Feelin’ Easy-ahh in Tunisia
We chose Tunisia rather randomly - the cheapest nearby country to fill 2 weeks before our upcoming UK housesit - and very ignorantly worried that it might just be a continuation of our Moroccan experience. More mosques, more North African landscape and culture, more medina market peddlers and walled old cities and offers of camel rides.
Thankfully, and not surprisingly, Tunisia is a refreshing change. We find it to be more laid-back and comfortable. In Morocco, the vast majority of people who approached us in the street were trying to sell or scam us somehow, which made us feel defensive and closed. In Tunisia, we are able to interact more freely with people, joke, laugh, be curious, connect. I spend a full hour in a random salon de coiffure (barber, not coffee shop) chatting (in French) or absorbing (Arabic) the open friendly barbershop banter. When Ramses undercharges me $15 for the very comprehensive treatment (head, nose, neck, ear, eyebrows…) I know he’s not looking at me with dollar signs in his eyes.
La Marsa
We land in the quaint but well-developed multi-cultural beach town (aka expat-heavy affluent Tunis suburb) of La Marsa. Great restaurants and hip coffee shops, a sweet unpopulated beach, and a place to catch our breath. Of course we hit the food market, trusting a group of women who insist we try this mysterious red fish, and a gross-looking Monkfish that ends up tasting like lobster.
Sidi Bou Said
An easy 1-hour walk takes us to the picturesque tourist-destination town of Sidi Bou Said - Tunisia’s answer to Chefchaouen (Morocco’s Blue City) with a healthier resident-tourist ratio and more tasteful restraint with the blue paint. Light lunch at a very beautiful (and therefore touristic, and overpriced, but still beautiful) café overlooking the ocean, very typical trinket-vendors in the market, and a walk through an amazingly restored villa (with typical trinkets on the main floor - the “free” tour is a very effective way to lure us inside their shop).
Tunis
A local train ride past the historic ruins of Carthage - complete with a 30-minute walk between stations where they started repairing the line a year ago - brings us to our next abode, a sweet away-from-downtown apartment. Clearly a middle-class neighbourhood: within a few blocks we pass 4 coffee shops, a women’s rights non-profit, 2 private daycares with paintings of white toddlers and Disney characters on the walls, a chic restaurant serving poutine, and two croissant-filled patisseries. Two blocks further is the national stadium, an impressive cement structure that somehow is missing all the seat platforms (never installed? Stolen? BYOB Bring Your Own Bench?).
Venturing into downtown, the streets are busy and pleasantly chaotic but not overwhelming. In the old medina market, an impressive number of “friendly” men keep directing us to the Berber antique carpet exposition that “is closing today, in one hour!”
Best of all, we are fascinated by the Bardo National Museum. Housed in an imposing palace complex built under the Hafsids (1228–1574), and fortified and extended by the Ottomans in the 18th, it has an amazing museum of Roman mosaics, and re-creation of the luxurious living styles of the 13th century rich and famous. It’s rated the 2nd most important museum in Africa (after Cairo) and I must agree.
Click on the first image below for a 40-second video walk through a mosaic tile wonderland and.luxurious living chambers, then enjoy more photos from the museum below
Monastir
Our final days are in the small beach town of Monastir, with more gorgeous beaches, warm water, seaside promenade, fresh fish, and an impressive old fort (Ribat) where some scenes of Monty Python’s Life of Brian were shot. As with so many historic sites, we’re free to just explore and climb (sometimes without handrails) and even get lost in this winding, twisting 1,200 year-old wonder.
El Jem Roman Colosseum
Saving the best for last, we rent a car on our final day and drive through a succession of small towns and open date-tree fields to El Jem. Built around 238 AD, the colosseum is one of the best preserved Roman stone ruins in the world, and is unique in Africa. And unlike my walk past the colosseum in Rome, we’re not lost among thousands of other selfie-snapping tourists waiting in line for a restrictive guided tour. We simply pay a meagre $5 and have full run of this amphitheater that once sat 36,000 people.
This truly bizarre Nike “Good vs. Evil” commercial, starring Ronaldo (the OG: Brazilian) and other football (the OG: soccer) greats from the 1990s, was filmed here. Watching it is worth 1.5 minutes of your life, and gives great video footage of the site too. The fourth episode of The Amazing Race 1 also ended here.
Goodbye Africa, Hello 2025
Heading to the airport I suddenly realize we’re once again leaving Africa. The last time we left, in 2000 after 7 years with Habitat for Humanity, I was a bawling blubbering blob in the back of Mr. Mubita’s pick-up, feeling like I was leaving a piece of me I could never again relive. This time I feel nostalgic but strong - wishing there’d been more time and interaction, but knowing that the piece of me that comes alive in Africa is still alive and well, and in fact is alive and well even when not on the continent, fully part of the symphony of light and faith and laughter that sparks through me wherever we go.
This relaxed time in Tunisia has given us space to map out the “wherever we go” for much of 2025. We head now for 2 house-sitting gigs in the UK, then almost two months in Albania, a quick visit to Zekiah in Copenhagen, a week in Krakow Poland (because, well, why not?!), then back to Canada for Galen's grad and a summer mostly based in the maritimes. After a September wedding in BC, we’re still waiting for the wind to whisper - Asia? Costa Rica? Yukon? No need to know yet, just know that we’re still strong and eager for more adventure and growth in 2025.
Here are my final glimpses of Africa, snapped hastily through the taxi window. Those of you who have been to most any part of Africa, you’ll recognize them.
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Currently in...
Mayne Island, BC, then to a family wedding in Surrey
Heading to...
Paris, Albania, Milan, then Cambodia-Thailand-Vietnam for Oct-May. Please share any sites, people or ideas by email.