"Like Seven Inches from the Noon-day Sun..."
Trip Start
Jun 03, 2010
1
35
47
Trip End
Aug 27, 2010
Tunis, Tunisia
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Yesterday was my first full day in Tunisia, and I decided to make the day trip out to see the ruins of Carthage. I walked up avenue Habib Bourguiba to the light rail station and mumbled something to the woman behind the glass at the ticket booth. I just said yes to everything she asked, and in hindsight I probably got away with paying less for my ticket than I should have. After a few minutes the two-car train creaked into the station and we all squashed on. I was definitely the only foreigner on board but thankfully there were other women, so I didn't feel too out of place. We headed out past the port of La Goulette and towards Carthage, and maybe after about 20-30 minutes we arrived at the Carthage station I was going to (there are several Carthage stations; I arrived to Carthage Demerch and left from Carthage Hannibal). I got off the train and was in the middle of nowhere. I was going to Byrsa Hill, so did the logical thing and headed up the hill, hoping I would see something that vaguely resembled ruins. I walked for about ten minutes through a really residential neighbourhood - fancy, but not what I was looking for. The road curved and finally I came to a roundabout. On my left, a sign in arabic and Latin - museum karthago. I continued up the hill and finally came to the top of Byrsa. I bought my ticket and went in - there was an absolutely splendid view of Carthage and the Mediterranean, it's beautiful brilliant blue a stunning backdrop to the Roman and Punic ruins. I spent about an hour poking around the museum and looking at the displays, as it's hard to appreciate the ruins if you can't imagine what life was like. Took some photos and them headed back down the hill to where I had seem some brown historical signs. After being lost for over an hour, I grabbed a taxi which ended up taking me back to where I'd come from, but I then ran into a Polish couple who were looking for other parts of Carthage. I kind of hijacked their taxi but promised to pay if I could go with them (taxis are so cheap, this hardly counts as an expense). Went to the roman theatre, then left them and finally found the roman villas I'd been initially looking for. The villas are something else - mostly ruins, but the scale is impressive. it's like a small section of a town with a road, and mosaics still in place. Of course, it all overlooks the Mediterranean and is absolutely gorgeous. Ran into an English couple who were leaving, and they gave me their map. I noticed a Tunisian woman actually turned around and gave the English lady a positively filthy look, which is rather understandable, as the Tunisian was covered head-to-toe and the English lady was in shorts and a tanktop. Walked next to the Antonine baths - the third largest in the Roman world, there are not only ruins of the baths but also a school. it is all right at the foot of the hill right on the sea, and big palms now grow up and down the paths. There was a little underground chapel that still had mosaics in situ. Absolutely amazing. Wandered around the residential streets of Carthage for a bit and then caught the train home.
Today I had the brilliant idea of going to the Bardo museum, essentially the Tunisian Louvre. Although it's currently undergoing renovations and most of it is actually closed, the bits that are open are mind-blowing. Once you get there that is. I managed to transfer to the right metro station, but once there could not get on the right train and rode about the suburbs for the better part of over an hour. However, I wanted to see a bit of Tunis and this was a really good way of doing it, so I didn't hurry to the museum. Although I wasn't on it at the time, i think some of the trams are Bombardiers, and it's a relatively safe way of seeing the city. However, there are no maps on board and the ones at the big station were just in arabic. When I realized it was a lost cause, I flagged down a cab and paid 2 dinar to delivered to the door. The traffic was insane - the weather was ridiculously hot (ironically enough a song by Rob Thomas and Santana came on the radio, giving this blog its title) and there were three lanes trying to go around a roundabout. Everybody was honking and yelling, and people were running across the street. A traffic cop nonchalently stepped in and tried to direct, but honestly to no avail. If there had been an accident it wouldn't have been serious as traffic was hardly moving.
The collections in the museum are amazing - mosaics from roman villas and baths in present-day Tunisia. It's difficult to believe they're so old. The Bardo is itself a cool building, having been a former palace, but most of the really interesting rooms were closed.
I also cruised through the medina this afternoon, but will go back in two days and write about it then. Going to the town of Sidi Bou Said tomorrow, which is also the beginning of the Holy Month of Ramadan.
Comments
It's a good thing dad isn't there with all that "getting lost" stuff! He might have had kittens by now :-P
Heee! So that's the reason I keep seeing stray cats around :p really, taxis are like a "get out of jail free" card because they're super cheap and you can't go outside without seeing twenty right away. Anyways, it is more like being misplaced, not lost. Everything I read about the metro said the signage is appalling -?at one station, there were no station name signs anywhere, they'd all been removed for some reason. It's not me, it's bad signs ( plus the fact there were police stationed where I needed to go in Carthage and I wasn't keen on running into them)