes, stopping on the way at Sousse and Sfax. At both Sousse and Sfax we walked around the markets for a while before moving on. We bought some delicious peaches...I don't really remember much else. Our hotel in Gabes was funny. It had doors all over the place. There was the door we entered to get in the room. When you walk through that door you find a hallway. On the left hand side there are two more doors, both of which lead to the same room that contains three beds, two sinks, two closets and a tv. On the right there is a door that has a bathtub and a sink behind it and straight ahead there is a door that has a room with just a toilet in it. It was the oddest set-up ever. On our fourth day in Tunisia we first ate the hotel's breakfast (which consisted of bread and butter and jam...) and then started our day's trek. We went to Matmata which is this town that was built under the rock. It was really cool. We went inside someone's house and got to see how they live and stuff. It was a little strange; as you walk along the road all of the house owners try to wave you in to come look at their homes in the hopes of receiving tips from you. Matmata also served as Luke Skywalker's home planet in the Star Wars movies. I haven't seen them so that wasn't as exciting for me as it was for a lot of other tourists...After Matmata we continued onto Medenine where we saw one of the best preserved Ksars in Tunisia. A ksar is an ancient grain storage thingy with lots of little rooms. All of the rooms at the ksar in Medenine have been converted into souveneir shops and we were the only tourists there when we visited so all of the shop owners were just staring at us. It was cool...After Medenine we continued to Jerba, an island just off the coast. It's really pretty and it has a lot of religious importance. We got there pretty late though so we just ate and walked around for a while before driving back to Gabes to stay at our peculiar hotel for another night. We got there at about 1 am, absolutely exhausted.
On our fifth day (today) we drove back to Tunis, stopping at Kairouan on the way. Kairouan has the Great Mosque, the oldest mosque in North America, built only about 25 years after the start of Islam. My parents were pretty excited for it because apparently they learned a lot about it in history class in Egyptian schools but it was actually kind of disappointing. There was nobody there and all the streets around it were covered in garbage and stuff. It closes at 2 for foreigners (really just Western foreigners) and we were there at about 3. Maybe if we had been there earlier or at a time of prayer it would have been more lively. We also saw a really ancient well in Kairouan that is powered by a camel. Kimo loved that. As we were leaving that little attraction, located in the center of Kairouan's market, we stopped at a shop and bought this sweet shirt for me. When we got back to Tunis we went back to the market here to buy this other sweet shirt for me that we saw on the first day. The first shirt is turquoise and the other is white with turqoise fabric stuff on it. They don't anything alike though and, seeing as the color turqoise is everywhere in Tunisia, I thought I'd take the chance to add a little of the color to my wardrobe. Also, on the first day my mom bought me this bracelet with turquoise beads..now I'll have something to wear it with..ha! We had some time to spare and Tunisia is supposedly famous for henna so I decided to get a henna tattoo. The stuff the guy did the tattoo with wasn't really henna; I'm not sure what it was. Maybe it had some henna in it? Anyway, hopefully whatever he drew it in lasts for a while.
As you can probably tell from the very poor quality of writing in this post, I'm pretty tired from 5 days of hardcore traveling. Nevertheless, I had to take advantage of the free wireless in the hotel here. Tomorrow we wake up bright and early to fly to Casablanca...woohoo!
Posted by ayah at 5:23 PM 0 comments
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