Tunisia - Day Trip

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The one day excursion took in a few sights: First we went to see the mausoleum of the first Tunisian Prime Minister. This looked like a Mosque with two minarets announcing its existence. It took ten years to build, required a number of graves to be moved and, just so he would not be lonely, all of his family's graves were moved into the mausoleum. His tomb was in solid gold and the walls were covered in gold leaf and, to make sure he was well remembered, there was a mini museum of his clothes, pictures, passports and other such items. He very thoughtfully left a space for his son to be buried in on his passing. The arrogance of man can be quite astounding at times. One day in a few thousand years time his mausoleum will be unearthed by archaeologists and will have the same reaction as the unearthing of the pyramids has had.

Next was the shopping part of the day. We were taken to a carpet shop for a "show". This was seeing how the carpets were made by hand and then a man from the shop showing us MANY different carpets. It was interesting to see how different the designs of each tribe were but the selling part of the show went on for a bit too long. Apparently it did pay off though as one couple bought a big carpet for about £650! The other part of the shopping was at the "Medina" or walled old city market in Sousse, a town not too far from where we were staying. It was fun to walk around the market and stopping in at a few of the shops. There was a lot of "come and see", "only one Dinar" (the currency is the Tunisian Dinar at about 2.2 to the Pound Sterling) and various other attempts to get us into the shops to buy. We haggled over some pottery before heading back to the bus.

Our final stop of the day was for lunch in Port El Kantaoui. This is a purpose-built tourist marina with hotels and restaurants around it. We sat at a café overlooking the marina for a well deserved late lunch beer and sandwich, delicious! And then it was back to our hotel in time for a visit to the swimming pool.