Tunis

Tunis

According to the ship tracker app, we have just passed Zembra Island and are heading into the wide indentation in the African shore at the bottom of which lies La Goulette, which is the port city of Tunis the way that Civitaveccia is Rome's port city.  Tunis lies about seven miles “inland,” in quotes because it's actually seven miles of complex waterway, mostly involving the Lake of Tunis, a huge lagoon with Tunis on one end and LaGoulette on the other, seven miles away.  The depth of the Lake of Tunis averages one meter.  Also a canal, seven miles long, running along the edge of the Lake of Tunis, from LaGoulette to the city.

The ship is still juddering and creaking, and the outdoor doors are hard to close once you've opened them – the ones that are unlocked, that is.  This constant movement is obviously not something you'd experience on a river boat – or probably at the other end of the size continuum, like the ship the Schuberts will be on in January – that ship could probably sail through a hurricane and the hurricane would get seasick.  

I'm back in the Explorer's Lounge, holding tight onto my chair (no, that's not true.  Slight but noticeable movement back and forth).  I made a journey of exploration out the door to the deck, and really didn't get all the way out – it is really windy out there.  A couple of very faint lights in the distance off in that direction (port), and no rain that I could feel.  The wind is not cold.  I pulled really hard to get the door closed, which was really hard, and returned to civilization.

First light – it's an overcast day, thick folded clouds stretching left to right across the sky.  Lights of a port ahead of us; faint line of land stretching to each side and around us.  Very few lights except for straight ahead.  La Goulette.

And now we're practically on the harbor.  Only one big ferry in port.  Standard-looking commercial port – tank farms, huge spherical LNG tanks, container cranes, warehouses, maybe a power plant in the distance.  The oversized bay we're in is ringed, at least on the side I can see, with pretty high mountains in spots.  [UPDATE:  Only one really high mountain.  With banks of absurdly bright lights on top, as we discovered the next evening.]

Looking further inland, I can see the canal and the Lake of Tunis.  And beyond, the land rises up, and on the slope is a white city, dim in the early light, insubstantial, strangely, like curtains billowing in the breeze, but unmistakably... something white.

We are turning around, inside the breakwater, just, I'm convinced, to show off.  Now we're backing into the channel right past the ferry (“Tunisia Ferries”), a classy red design on white and nearly our size.   

I was wrong – there's another huge ship in port, which was hidden by the ferry – the mccl 'sea patris' (no caps) which, according to The Internet, is a vehicle carrier.  Good heavens – that ship will fit so many vehicles in it!  Looking over the acres of port, I can see some large yards full of cars that are lined up tight – not parking lots for employees.  And there's a freighter further in.  But that's it.

Went out onto the deck – the wind isn't much of a factor here, and it's warm enough to stay out for a while – and saw three distinct rainstorms around us, one that looks like it's raining on Tunis, which explains the ethereal aspect in the dawn light.

We're in Africa.

And just like that, here come the rains down in Africa.

Our tour doesn't leave until 9:45 this morning, so there's time for a leisurely breakfast.  I'm reading about Tunis while Abbey's taking a shower.  We'll be taking a bus, then a walking tour of Tunis, focusing on the medina which, according to Google:

...is the medina quarter of Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979. The Medina contains some 700 monuments, including palaces, mosques, mausoleums, madrasas and fountains dating from various periods. 

It came as no surprise that we'll also be visiting the souk in the medina, which is the shopping area:

The souks of Tunis are a set of shops and boutiques located in the medina of Tunis, capital of Tunisia. Most of the souks were built under the Hafsid dynasty in the 13th century and near the Al-Zaytuna Mosque. They are organized in several streets and alleys. 

Thirteenth century?  Pretty neat.  I suspect it will be easy to take for granted how old this city is, at least partly because it won't feature architecture that we associate with being old; we'll be learning a whole new sequence of history, and how it is expressed.  I look forward to this.

Onward.  On the way from the ship to the buses is a modern attempt to recreate the souk – shops

Imitation souk (right)

featuring mostly tourist stuff.  Lots of them.  Finally made our way out to the bus, and down the long straight highway on the narrow strip of land between the canal and the Lake of Tunis.  We're looking out the windows; the two couples in the seats ahead of us and across the aisle are deeply engaged in a conversation about mortgages and property values.

Lots of traffic in Tunis.  One whole block on the four-lane, with nothing but flower stalls lining it.  We get to the bus parking area.  Our plan:  start at the casbah, work our way downhill through the medina to the Al-Zavtuna Mosque, which is completely surrounded by souks.  Then back again.

The casbah is, according to various sources, including our guide,  the highest point in the medina, the fortress guarding the medina, or the old city.  It's a term which seems to be limited to cities in North Africa.  The medina is also defined as the town or city or, as our guide told us, more recently it refers to the old town.  So the casbah is part of the medina; both describe a kind of cohesive municipality, or part of one.

The medina we walk through in Tunis seems mostly to be government buildings and memorials. 

There's the Ministry of Defense, which we weren't supposed to take pictures of (no Ministry of War that I noticed).  I accidentally included it in one of my photos (right, left background).  There is the memorial to the martyrs, mostly Tunisians murdered by the French (“murdered” is the word our guide used)(right, center if pic).  One of them, a labor leader, is buried in a large ,elaborate, domed tomb next to the memorial.  The Ministry of Finance building is a beautiful white structure with crenelated towers and arched arcades of windows.  We are high up, and can see a lot of the city, including the French cathedral down toward the water.  France controlled Tunisia from 1881 until Tunisian independence in 1956, and there are still a lot of signs around town in French.

We move down a narrower passage from the wide plazas and boulevards we've been on, and enter the souk.  It's a maze of narrow streets and alleys; it feels like we've moved underground, but the streets are covered with arched ceilings.  It's an exotic combination of a network of caves, and a medieval city (which it kind of is).  It completely surrounds the Al-Zavtuna Mosque, the oldest mosque in the city, founded in the 7th or 8th century, and rebuilt – much as it is seen today – in the ninth century.  Stones, columns, arches and many more building materials from the ruins of Carthage and the subsequent Roman community that replaced it were used in its construction.  

One thing that surprised me (and disappointed me, a little) was that there was no mention of Ancient

Carthage.  It's about ten miles by car from Tunis, and only a little more than three miles as the crow flies from our ship.  If you look along the Carthage coastline, you'll find a circular water formation, which is what is left (and probably reconstructed) of a kind of turntable at the entrance to the Carthage Navy Yard.  Next time.

Back to the souk.  Shops in the souk are generally tiny, open to the street or alley, usually well-lit.  The passageways are darker, giving them that ancient, mysterious look.  There are sections of the souk which specialize in particular products – gold, jewelry, perfumes – but it's mostly a hodgepodge of one little shop – some the size of a king size bed – after another.  Products are displayed everywhere, including out on the street.  And, unlike the Christmas Markets, almost everything is interesting – eye-catching, colorful, elegant, intriguing, often handmade, from prints to shawls to fezzes to leather goods, pottery, rugs and, of course, gold, jewelry and perfume.  Much of the souk smelled like incense and perfume – subtle, and pleasant.  We stopped at where the souk widened out a little at the confluence of streets, and learned that this is where the slaves were sold for hundreds of years.  The guide proudly told us that slavery was abolished in Tunisia in the late 1840s - “Before in America, yes?”  Many in the group seemed surprised at that.

In the souk, we saw an Actual Cat, keeping the at-least-one-Actual-Cat-per-trip streak alive.  Actually, there were a number of cats, dashing in and out and barely missing getting stepped on. 

At one point, we went up some steps into a bigger shop which had some steps that went higher, and so forth; the stairs appeared and disappeared, wending their way through countless shops, until at about the fourth floor we emerged onto a flat roof with many levels, and from the top level you could see the whole city.  The floors of the roof, and some of the walls, were tiled with broken pieces of colorful tile mortared in place.  All the buildings we could see – for miles – were white, and had flat roofs.

We lined up to use the two unisex toilet stalls (toilets without lids or, at least the one I  used, a seat or a comprehensible flushing mechanism), and headed downstairs.  We continued through the souk until we came to the entrance passageway where we had entered, and we headed (uphill all the way) back to the bus.  I am happy to note that I have been able to walk pretty well the last two days, and the hill wasn't a problem at all.  We're getting a lot of concentrated exercise on this trip, and that doesn't even count our laps around the ship.

Back in the bus, and down the highway between the lake and the canal, and back to the ship.  We had to go through the long passage of brand-new souk-like shops.  There was one place with postcards – lots of them – but nearly all the postcards featured 1) camels, 2) desert, or 3) French stuff.*  Abbey shopped a little, and got a nice shawl.  I went back to the room and put my feet up. 

We've been able to see the sky from horizon to horizon a lot today – from the ship and from the medina, and it's been like Meterology 101:  every kind of cloud formation and storm, but with lots of blue sky, and even a rainbow.  We were rained on – sprinkled, really – upon emerging from the souk, but that stopped quickly.  It rained later in the afternoon, once while we were on deck – the ship was in bright sunshine, and it was raining.  From the top of the ship, we had a panoramic view of Tunis, miles away, and the suburbs on the low hills that stretched around the Lake of Tunis.  Sections of this miles-wide expanse of white were lit up by the sun in turns, but we never got to see the whole thing in the sunlight.  We did see another rainbow, however.

So – lunch (inside, because of the wind), and a leisurely afternoon.  Abbey took a nap, and I began downloading Abbey's trip pictures from Google Pics so we didn't run out of room.  Only Abbey's pictures are on Google Pics.  Both our phones are on airplane mode, and only hers is hooked up to the wi-fi.  We get one connection per person, and mine is the laptop.  So I guess Abbey's pictures upload to Google Pix automatically when her phone is on wi-fi; my pictures are stuck on my phone.  I thought I'd turn my phone on sometime during these two sea days, and dump my pictures into Google Pics and then down to the laptop.  Can I do that without wi-fi?  Can I do that in the middle of the Mediterranean?  Everyone else is busy on their phones; I guess there's some magic that makes it work.

We've been walking around the ship, mostly on the top, Abbey more than I.  We fought the wind for four laps after dinner tonight – accompanied by an almost-full moon that went in and out of the clouds – and then another lecture we had missed, on the TV.

By the time we went to bed, we had turned west, out of the shelter of the bay, and the excitement was starting.

[ABBEY: Barf bags instantly appeared everywhere, in clever little leather holders that fit over the railings. Just like the instant Christmas decorations that showed up in all the public areas on December 4th.]  

* - The Sahara Desert starts about 300 miles south of Tunis.  Tunisia gained its independence from France sixty nine years ago.  Camels?  Didn't see any.