What the…is that a camel outside our window?

We’ve now landed in Tunis in the country of Tunisia, the 4^th of our journey.  Tunis is on the Mediterranean on the North African side, so we’ve decided to have some relaxation on the ocean for the next few days before we head into the Sahara.  The above picture is from our balcony, and yes, that’s a camel!  I always pictured them surrounded by oceans of sand being ridden on by turbaned Arabs or Berbers, not aimlessly wandering in lush greenery 100 ft from the Mediterranean.  While watching it I was grasping how ugly a camel really is.  It doesn’t have the graceful power of a horse, or the elegance of a giraffe. It’s just goofy and clumsy looking!

Anyways Tunis is a pretty nice city, and far more modern than those we saw in Morocco.  Its main boulevard, Avenue Habib Bourghiba really looks like the Tunisian Champs-Elysees.  Di and I had a fantastic lunch in one of the cafes there, and if we weren’t surrounded by Tunisians we could have easily been in Paris.  The decor and menus are straight out of a Parisian cafe, and all the waiters speak French to you.  Given that a lot of these North African countries were French protectorates (ahem colonies), French is far more useful than English here.

Yesterday we spent the better part of the morning in the ruins of Carthage, one of the great cities of the ancient Mediterranean world.  For those who are into Greek/Roman mythology or history, Carthage has an amazing life-story.  Virgil’s Aeneid tells the tragic love story of Elissa (Queen Dido) of Carthage and King Aeneas of Rome.  Hannibal, who some argue was the greatest military commander in history, lived here.  He almost brought the Roman Empire to its knees, and he ruled Italy for about 15 years.  Anyways I’ll briefly summarize the cities’ history here:  The Phoenicians founded it and built a great city, but eventually lost it to the Romans.  They in turn razed it, and eventually built another gorgeous replacement that was one of their Empire’s 3 most important.  The Vandals then came and trashed it and rebuilt it as their capitol for their short-lived kingdom.  Briefly after the Byzantines took over, but shortly after that the Muslims came to rule.  They governed from Tunis however, and left Carthage to agriculture, and today the remains are in Tunis’s nicest suburb (30 mins from the city).  So for today’s visitor, you get to see the ruins of 4 destroyed cities spread out over a couple square kilometres, with modern day mansions and villas in between the sites.  I admit my imagination is not vivid enough to create images of grand ancient cities over the ruins which are not much more than a few broken columns and some really old bricks.  The mounds of bricks are huge, I’ll give them that, but they’re still just big brick mounds.  It doesn’t help either when they’re surrounded by boatloads of Mediterranean cruise patrons, and there are hundreds of them.

So after Carthage Di and I went to check out Sidi Bou Said (only 10 minutes away), pretty much a Tunisian Santorini.  The buildings of this little cliff-top village are all white with bright blue window grills.  Its architecture is Spanish Muslim and really quite pretty, and the streets are narrow and romantic as you stroll through them over-looking the azure ocean.  It’s all picturesque until 8 tour buses arrive, like clockwork, every 15 minutes from the cruise ships.  So ya, we didn’t stay long here either unfortunately due to the crowds, because on a quiet day I’m sure it’s extremely beautiful.

So now we’re back at the hotel, and as I look out the window the camel’s gone.  Who knows what I’ll see out there tomorrow?  I’m hoping a liger.