Rock the Kasbah in the Funky Old Medina

(For those over or under certain ages: Rock the Kasbah and Funky Cold Medina are two pop songs from the 80s.)

Tunisia has been great fun at times, and generally quite interesting, but there’s a lot of waiting and less-than-easy travel and hot weather...it’s like we’re in the Sahara or something!

There is great architecture and beautiful examples of tile and sculpted décor –- Arabic, Ottoman, Roman, nomadic/bedouin -– but in general the sights are marred by trash, graffiti, decay, or progress (like satellite dishes in the view). But there are not many tourists around, and preservation takes money, and so it goes.

Medinas are the oldest section of each town, the original walled cities with mazes of small streets, and still the primary market areas of the cities as they now exist (enlarged outside of the medinas).

Parts of the Tunis medina are now very tourist-oriented, but if you keep wandering you get to the real thing, where the daily life of a city’s commerce is done, with tailors at work, shoe repair underway, and goat heads and sheep intestines on display.

But the tourist-oriented parts aren’t all bad, as that’s where you find the freshly baked waffles, whole wheat bread, ice cream, and other goodies. And thankfully there's not much hard-sell of the souvenirs anyway.

The kasbah is the citadel of a walled city, the highest fortress-type corner of the walls, if it’s still standing. In the city of Sfax (where Brian claims fax technology was developed, heee), the Kasbah is open to roam around and upon as a museum of traditional architecture, with interesting exhibits on how the medina walls were built and materials used for walls, flooring, and ceilings over the years. Who needs steel for rebar when you’ve got olive branches? Our roaming included climbing up the bastions and walking on the battlements; one tower’s route up was a ladder with rungs made of tree branches imbedded in the walls in a corner.

The Bardo museum in Tunis is fabulous, mostly for its roman mosaics (quite similar to the Villa Romana mosaics we saw in Sicily. The museum entrance is a boring cement block outside, but actually incorporates a former palace which has been built up and expanded over centuries, with gorgeous ceilings and marble columns.

After the Bardo, we scooted out to the ritzy suburb of Sidi Bou Said, where regulations require all buildings to be painted white and blue -- gorgeous effect!

And also to the Roman baths at the ruins of Carthage -- so little remains of a city which had such great importance -- Brian of course liked to pretend that he was a Roman senator out for a workout, massage, and dip in the Olympic-sized pool.

We’ve been doing a lot of swimming, either in the sea or at the zone touistique hotels, which will let you in for a small fee.

For some odd reason we can’t seem to find Brian any decent fitness centers –- or any at all, for that matter –- trust me, he doesn't let us forget that the best part of vacation is in extremely scarce supply. He sometimes improvises with push-ups and squats by the pool, to the befuddlement of tourists and the delight of the hotel staff, who give him a thumbs-up and call him “tres sportif.” And once when I was swimming without Brian, the pool guy asked if I was a professional. I may have OK form, but trust me, I am a very slow swimmer -- It's just that no other tourists seem to do more than splash around a bit.

And now, as always, the food report: our guidebook talks of great-sounding lamb dishes and chickpea stews, but we’ve found that most menus are heavy on couscous, roasted chicken and “sorry, we’re out of that.” (“Finished,” as they say both here and in Singapore.) We’re looking forward to Club Med to get a greater variety of local fare -– which may sound incongruous, but CM truly is good at showing off local dishes. Also, you can count on CM to have great food safety practices, which is good for seafood items and the not-fully-cooked egg-in-pastry dish called brik that I can’t wait to try (Brian swears one of these made him violently ill in Morocco a few years back).

Also, baby goats and camels are really cute –- Brian will cover that soon.

(All photos courtesy of Marty, as always! We love traveling with our personal professional photographer!)