Tunisia is also known for carpets, which put Kairouan on our map. We couldn’t find an affordable Airbnb on our potential dates, so we settled on Sousse. We could day trip to Kairouan for sightseeing and carpet shopping, while also being close enough to visit El Jem, the massive Roman colosseum just south of Sousse. Plus, Sousse is Tunisia’s third largest city, so we didn’t think we’d have trouble filling up the time.

We also wanted to see the desert, since we’d missed it in Morocco. But tagging that onto this trip seemed too complicated, so we tabled it for the time being. We’d have five more weeks in Tunis before we left for Chicago, so we hoped we’d be able to figure it out.

Then Plan B became Plan A.

Our host in Nabeul, Mohamed, is a retired tour guide who took us on our journey around Cap Bon. While spending the day with him, our desire to visit the desert and Berber villages came up. Mohamed was emphatic that leaving Tunisia without that tour would be a lifelong regret, and promised to come up with an itinerary and find a driver/guide who could shepherd us.

We’re not really all that keen on guides and itineraries. Despite our heroically abysmal language skills, we generally prefer to get around on our own, and favor wandering loose to having a schedule. We miss things and we’re inefficient, but we’re OK with both. We’d rather take things at our preferred pace than bend the knee to the gods of efficiency.

But the primary reason we couldn’t figure out how to get to the desert on this road trip was that our preferred travel style seemed inadequate to the task at hand. Drop us in a city and we’ll figure it out. We’ll Google Maps our way around, and find enough English spoken that our entire experience isn’t mediated through Translate.

That didn’t seem like a plausible outcome in the desert. We assumed there would be way less English, and no taxis milling about waiting to get us from place to place. The most common solution to this is a packaged tour. I don’t want to be a snob about it, but… I’m a snob. I’d rather skip the desert than have it curated for me like EPCOT Center.

Mohamed to the rescue. As we batted itineraries back and forth, he decided that he didn’t trust us in anyone else’s hands. Having Mohamed behind the wheel meant a number of things. Obviously, we’d be leveraging his language skills and his deep knowledge of the area. Even better, though, is the flexibility he offered. He was entirely willing to play it by ear with us. We’d head off with a loosely sketched plan, but stay, go, or veer off based on our interests. We’d pick up hotels along the way, so we weren’t lashed to the clock. Perfection.

Somehow, he was willing to take off with us in a week, so rather than returning to Tunis as planned, we’re able to extend this road trip and take advantage of our starting point. We’re still going to day trip to Kairouan from Sousse, but El Jem will now be part of the desert trip. We’re on a little bit of a tourist tempo for this adventure, which is not how we prefer things, but it’s also the only way to see more of Tunisia than just Tunis and Carthage.

Sousse

Sousse is both a big city and a lovely Mediterranean seaside town. There’s an active commercial port, a charming Medina (no one would ever accuse the Medina in Marrakech of being charming – bustling, chaotic, or threatening, but not charming), beautiful sandy beaches and resorts, and a wonderful archeological museum. We saw it all in our five days in Sousse, and still found time for a trip to Kairouan.

The Medina

Wide walkways, beautiful arches, classic storefronts, and no crowds. What’s not to love?

Although, at the risk of appearing more annoying than usual (because jaded is such a good look for us), we’re kind of Medina’d out. Both this Medina and the one in Kairouan were lovely, but they’re fundamentally shopping experiences. I think at this point literally the only thing we could make room for, after the pottery potlatch, is a tattoo. Which I’m considering. The Medina experience loses some of its appeal if you’re not actually shopping.

Another highlight of the Medina is the Ribat, one of a series of fortresses that dot the coast, set close enough together that signals could be easily passed. Sousse’s Ribat, completed in 821 AD, is easily the most well preserved of the bunch. It has modern conveniences such as living quarters for the garrison that include toilet and washroom facilities, an on-site mosque, and a cistern for collecting rainwater. Unsurprisingly, given the purpose for which it was built, it also has spectacular views.

Archeological Museum

Having obsessively documented both the Bardo Museum in Tunis and the onsite Roman mosaics in Carthage, more pictures of mosaics seem unnecessary. Well, too bad. The museum in Sousse is smaller than the Bardo, but the collection is just as choice.

It’s also a pretty cool building in its own right, as the museum occupies Sousse’s Kasbah, the fortress that protected the Medina.

There is way too much going on in this piece to shove into captions, so it gets its own section. OK, first, these are not murderers holding up the severed heads of their victims. This is, we are assured, a theater scene. The figure on the left is a poet, and the head to his right is a tragic mask. The figure on the right is a comedian, holding up a comic mask. For laughs. Even if you accept that, and I’m personally 50/50, it doesn’t explain the positively psychedelic border. What could?

Most of the mosaics are from the 3rd to 4th century AD, the prime period of Roman rule in the region. A bewildering exception is the Medusa, which dates from the 11th century AD according to the placard. If that’s correct it means that Roman cultural and artistic influence lasted for hundreds of years after their departure, past the Vandals, the Byzantines, and through multiple iterations of Islamic rule.

The placard further claims that the massive mosaic came from the private baths of a villa near Sousse, specifically from the warm bathroom, which it refers to by the Latin tepidarium. The rulers of Tunisia in the 11th century were the Zirids, a Berber dynasty. Were they really building Roman-style baths with tepidariums over 500 years after the Romans skedaddled? According to the Sousse Museum of Archaeology, yes. Color me skeptical. We haven’t seen a single mosaic here from later than 5th century AD. Nothing for 500 years, and then the Medusa. Sure.

There are grammatical typos in the English translations on the placards, so it doesn’t excessively strain credulity that there was an editing error in translation. That’s the Occam’s Razor answer.

Of course, it’s not all mosaics. The museum also houses some pretty cool artifacts.

Kairouan

Just as pottery was the motive force for visiting Nabeul, so did carpets demand the trip to Kairouan, Tunisia’s Carpet Capital. Kairouan, founded in 670 AD, is also Islam’s fourth holiest city (not sure who keeps the scorecard), boasts the oldest mosque in North Africa, and was the capital of Ifriqiya for five centuries. So… a little history here.

Which is reflected in the built environment. There are mosques, mausoleums, palaces, and feats of ancient engineering. Trying to get it all done in only one day was… stupid.

There are multiple ways to get from Sousse to Kairouan: bus, taxi, and van. We chose the cheapest method, the van, called the Louage (Google Translate says it means rental). The Louage, at least as a term of art, is specific to Tunisia, but the method isn’t uncommon. It’s just a shared van.

It was a little chaotic to navigate, as we didn’t understand that there were different ticket counters depending on the destination. We waited in the wrong line before being directed to the right location, which was, thankfully, close to the Kairouan van. The ticket counters and vans seemed intentionally near one another, which is why the ticket counters are spread out. It’s a pretty big facility, so it’s nice that once you have your ticket you’re near your van.

The Louages don’t have a fixed schedule, so, thank goodness, it doesn’t matter how inefficiently you manage the ticket process. Each van holds about eight people, and they leave when they’re full. If the next one fills up quickly, it just pulls right out.

They are also super cheap. Tickets were just under $2 USD each. So a full van pulls in $16 for an hour’s drive of about 35 miles. No complaints from us, but it definitely feels underpriced. Maybe it’s the absence of the lawyer surcharge on every transaction. You can absolutely tell when you’re someplace with a vacuum usually filled by tort lawyers.

Le Mausolée d’Abu Zamaa al-Balawi

Our first stop was just a few minutes walk from the Louage station. This is considered one of Kairouan’s most holy sites, as it houses one of the companions of Muhammad, Prophet of Islam and Messenger of God. Abu Zamaa al-Balawi died in 654 AD, so his tomb actually predates Kairouan. The mausoleum was built around the preexisting tomb in 1661 AD, 1,000 years later. Per legend, he kept three hairs of the beard of Muhammad, with instructions that they be buried with him. That’s why the site is commonly known as the Barber’s Mosque.

The interior is a riot of tile and plaster work. The plaster really stands out. We saw tons of great dimensional carved plaster in Morocco, but we haven’t seen this style before, with the pronounced open work. Just beautiful.

Here’s a 360 view of some of the glorious plaster work.

And this was just outside the Mausoleum, on the corner.

Grand Mosquée de Kairouan

This is the aforementioned oldest mosque in North Africa. Built in 670 AD, it was erected as part of the founding of Kairouan itself. It is not only one of the oldest places of worship in all of Islam, it served as the template for all subsequent mosques in the Maghreb. It is an imposing structure, even disregarding its historical importance.

Medina

We walked through the Medina a little bit for lunch before hitting the Governor’s House. It’s really pretty, even if we weren’t in much of a Medina mood.

Governor’s House

While Kairouan is a hotbed of carpet weavers, not all carpet sellers are alike. Many, if not most, are sharks, as we discovered in Marrakech. Buying a carpet is generally a process you survive, not relish.

So we did our homework, and instead of wandering randomly and waiting to be shanghaied we headed directly for the Governor’s House. It’s an attraction in its own right, aside from the carpet shopping. Built in the 18th century for the Bey (governor) of Kairouan, it’s still a spectacular space, even if it has been taken over by carpets.

But the real reason to buy a rug at the Governor’s House is that it’s a government run store with fixed prices. No haggling, no hard sell, no fisticuffs. No tears. We just had a conversation about what we were looking for and carpets were brought to us for feedback, refining the offering until we nailed it. We bought two carpets for ourselves and one for our daughter Ruby, who’d tasked us with getting something to her spec and budget. We’ve sent her a picture, but we’re certain she’ll be delighted when it shows up in person.

We are now officially done buying carpets. We have a silk Kashmiri rug we bought in Mumbai a few years back, the carpet we bought in Oaxaca, and a runner we bought in Marrakech. We bought another runner and a 4′ x 8′ Kilim in Kairouan, bringing us up to five rugs for our Chicago apartment of just a little over 1,100 square feet. We weren’t planning on buying two rugs here, but Dorothy fell in love with one rug and I fell in love with a different one. So we compromised and bought both.

The Bateau Pirate Cruise

Our last day in Sousse found us wandering about pretty aimlessly. Key fact, without which none of the rest of this story makes even a bit of sense: we opiated at lunch. If you’re gonna float, float, am I right?

We decide, if that’s the right word, to walk down to the port. Where we spot this, and are drawn towards it because, seriously, what the actual fuck?

Next thing you know, and I honestly can’t accurately unwind the steps, we’re aboard. I know we bought tickets. That’s all I can truthfully recall. So while we’re sitting waiting to heave ho, a Google search tells us that we’ve signed up for a two hour pirate-themed Mediterranean tour with lunch and entertainment. We couldn’t have picked a more ridiculous, touristy thing to do if we’d put any effort into it. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than skilled.

The cruise part of the cruise involved a circuit around the bay before dropping anchor for lunch not far from shore. Thankfully, we’d already had lunch (to wash down the opiates), so we were able to pass on what I’m sure was a mostly digestible meal. The best part of lunch was that they turned off the overamped Tunisian pop, which had been clipping the speakers in an unexpectedly successful effort to manufacture FUN. There was much dancing. Mostly by the men.

As the only non-Arabs aboard, we were quite the novelty, and had several interesting conversations. All of which were with Algerians, who love to vacation in Tunisia. I’m guessing that, ourselves aside, the entire manifest was Algerians.

That was plenty entertaining, but there was real entertainment on offer, as well. A shirtless, middle-aged man did tricks with sharp things. He got on all fours with a spiky thing under his throat and had a fairly substantial woman stand on his back. Then he laid down on a bed of nails while another large woman stood on his stomach. He was getting ready to repeat that trick with a bear of a man when we pulled into port and he ran out of time. Which I’m sure was accidental.

The best entertainment, other than talking with people, which we really don’t get to do very often, was the birds. People were throwing their bread overboard, which had a predictable effect on our fellow travelers.

That ties up our time in Sousse and Kairouan, and we’re ready for part three of this adventure, our desert romp. First stop El Jem, and then on to Tataouine. Yep. We’re going to Tataouine.