Tunisia

It’s only a few days before Christmas.  The malls are slammed, parking lots overflowing.  We kept being surprised at the line ups at all the stores.  We didn’t remember dealing with this in years past.  That’s when it hit us – we haven’t been home for Christmas in

The walls of the medina of Sousse In the morning we made our way by louage to Sousse. It’s a pretty frequent route. The louage station there is huge – a cavernous warehouse.…

From there, it was about a half hour walk to the louage station. We were told that there were no more Louages headed only to Kairouan, our next stop, as the louages only run in the morning.…

During negotiations with the louage driver getting to Douz, the driver warned us that there was an international festival going on in Douz. We had heard this line before, usually as a preface to getting us to stay at the cabdriver’s cousin’s hotel room, which was claimed t

Our next stop was Douz. In about 2002, they build a new road directly between Douz and Matmata. Until then, it had been necessary to loop back up to Gabes, and go through Kebili.…

We went shopping in the Medina and experienced some high-pressure selling. We could tell they were used to a steady stream of European tourists. Things were priced accordingly, and they didn’t really take ‘no’ for an answer.…

Continuing south from El Jem, we were headed to Sfax. Our Lonely Planet indicated that the bus station was right outside the train station, but, well, it wasn’t there. It didn’t really exist – one simply has to stop on the road and wait for the bus.…

Coliseum of El Jem Our next destination was El Jem. The only reason to go to El Jem is a magnificently preserved coliseum. It is directly off the train line heading south out of Tunis.…

Inside the cities, taxis are a pretty cheap option, if it’s too far to walk. We never tried any local buses. Between the cities, there’s bus, rail, and louage. Some buses are government run, and the rest are a hodge podge of local companies, using buses that by all right

We’ve met some people who thought we were brave to go to Tunisia independently. We never once felt threatened. The only time we felt vaguely uncomfortable, was sort of our fault.…