Tunisia Part 2

This is the view from our hotel balcony. Obviously not warm enough to sun since I am wearing a coat, but what a view.

Sunset our first night in Tunis. We walked along the beach for a while and took in the sights. It reminded us of the beach area in Puerto Vallarta, except January in Mexico is generally crowded because that's when all the Canadian snow birds go south.

This is the hotel we stayed at in Hammamet. The Yasmin Beach hotel. It was nice and beach front. It did set me to wonder what it must be like there in the spring, summer would be too hot I think, but spring and fall must be very busy.

The Bab Bhar or Porte de France on Place de la Victoire; this is the main entrance to the Tunis medina. At this point you should have your breadcrumbs or stones or twine ready, because this is where you enter the huge maze of crowded streets that make up the famous Tunis medina. The Tunis medina is designated a world heritage site. It was constructed in the late 7th century. We were befriended by at least 3 guys who tried to scam us into some shop or other. Here's the scam: you are approached on the street by a guy who 'works at the hotel' or (as in our third 'friend') speaks your language. (We got tired of being bothered by the questions 'Are you...[insert nationality here] I speak..[insert appropriate language here]' we finally started telling them we spoke spanish. This backfired with friend #3 as he was fluent in Spanish) You are then told by your new 'friend', that he knows a place where you can see the medina from a rooftop; a 'must see' view! Or 'This is your lucky day', because today is a holy day and they can take you to see some of the sites usually reserved for believers only. Don't be that gullible, they try to get you into a shop where they'll get a cut of whatever you buy. Getting away from these would-be guides was tough enough; I can't imagine how hard it would be to get away from the shop keepers! Again, it was a matter of keeping our heads down and feet moving. This is where I began to be told that I looked Arabic; such charmers these men.

A shop in the medina. How cool is that.

After the medina we went to Carthage to see some Roman rubble ...I mean ruins ...um..I mean history, yeah history. This is the Musée National de Carthage it houses a small collection of Punic items found scattered around the site. Most of the items are of the household variety; combs, razors, pottery, jewelry and some weapons. The ruins themselves are scattered with broken columns and statuary.

Sean with a bust of some Roman royal dating back to the 5th century or something like that. This is on the second floor of the museum. This is where I was, once again, trying to extricate myself from yet another would-be tour guide. These guys hang around the museum and wait for an unsuspecting tourist. Once they identify a likely victim they come up as you look at the displays and begin to explain what stuff is (as if you couldn't read the placards yourself.). You are then expected to tip them for their helpfulness. Yet again, you have to be rude and tell them to go away to make them stop. Or just saying point blank 'I have no money' might work, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.

The remains of a Punic city on Byrsa Hill in Carthage. This is where most of the items in the National Museums' collection were uncovered.

The Acropolium (Cathedral of St Louis) was built by the French in 1884 on Byrsa Hill. It was de-consecrated years ago and now serves as overflow exhibition space for the Museum. The pastel colors are so not 'Catholic church' but more middle eastern. You can climb to the second and third balconies inside; though there's not much to see up there.

Now the Antonin Baths on the other hand are more than just 'more rubble'. They are rubble with personality and lots of great photo opportunities. Built in the 2nd century they were the third largest baths in the Roman Empire. All that is left today is the foundation, but the whole site is chock full of columns and pillars and tunnels. Exploration is at your own risk. We saw one or two signs warning not to walk or climb on the ruins because they are, after all, crumbling, but this didn't stop many people. You have to wonder at the strength of construction that would last this long. They are not in this state because of poor materials or construction though, they were, like many ancient sites, scavenged over the centuries for their superior building materials. The same thing happened to the Colosseum in Rome. More of it would still be standing if people hadn't come in and stolen blocks for their own construction projects. Oh yeah, that's me there in that photo.

More Antonin Baths

Yet more Antonin Baths...no, that's not original 'bath' water, it's rain water.

And yet more Antonin Baths...and S down at the end of the little tunnel.

From Carthage Sabih (our driver) took us to the little sea side village of Sidi Bou Saïd. Very picturesque and very Mediterranean n'est pa? We were walking to the top of the hill to the little cafe for some refreshment. Down in the bottom right hand corner of the photo can you see those little white bird cages? They come in all sizes, I wanted to bring a big one home because they were so cute but (A) they wouldn't fit in my suitecase...oh wait, didn't have a suitcase yet at this point...yep on day two of the same outfit. And (B) I hate birds. Birds in cages are just wrong and they are so stinkin messy.

Yep, I had a Coca Cola at the cafe. That is what it says on the bottle isn't it?

These gorgeous doorways are famous in Tunis. I bought some watercolors in one of the shops of Sidi Bou Saïd of these famous doorways. I just love them.

This is a photo of the back of Sabih's head, and yes that is a cop outside the car window. This is proof of a 'shake down'! Something like 50% of the cabs in Tunis are not strictly legal. They are necessary and always busy, but the cost of running a 'legal' cab is so prohibitive that it's cheaper to pay the cop a bribe than to pay for all the licenses you need to operate. So cops pull over cabs randomly and when you are asked for your NINE pieces of proof, you hand over your license with a few bills instead and the cop sends you on your way. Sabih, however, had all NINE of his necessary proofs and the cop had to let him on his way anyway, but he wasn't too happy. Oh, and seatbelts are required to be worn by everyone in the vehicle, Sabih made us wear ours, it's not worth the ticket.

The next day Sabih drove us two hours south to El Jem and the colosseum there. We took tons of photos. Rich, you would have been in heaven, this is a fabulous place for black and white photography. I wish I had time and storage to upload all the fabulous photos we took. This one is not as big as the one in Rome, but it is in better shape. You can actually go underground and wander around.

Colosseum.

Me in one of the underground tunnels.

S kicking sand down on me in the tunnel ...accidentally of course.

I love this photo.

In El Jem there is a museum that you can get into with the same ticket you bought at the Colosseum. It houses one of the best collections of mosaics I've ever seen. Many of them are complete and were moved here pebble by pebble from a nearby roman village. Unlike museums in the state where they would be roped off, these are fully accessible and not only can you walk on them, in some rooms you have to walk on them because they go wall to wall (as well as being on all of the walls too.)

We headed back north to Sousse. This is a photo of the fishing harbor. Lots of piles of nets and stuff, the good news is that you can't smell the lovely odor that accompanied the taking of this picture. I may never eat fish again. And mercifully it was cold outside cause if it had been warmer...

This is the inside of the Ribat which is located inside the huge walls of the Sousse medina. The ribat was built as a fort. It housed soldiers who divided their time between pouring boiling oil down on intruders from the ramparts and studying the Quran on quiet days. It was pretty cool, we took some great photos from the top, of the surrounding medina and the town of Sousse and it's harbor.

Yeah, this is a picture of sheep. (A bad picture of sheep because it was taken from a moving car and the sheep turned their butts to us.) Now why would this be an important picture to include? Especially after uploading 25 others? Well there's a funny (funny odd not funny ha-ha) story to be told here. The sheep would be used in a muslim holy day celebration later that week. Sabih couldn't explain it very well except to say that early in the week every family bought a sheep. There were various activities accompanying this purchase and then the sheep is slaughtered. These sheep and shepherds were everywhere, vacant lots, parks, olive groves, highway off ramps/on ramps and even on the highway medians. (Grazing in Tunis is poor. Too much deforestation leading to poor soil, leading to tremendous erosion - huge cautionary tale here about poor land management) Anyway, we saw sheep everywhere we went. On the day we went to El Jem and Sousse, much of the driving took us through small rural villages and in many of these places the slaughter had begun. You'd drive past these shops where out front there would be hanging, on one side the fresh and bloody hides, on the other side the freshly butchered carcasses and tied up underneath the next victims. Now you would think that these sheep would be agitated knowing they were next, but no, either sheep are really that stupid or they had moved on from denial, anger etc. and had safely arrived to acceptance. It was pathetic and funny at the same time. In other news, we did finally receive our luggage. It arrived the day before we left. This after several phone calls, assuring us, that yes, it's here, but weasil boy behind the counter did not have time to actually check that it was there, but he was sure it had come in on this last plane. We arrive at the airport 45 minutes later only to find no luggage. Then weasil boy behind the counter would say, 'Oh, I'm sure it's on the next flight, if you want to wait, it will be here in two hours'. I swear, S, my mild mannered and eternally calm husband, was seconds away from killing someone. My money was on weasil boy because he sure as heck was irritating. Bear in mind that each round trip to the airport cost us about $70. We finally, on Sunday night, bought some bare essentials. Though the laundry in the sink was continued. It sounds worse than it was, after all, we got there on Saturday and our luggage finally arrived on Monday morning. Sabih took S to pick it up, we quickly showered and changed into gloriously fresh clothes for our trip to El Jem. Sabih very charmingly commented on how much better we looked; what a sweet heart.

Tunisia Part One…of…

When we left Nice for Tunisia we joked about all the carry-on luggage people were taking. I mean bags and bags of stuff that could not possibly fit in that little box at the check-in that advises you of your carry-on limits. We smirked at each other when the three people ahead of us were kicked off the plane (temporarily) to check their carry-ons. Amateurs! We’ve been doing this so long that we wisely checked only one bag with both of our things in it. In the spirit of traveling light I only brought my purse with my essentials for travel, water, PDA with a new book loaded on and new music, cell phone and some basic drugs. S carried-on his laptop. We were, after all, only going to be away for 4 days. We arrived in Tunisia Saturday afternoon to the madness of the Tunisia Carthage airport. Where our flight was listed at one baggage carousel and then abruptly it would disappear and appear two carrousels over. We spent the better part of an hour chasing from one baggage claim carousel to the next with about 200 other people (wondering the whole time if we were on some weird Tunisian version of candid camera) only to finally have a sour faced airport official, that I had to practically pin to a post, confirm that about 250 pieces of luggage had been misplaced. The airline lost our one piece of luggage. Now who's the amateur? Those people knew. ‘No Madame, it is not lost, it is in Paris, it will be here this evening’ says the short sweaty man behind the lost luggage counter. Ha! Famous last words! Our hotel was a 50 minute drive south in Hammemet and a driver had been sent from there to meet our flight. We walked out of the international baggage claim area to a mob. The three flights worth of people all milling about in baggage claim had 10 times as many people on the other side of the gate waiting to greet them. Madness! Madness, you’ll see, will be a recurring theme. ………. We got the driver’s card when he dropped us off at the resort so that we could call him when our luggage had been located and he would happily take another 90.000TD (Tunisian Dinars, their money goes down to the third decimal place. I had a bit of a tough time trying to figure out all the different coins.) from us for the roundtrip to retrieve our luggage. In the good news column, we checked into our ‘very good’ room to find that we had a fabulous unobstructed view of the Mediterranean right across the road and since we were already down ½ a day we decided to stay local and walk down the street to the Medina. This is where our education began. The first lesson I would impart is that if you purchase a guidebook for a country READ it, ALL of it, before you go, don’t just take it along as a quick reference. If we had read the following story before our first trip into a Medina the whole experience would have been less frightening and more funny.

Just Look, No Buy Viewing vast numbers of carpets and kilims is as much a part of the experience as visiting the Great Mosque. However averse you might be to the idea, you’re likely at some stage to find yourself in a carpet shop. Resistance is futile. The secret is to accept the hospitality, enjoy the ceremony and not feel in the least obliged to buy – easier said than done. The process starts with a passing glance as you walk through one of the medina’s lanes. You’re invited inside and offered sweet tea or Turkish coffee while you sit around and discuss the fact that the salesman (they’re all men and all very charming) has a brother or uncle living in your country and indeed, what providence, sold a carpet, a very beautiful carpet, from his private collection, to one of your countrymen just last week. While you wait for your drinks, why not look, looking is free, just for the pleasure of your eyes. Choices are unfurled by a boy, while another brings tea and coffee which is too hot to drink quickly. You as a price and are told in a conspiratorial whisper that, because you have not come as part of a group, you will be offered a 30% discount. You’re an honoured guest in Tunisia and hospitality demands such things. The ones you don’t like are rolled up and stacked against a wall. The designs are explained and more young men arrive to hold the carpets at viewing level. They might even try to burn the carpet with a cigarette lighter to show its durability. Suddenly the room is filled with young men at your service. Carpets are expertly rolled into tiny bundles to show how easily they will fit in your bag for carrying home. This is the point at which you might decide that carpet-buying is not for you. You say that you want to think about it. The salesman, possibly now casting furtive glances in the direction of the shop owner, is suddenly serious, knowing full well that the vast majority of tourists never return despite promises to do so, knowing even better that most visitors will be leaving on the next bus out of town. Prices drop. They might even do so dramatically. Looks of sadness will be exchanged that such beautiful carpets must be let go for such a price. As you walk out the door – you might be left to find your own way out as hospitality evaporates – you might hear dark mutterings and grim curses directed towards you. More likely, you’ll look over you shoulder and see the salesman deflated on a chair, like a child who has lost his toy… Taken from Lonely Planet Tunisia. Pg. 179

We weren’t buying a rug, but I did make the mistake of stopping to look at some leather goods outside of one shop. We were instantly surrounded by 3 men one who threw an arm around S, and one who took me by the elbow into the back of the shop to show me the best of the leather purses, coats and belts. “No thank you, we’re just looking” has absolutely no meaning, leaving someone alone to shop is a foreign concept, really foreign, how can you know the real value of a thing unless someone is standing there giving a running commentary on each item and pointing out the finer details that you would miss. It took ten minutes of polite refusals and edging toward the door to get away from these men. Their disappointed scowls and mutterings were enough to make us really want to watch our backs as we walked away. First lesson learned, polite doesn’t work, and lesson two, just like when you’re night clubbing, don’t make eye contact. Needless to say we then tried traveling down the alleys of the medina without looking left or right and without expressing the slightest interest in anything. ………. Saturday night arrives and we still have no luggage. Our hotel package turned out to be a demi-pension which meant that our breakfasts and dinners were included in the price of our room. So we went to the giant third floor dinning room to find a huge buffet and about 100 German tourists. I wandered the various buffet stations and had a tremendous time trying to identify anything. Finally settled on some couscous, which I love and something that looked like, and I fervently hoped actually was, chicken. At one of the other stations a man was cooking something that looked like thin slices of beef, so I grabbed some of that too. We sat, ordered beverages and settled in to eat. The ‘chicken’ wasn’t, I think it may have been rabbit; and the beef definitely wasn’t. It was disgusting! I pointed it out to S who tried a piece and then nonchalantly says, ‘Oh, that’s stomach, I’ve had it before in Turkey’. Well that's just fine 'cause I can have couscous for dinner for 3 nights, not a problem. We had no real plans for our visit so we went down to the lobby where there were about 4 or 5 fat notebooks from a variety of tour companies offering day trips to various places, the books however were all in German. We went to the front desk to ask the receptionist if she had any tour information in English. ‘I could call a guide to take you wherever you want to go.’ She told us immediately. We told her we wanted to visit Carthage and the Roman ruins. She called a guide, negotiated a price of 140.000TD for the whole day and told us he would arrive at 9:00 am. Perfect since Carthage is just a bit north-ish of Tunis he could take us past the airport on the way back to the hotel on Sunday night and we wouldn’t have to pay someone else extra for that round trip. Off to the room and to do some ‘laundry’.

As Promised…

A courtyard in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan.

A hidden courtyard shopping haven in downtown Milan.

The Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore or as it is better known, the Duomo of Florence begun in 1296 and and completed, sort of, in 1436. It has known many a facelift over the century's and even now is being renovated. This photo was taken from the Campanille.

An elaborate doorway in a hidden courtyard in Florence.

David, a man on the move, standing in front of the Palazzo Vecchio (Florence) which is, of course, being renovated.

The Ponte Vecchio is located where the first stone bridge stood in 972. It is now occupied by about 100 jewelry stores.

The main alter of the Chiesa di SS Annunziata (Florence), dedicated to the Virgin Mary in 1250. Many of the frescos are currently being refurbished and cleaned so many of the side chapels are closed.

Il Vittoriano or as the Roman's call it 'The Wedding Cake' or not as nice 'The Typewriter'. They apparently aren't fond of the behemoth of a building that seems to have no real purpose except to provide a great vantage point (after climbing the 200 plus steps) from which to see the rest of Rome...

...I thought the colonnade was pretty impressive though.

View of the Colosseum from the top of Il Vittoriano.

Sean in the Colosseum.

La Pieta in St. Peters Basilica.

I think this is the Statue of St. Peter.

Throne of St. Peter in St. Peter's Bascillica.

The Galleria delle Carte Geografiche is only one of the long galleries to be hiked through on the way to the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel is, no exaggeration a mile down the path from the front door of the Vatican Museum. I mean, it would take days to see all the displays in the museum and if all you want to do is see the Sistine Chapel, there's no way to see it without traipsing the full length of the place. Then you get there and stand in a shoulder to shoulder crowd staring up and get yelled at if you try to snap a photo. Unlike the rest of the museum where non-flash photography is allowed, NO photography is allowed in the chapel.

A sculpture (?) in the courtyard of the Vatican museum. Don't ask me what it's called or what it is supposed to be, cause I have no clue. But it looks cool doesn't it?

The Spanish Steps (Scalinata di Spagna) in the Piazza di Spagna. You are not allowed to eat on the steps, the municipal police are very strict.

Campo Dei Miracoli housing the Duomo, baptistry and bell tower. The bell tower also known as la Torre Pendente or The Leaning Tower of Pisa.

We're off!

Off to Tunisia, back Tuesday night. Will check e-mail from there.

Love to all!

Soldes! Soldes! Soldes!

I’m having some Fois Gras with figs and some fresh baked bread for dinner. Don’t get too excited; though I actually cooked the Fois Gras, it came prepared and frozen and all I had to do was follow some not too simple instructions. Well, it’s a bit tougher than that, even frozen, pre-packaged fois gras requires 24 hours and there are more than 3 steps involved. (No comments from the Chef gallery) But still, it’s quite tasty and really good with a nice glass of wine and a Pepsi. (Keeping that ever so precarious mix of stimulants and depressants balanced). Waiting for dessert to emerge from the oven, a homemade apple crumble. (or jumble)

Today was the first day of the famous French sales. Everything in every store, almost, is on sale. 30-50% off of purses, scarves, shoes, coats, makeup, perfume, jewelry, electronics, books… So I went into town. The boutiques in town have nothing but naked mannequins in their windows, wearing little banners a la Miss America, that say ‘Soldes’. All the stores have an ‘Everything Must Go’ look to them. And if there is something you’ve had your eye on all season, then today is the day to go, before all the good stuff gets snatched up.

I love being there for the craziness. All the people, all the pushing and shoving, sidewalks full of shoppers; it gives the whole town a pre-Christmas feel. The best part about today is that all the racks and bins are still full and mostly organized, as opposed to what they’ll look like by next week. I saw a pair of beeeautiful boots that I liked and a purse that I’ve had my eye on for the whole winter is now ½ off, it’s also the time to stock up on those jeans. Didn’t buy anything today so as not to appear too impulsive, but I may have to go back tomorrow or Friday.

……….

We leave for Tunisia bright and early on Saturday morning. On our flight out we change planes in Nice, but the return flight is direct Tunisia to Toulouse. Been reading the Lonely Planet guide and looking forward to the trip. I’m concerned about the whole Americans in a Muslim country thing, but S is unconcerned, and others I’ve talked to say that the Tunisian people are very welcoming and friendly.

Am working on some photos to post, hopefully I’ll get that done by Friday as ‘The Precious’ will not accompany me to Tunisia. Four days is a long time to be without it, but four days is to short a time to make it worth having to cart it through airports and carry it on to a plane etc.

That is all.

A Sign?

While at Vatican City, I bought a cute necklace. Well, it's basically a crucifix, but the necklace is a black plastic cord and the crucifix is a rectangular block of crystal that is laser-etched. The crucifix is etched into the center of the block of crystal. I found it to be very modern and kind of cool. I bought it and wore it for the remainder of our Italy trip.

I wore it from Wednesday through Sunday, on Sunday night, when we got home, my neck was very itchy, I went into the bathroom and took off the necklace as I looked into the mirror and found that I had a horrid rash around my neck. A rash so red, so itchy and so bad that it is only just now starting to clear up.

My question is this: Should I take that as a really bad sign?

December 25th – 26th

Our Gondolier warned us, well maybe not exactly warned, more like mentioned. I don’t know why it still scared the holy crud out of me. ………. We walked from our hotel in Santa Elena (a beautiful refurbished convent) which is on the ‘far east end of the city’ (as our reluctant water taxi driver pointed out), on Christmas Day in Venice and the city was pretty quiet. We had arrived at around 2 pm and were out exploring when we came across this little carnival right there on the edge of town (literally, the edge of town). We'd been on the road for a while and hadn't eaten so we looked for a food vendor to get some lunch. Spotting a decent looking place we joined the queue. Pickings were slim but we each found a meal to our liking. S had salted popcorn (as opposed to the more popular sweet popcorn) and I had a cream filled canolli (leave the gun take the canolli) and a Pepsi. Hey, what the meal lacked in nutrition it more than made up for in taste (and sugar). I was quite surprised by the number of tourists we encountered, here and all over Italy. The largest group represented was the Chinese, hundreds of Chinese all over Italy. Anyway, despite it being Christmas day, a few shops were open to cater to the ubiquitous tourists and a few gondoliers were available to paddle us through the maze of canals. Hunger satisfied and ready for adventure we approached a gondolier and asked what a tour would cost. He spoke English and quoted us some crazy prices and assured us that it would be the same no matter who we asked. It was Christmas day after all. The guide book had quoted about the same prices, but it's still a bit of a shock. But when in Rome (or Venice)… So we went for it. Let me just say here that even though we were bundled into coats and under a flimsy little blanket that the gondolier provided us, I was still shivering uncontrollably. Lesson here is to wear more clothes when taking a boat ride in the dead of winter. To be sure, steering a gondola is a true skill. Those little boats are only about three feet wide at the widest point and they are over thirty feet long; in some of the broader canals the gondolas can pass three or four abreast. And if you don’t think that that requires skill, you should try it. Our gondolier expressed a preference for the canals in winter because they are passable and because of less crowding he is able to take some of the narrower canals and show other parts of the city. I can’t imagine what it must be like in the height of summer in the main canal, with hundreds of gondolas, water taxis and water buses competing for passage in something as traction-less as water. On our ride we encountered a gondolier in training; his trainer was standing in the center of the gondola rocking it, not too gently, from side to side while shouting instructions to the poor driver as he tried to negotiate a narrow turn without smacking into the far wall or the corner. Poor guy, we followed him for a bit and every passing gondola driver, including ours, yelled at him and taunted him by steering too close to him, sort of pinning him to the wall. Not a job for the meek or fearful. Our driver did the whole ‘This is this, and that is that’ tour guide thing as we moved from canal to canal. When we commented on how low the water level was in some of the smaller canals he explained that it was low tide. He told us that sometimes the city does get flooded, you’d expect that since it is built over water, and that at those times a siren will sound to warn the residents that the water level is rising. He described the siren as an 'air raid siren' and let me tell you, that’s exactly what it is. The siren went off the morning of the 26th at 4:00 in the morning. I think S and I both sat bolt upright in bed looking around wild eyed and trying to figure out what the ear piercing sound was. S regained his wits first and mumbled, ‘flood siren’ as he fell back to bed. ‘Are we supposed to do something?’ I asked in bewilderment. ‘Yeah, go back to sleep’. As if I could! ……… The next morning we packed up and prepared to leave. Our end of the ‘island’ was not flooded, but toward the center of town and the famous Piazza San Marco there was probably a foot of water. The Venetians erect these elevated sidewalks to get from place to place and let me tell you, you have not seen anything in your life like 80 Chinese tourist trying to walk from their hotel to the water taxis on three foot wide sidewalks while pulling suitcase, holding umbrellas and dodging other tourists doing the same thing, but going in the opposite direction. You keep rooting for someone to fall off the edge and into the water. Or maybe only I would root for something like that. The locals own hip waders and they just slosh right through the center of the water. Some creative tourists strapped plastic bags to their legs and joined the locals. The best part was when a local, who had been walking on the boardwalk, would get impatient with the crowd and just jump into the water splashing all the tourists on the boardwalk, and then walk away through the water. ……… Venice gets two enthusiastic thumbs up. Next stop Florence!

Canal Views.

On the grand canal.

Doge's Palace on Piazetta San Marco.

Ponto di Rialto on the grand canal.

Frozen smiles on our cute little faces...no literally frozen.

View of Canal della Giudecca from the top of St. Mark's

St. Mark's Square flooded.