Home Sweet Home: The Third and Final Chapter!

Let’s see, where did I leave off last time? We departed Tunis with our friends, caravanning down to Kairouan. It was nice to see the Tunisian countryside along the way. Two things surprised us, the first was the number of butcher shops they had along the roadsides. Mostly sheep about to be slaughtered or the dead ones hanging. We even saw a small camel about to be butchered. In a 2-hour drive, we must have passed 20 of these shops along the road. I guess you could say fresh meat is plentiful in Tunisia! The other thing was the number of red peppers hanging to dry out. At some points, the scenery was all red from the peppers. They use the peppers to make their national dish- Harissa. It’s a spicy chili paste topped with tuna that you dip bread into, too hot for my taste buds though. Incidentally, they put tuna on just about everything here.

We arrived in Kairouan and our first stop was to check out the Mosque. It’s supposed to be one of the holiest sites in Islam. We did a quick walk thru while the kiddos played (it looked like every other mosque to me) and then a guide told us he could help us find a place to eat lunch. So we walked and walked (it was boiling out) and finally he brought us to this small kitchen restaurant where they prepared the food in front of us and we all tried not to watch. After about 2 hours (slow service is the name of the game here) we finally left, somewhat full- they served the standards of couscous and omelets but we are getting tired of those two meals so we weren’t overly impressed. We’ve actually found the whole dining out experience here to be pretty poor, after 3 weeks of eating out constantly I think we’ve only had a couple of good meals. We should be losing weight! The seafood in Tunisia is okay but only if you don’t mind eating your fish while it looks you in the eye!

After lunch, we decided to do a little carpet shopping since this was the place in Tunisia to do it. We had fun and when it came down to the purchasing, we all ended up with a traditional Berber rug. I’m pretty sure it was the AC that actually won us over; we were in no hurry to leave that showroom. Kicked ourselves later for paying too much but it was a great experience nonetheless. Who knows if the rug will ever work in our home one day (not like I could purchase it for a particular location) but I hope it does, it will always remind me of our shopping adventure. You really have to bargain hard, J and I always play good cop/bad cop. Guess who gets to be the bad cop?

Afterwards, we said goodbye to our friends and departed for Sfax. We got to the hotel pretty worn out and were over the moon to find that they had given us a large suite, finally some space for all of us to spread out in! The room was amazing, rose peddles all over, enormous fruit basket, treats. We should have been on our honeymoon or something. If we had that experience everywhere traveling would be a lot more fun : ) We spent the next morning walking around the Medina which was very untouristy. Personally, I prefer touristy because that means there might be something I want to buy. Untouristy means vegetables, carcasses, underwear, cleaning tools and traditional garments for sale. Not my thing! The only interesting thing was seeing the Berber women doing their shopping, they were dressed in the most fascinating and colorful way. Layers of bright fabrics tied around them (I don’t know how they stand it in the heat). Very National Geographic looking. The other thing I noticed was that there weren’t any people begging for money. I have gotten so used to seeing that in most of the poor mid-east countries we visit but not Tunisia. J informed me that they had graduated from USAID and you could certainly tell the difference. The rest of the day we did nothing, there was nothing else to do there! I guess it was nice to have a day off but if you ever visit Tunisia skip Sfax.

We departed the following day for Sousse with a stop in El Jem on the way. El Jem has an incredible Roman Coliseum, which was the third largest back in the day. It’s still very well preserved and had some fun tunnels that you could walk thru under it. We imagined that’s where they kept the lions during the gladiator fights! In Sousse, we found our hotel and chilled. Sousse is to Europeans what Cancun is to Americans. Miles and miles of beachfront resorts filled with Europeans and Russians. This also meant the dress code for the town was much more relaxed which was nice! People-watching kept us entertained, lots of speedos (etc.) in the “holidaymaker” wardrobe. The odd thing to us is how so many of the girls go topless, up until the age of 13 or so they just wear bottoms. You would never see that in the States would you? That night we headed into their Medina, the touristy kind which I enjoy and shopped some more.

Our last day in Tunis was nice. The morning started off by meeting our friends (who had driven down from Tunis to meet us) at a market in Sousse. We had run out of money the night before and needed to find an ATM before doing any shopping. Well, long story short it took us 10 different ATM’s to finally find one that worked! We drove around everywhere trying to find one but they were all off-line. It made us a little nervous that we were gonna be broke but Finally one worked. Then, 5minutes into the market, J got pickpocketed! Thankfully, they only got the equivalent of $20 but he was pretty ticked. The market was packed full of people so it wasn’t a wonder that someone could pull it off. We chalked it up to one of the joys of traveling, it happens to everyone eventually. Then we spent the afternoon playing at the pool with our pals. K spent hours in the water and loved every minute of it while the boys rode a banana boat in the Sea. That evening we finally found a restaurant we could enjoy- a Saloon! Felt like I was in Arizona for a couple of hours. That may have been the highlight of the trip for us. More shopping followed which meant more of J complaining that I was never going to get everything home with us. I showed him though, carried all of my new pottery on my back and didn’t break a thing : ) Christmas presents anyone?

We arrived late last night after a delayed flight (that was just par for the course since every flight and every train ride of the trip was delayed). We are so thankful to be home safely with no drama. It was a great trip with enough memories to fill a lifetime. We’re supposed to go to Damascus later this week for a couple of nights but it feels so nice to be back that I’m undecided on joining J. Right now, we’re attempting to put K to bed now at a decent time, she kept yelling “Daddy” for a while (he’s the softy, smart girl) and then she resorted to “Jesus”! Repeatedly. Too cute! Before I sign off and add the bazillion photos from our trip (for the grandparents of course!) I wanted to let my fellow bloggers know the web address to turn their blogs into memory books. See, I’m not doing all of this for nothing! http://www.blurb.com/create/book/blogbook