So what’s the appeal of more ruins at this point? It’s all about the y-axis. Carthage is flat. We’re pretty sure that’s because the Romans fucking flattened it. Whenever you see anything like a column standing in Carthage, it’s because someone found the pieces and stood them back up. Most of the Carthaginian ruins are foundations.

We hadn’t been fully aware of that until we visited El Jem, an enormous Roman colosseum that still has most of the vertical structures, such as bleachers and galleries, intact. You 100% get the you-are-there feeling that Carthage doesn’t completely offer. So in hunting about for a couple of day trips we might enjoy in our last few weeks here, Dougga and Bulla Regia stood out for their aggressive use of the y-axis. El Jem definitely whet our appetites for a more immersive ruins experience.

We used the GetYourGuide app for the first time, to book what we thought was a group tour. It would have been our first, but we figured it would be survivable on a one-day jaunt. Imagine our surprise when a car pulls up to our pickup spot with a driver, our guide, Yaya, and empty back seats for us. The lap of unexpected bougie luxury.

Dougga

This was definitely a full-day trip. We got picked up at 8:00 am at the clock tower in Tunis’ city center and returned there at 5:00 pm. Our first stop was Dougga, about a two hour drive, but we stopped and stretched our legs at about the halfway point, in Testour. Like most Tunisian cities, it dates back to at least Roman times. However, it has a distinctly Andalusian flavor due to the influx of Muslim and Jewish refugees in the 1500s. That’s obvious nowhere so much as the town’s Great Mosque, which dates to 1631 and features Andalusian architectural and decorative elements.

As a major agricultural center, Dougga was a wealthy city in its Roman heyday. The area is still one of Tunisia’s key breadbasket suppliers, with the ruins nestled lovingly within a patchwork of beautifully tended fields.

Dougga is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, having earned that designation as the best preserved Roman small town in all of Northern Africa. Our guide provided an unexpected reason for the extent of the Roman ruins in Tunisia. According to Yaya, one Koran proscription is to not live where pagans lived. So while the Romans were delighted to build on the ashes of Punic cities they’d razed, Muslims ignored them. There were plenty of Byzantines and Vandals without those prohibitions, but at least the Muslims left the Roman sites alone. I have no way of proving this, but it’s at least a good story.

Prior to its Roman iteration, Dougga had been inhabited by Phoenicians and Berbers, going all the way back to the 6th century BC. In fact, one of the most interesting things about the site is that, unlike Carthage, the Romans didn’t raze Dougga when they concluded the Third Punic War. Instead, they built on top of the existing Numidian street plan, which is why the city isn’t laid out in the prescribed Roman rectilinear grid.

That laissez-faire attitude extended, unusually, to the civic sphere, as well. The Numidians, who were Berber, lived side-by-side with the Romans for 250 years, with dual magistrates each governing their own sections of the larger city. Very un-Roman.

Except…

The Numidians were kind of Rome’s fifth column in Carthage. It was pressure from the Numidians that drove the Carthaginians to beef up their naval preparedness in violation of the treaty signed with Rome at the end of the Second Punic War. Which set off the Third Punic War, crushing Carthage. How did the Romans learn about Carthaginian military plans? The Numidians ratted them out.

So while co-government might have been a little un-Roman, you can see the rationale for it, even from this distance.

The Theater

The entrance to the site takes you right into the theater, which was built in 168 AD. It optimistically seated about 3,500, despite Dougga only having 5,000 residents at the time. This, like most of the structures, both in Dougga and in similar Roman era cities, was financed by local poohbahs, but built largely to a Roman provided plan. If the locals built enough, spent enough, and built to plan, they could get their taxes lowered and become Roman citizens. Kind of like how you can buy citizenship in many countries today by purchasing expensive property. Those who don’t study history are doomed to live in Barcelona.

Downtown

Dougga boasted a robust city center, encompassing the Capitol, a forum, a market, and several temples. The highlight is the Capitol, which is still standing as originally built in the 2nd century AD. It wasn’t a Capitol in the sense that it was a seat of government. Rather, it was a temple dedicated to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.

It’s an epic structure, with its front columns rising 26 feet and the original pediment still intact. This was not, as so many structures of its ilk were, reassembled from parts. The front of the Capitol has been standing in its current configuration for almost 2,000 years.

It has survived for so long in no small part to an act of defacement during the Byzantine era. Under pressure from the Vandals, the Byzantines tore down some of the existing buildings in order to harvest enough material to add a defensive wall, which had the secondary effect of supporting the rest of the structure. It’s the wall at the lower left of the picture below, by the tiny human figures. They clearly weren’t trying to build a monument, as the stacking of the stones lacks the precision of the Roman and Punic work. In addition, they were prone to using the capitals and pediments as bases instead of caps, which just looks kind of weird when you stare at it. Which we did.

Dougga happens to sport prime examples of opus africanum, a local building technique the Romans adopted in North Africa. It’s characterized by pillars of alternating vertical and horizontal stones to provide structural stability, permitting the rest of the wall to be filled in with smaller stones. Walls were traditionally built here using dry-stacked stones, with opus africanum thrown in to support more substantial structures. It can be seen clearly on the side of the Capitol.

The Baths

For a small town, they had plenty of baths. Archaeologists have identified four, three of which have been fully excavated. One belonged to a private residence, two were public baths, and no one is quite sure about the fourth. Of the two obviously public baths, one was considered a winter bath and one a summer bath. The pictures below are from the winter bath, the Licinian Baths.

Sewage

Who doesn’t want a whole section on sewage? Fine, I’ll be brief.

First, the city actually had a sewer system. There are still access stones scattered throughout the city, like the manholes of the gods. The one place you can see the system in action, as it were, is at the latrines, nestled between the winter bath house and the residential district. It features twelve regal seats that flush directly into the sewer.

Speaking of regal, in the third picture below you can see the mosaic platform on which stood servants prepared to… serve. Behind them was a basin, in which they soaked cotton affixed to the end of long sticks. Which they then delicately reached forward to wipe the bums of their masters, depositing the soiled cotton directly in the latrine.

Jesus, don’t you dare tell Elon Musk that was a thing. Thank you.

Housing

There were two distinct residential neighborhoods in Dougga. You can see one of those neighborhoods on the hill in the picture below. The housing in this area was, relatively speaking, modest. But below that was the housing for the Masters of the Universe. These were massive compounds with substantial below grade components, entire second levels that protected the residents from the elements.

Mosaics

Seriously? Did you really think we could do this without more mosaics? You are a silly, silly person.

Bulla Regia

Next stop, Bulla Regia. OK, next stop lunch. Then ruins. Order of operations.

Bulla Regia lacks Dougga’s vertical majesty, but that’s because its claim to y-axis fame is negative. Where Dougga had some housing that included below grade components, Bulla Regia’s housing tilts heavily underground.

Bulla Regia is also a little wilder than Dougga. Lacking the UNESCO designation, there’s less signage, less oversight, and less budget available for upkeep and exploration. The dark side of the depth of Tunisia’s historical heritage is that there’s a certain amount of necessary budget triage.

Housing

The Romans built heavily underground in Bulla Regia, mimicking in results if not technique the traditional Berber troglodyte cave dwellings. While the houses all had a full story aboveground, the lower floor provided protection from the extremes of both summer and winter.

Unlike in Dougga, we were able to enter the lower floors in Bulla Regia, and we were struck by how well they were lit and ventilated. These were engineered to be very comfortable spaces.

Infrastructure

Despite being Dougga’s little brother, Bulla Regia boasted a full panoply of the expected Roman amenities: baths, a theater, bugs… The works.

Mosaics

Ha. Just when you thought there would be no more mosaics. Foolish mortal.

Curiously, the mosaics in Bulla Regia are better than Dougga’s. That’s because there’s an entire Dougga wing at the Bardo in Tunis. They’ve looted themselves. But as a lesser site, Bulla Regia has been left comparatively alone, leaving a richer collection to enjoy in situ. And as with all of the other ridiculously beautiful mosaics we’ve seen here, it is impossible not to be completely gobsmacked by the expressiveness and delicacy of the execution.

And back to Tunis to close out our day.

I hesitate to promise, but unless something truly bizarre happens, this should be our last ruins visit and our final documentation of mosaics. I hope you’ve enjoyed.

Blown Glass

Tunisia has a long, rich history of glass blowing. Which for some reason died out as an art form in the 14th century. Enter Sadika Keskes, a Murano-trained glass artist determined to revive the craft. After returning to Tunis from her studies, she opened her own studio and conducted the research necessary to recreate Punic glassmaking techniques. Sadika is a force of nature and a national treasure, so we had to visit her studio in Gammarth, just the other side of La Marsa.

I have no idea if this is one of the Punic techniques she reproduced, but her calling card is blowing glass through metal frames. We were dubious about getting glass home safely, so we asked about shipping. They ship! We’re happy. Only wholesale quantities. We’re sad. We’re returning with none of Sadika’s beautiful work, but the showroom visit was still a blast.

Chechias

Strictly speaking, we didn’t buy a chechia. But we did buy hats from a Chechia maker who’d branched out into more modern shapes. I tried on a chechia, to be a good sport, but I looked exactly like what you’d expect: an organ grinder’s monkey. OK. More like an organ grinder’s monkey.

Dressmaking Supplies

The Medina in Tunis is divided up into zones, one of which is devoted to tailor’s supplies. There’s clearly a robust clientele, as the fabric and trimming options are dense. It reminds me of LA’s fabric district, only with more interesting inventory.

Jewelry

There is so much jewelry, an entire district in the Medina is given over to it.

While there’s plenty of beautiful work, one shop particularly stood out. Down a little alley, behind a frankly grubby facade, we found an old man who made exquisite enameled Art Nouveau jewelry. Not quite old enough to have been making it from the beginning, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was second generation and had inherited the shop from his parents.

All of the work was his, the prices were ridiculously low (I refused to accept change for the earrings), and he was clearly working from a lifetime of knowledge and experience. Dorothy picked up earrings, and then we went back so she could get a necklace.

Medina Crafts

Like Morocco’s Medina, the Medina in Tunis offers a rich array of traditional crafts: wood, metal, leather, and glass, as well as antiques.

Music

Yes, yes, we’ve already established that music is a craft. Try to keep up.

We haven’t seen much music in Tunisia. Or anywhere else for that matter. It’s pretty easy to find museums, galleries, and artisans, but decoding the listings for music has been more complicated. Since we’re not experts in the local styles, it’s hard to know what you’re signing up for. Plus, given that much of the music scene is club-based with late start times, we don’t see nearly as much music as we’d like.

But just off the Medina in downtown Tunis sits the Théâtre Municipal de Tunis, a jewel box of an Art Nouveau concert hall built in 1902. They have an easily decipherable schedule and a reasonable curtain time, so we just picked something almost at random. We wound up seeing Spectacle El Gobba, a massive troupe presenting an evening of Sufi music. Sure. Why not. Spectacle!

Counting the director, the troupe was 27 strong: 8 singers (2 women and 6 men), 8 percussionists ( 1 Western drum kit and 7 playing an array of traditional percussion), one each of keyboards, flute, bass, and violin, and, finally, 6 dancers. And a partridge in a pear tree.

For no particular reason (ignorance?), I was expecting something more trancelike, but it was an evening of high energy performance. They have their own Facebook page and their own YouTube Channel, but I’ve got a few live snippets below.

Caution: extensive use of traditional Sufi lasers. You’ve been trigger-warned.

My Mexican and Moroccan tattoos are ink representations of images that are culturally relevant to their place of origin. I have a traditional Oaxacan embroidery pattern from Mexico and a henna-inspired Moroccan piece. But while the motifs are site specific, neither location has a history of rendering them as tattoos.

In Tunisia, tattoos themselves are the culturally relevant art form, and the Berber tattoos are beautiful. They’re a visual language, a series of graphic symbols that are meant to be both decorative and communicative.

(Image gleefully stolen, from someone who I’m pretty sure stole it herself)

Even the Amazigh Tifinagh alphabet looks like iconography.

Here’s an interesting thing. There are very few curved shapes in either Berber tattoo symbology or the traditional alphabet. The few curved letters mostly have variants with straight lines.

I think that may be tool-related. The primary method of traditional Berber tattooing involved incising lines with a sharp blade, where it’s harder to accurately make a curved shape than a straight one. Those same symbols were used in rugs, where the primitive looms also made curved shapes more difficult to execute. The methods used to disseminate these symbols may well have constrained the visual language itself.

While that’s a plausible theory, there’s no way to definitively say whether it’s true or not. That makes it true!

The Heart Wants What It Wants

I’d been craving a Berber tattoo ever since the first rug dealer we met in Tunis explained that the rug motifs actually originated as tattoos. But when I broached the idea to Dorothy she voted nay.

Her completely logical points were: A) I already had a North African tattoo, so it would be redundant, and B) it would dramatically reduce the available real estate for future tattoos, and how would I feel in Southeast Asia or Turkey when I craved another piece and couldn’t find room? All very logical.

Plus, I’d been trying to locate a local tattoo artist, and I hadn’t found anyone who seemed to really know the Berber tattoos. They all did some variations, but no one seemed to be a specialist. My concern wasn’t design or proficiency, it was meaning. It’s like that thing where you go to an artist for a Chinese ideogram and you’re assured it means Power, and then you meet a native Chinese speaker who asks you why you have the word for Chicken tattooed on your arm. That thing.

Admittedly, once we leave the Maghreb the odds of running across a Berber native who’d ask me why I had chickens tattooed on my arm seemed low. But the point was respect, not cosplay, so I needed some confidence that the design would be appropriate. And not for nothing, disagreeing with Dorothy about the visual arts is pretty stupid. All signs pointed to no Berber tattoo.

Then two things happened. First, we toured the Sahara, which immersed us in Berber culture in ways that hanging out in Tunis didn’t. And holy shit, that culture is rich, deep, and surpassingly beautiful. It made my heart ache to think how enriched American culture would be if we hadn’t so thoroughly devastated and subjugated the native peoples. I wanted to celebrate a still vibrant Berber culture in the only way I know how: by using myself as a canvas.

Finding The Maestro

The second thing that happened was finding Manel Mahdouani. qartaj.com is a commerce site for Tunisian crafts, but they also blog, and we found a post on Amazigh symbolism that cited Manel as the modern expert on Berber tattoos. I was able to track her down and we met for a consultation.

That turned into a wide-ranging, delightful two-hour long conversation that veered from tattoos to colonialism, with stops along the way for stories about her month in America (a truly epic road trip, from DC to Oregon and back) and my family’s emigration from Ukraine to the US.

But as much as I enjoyed the conversation on its own merits, it’s what she had to say about Berber tattoos that hit home. It turns out she’s as much ethnographer as tattoo artist, traveling the Sahara and documenting the tattoos of the people she meets. There’s a great documentary about her from five years ago, although it’s in French. Even if you scrub through the talking, the video of her meeting Berbers and cataloging tattoos is more than worth it.

One of the interesting things she’s learned through her research is that it’s impossible to put together a definitive codex. Different tribes often ascribe a different meaning to the same symbol. She’s documenting as much of that variation as she’s able to uncover, but there will never be One Truth about the meaning of the symbols.

However, it’s her reasons for undertaking the ethnographic research that are so compelling. Manel is Berber through and through. Her grandmother had traditional Berber tattoos, but her mother didn’t, and Manel didn’t get inked up as a child, either. She said her mother’s was the generation that looked on the tattooing with shame, breaking the chain through which the culture had been passed down over centuries. Rather than being seen as emblematic of their heritage and traditions, the tattoos had sadly come to represent backwardness.

Manel told me that in her travels, the youngest tattooed woman she met was thirty, and she’d grown up fully nomadic. But her daughter attended school, and she wasn’t tattooed. Even in the desert, it would have engendered bullying that she didn’t want her daughter to endure.

Which means that traditional Berber tattooing isn’t a dying art. It’s a dead art. It’s like an oral tradition that stops being transmitted when children aren’t interested in the old ways, except in this case it’s the parents intentionally killing the culture. Manel is preserving the history and meaning of this art form before its last followers die out, leaving nothing behind.

So if I was on the fence about getting a Berber tattoo, and I wasn’t, this sealed the deal. I’d be transforming something ephemeral into something permanent, and participating, in my own small way, in the preservation of a centuries old tradition.

There’s a potential silver lining to all of this. The generation that couldn’t be bothered to hear about the old ways often spawns a generation hungry for knowledge about their heritage. Manel represents an almost radical Berber pride (you should have seen her eyes when she talked about Arab colonialism) that itself represents the seeds of regeneration. She can’t possibly be alone, and if enough of her cohort feel the need to reconnect with their origins, Berber tattooing may well come back. Manel is preserving the art form, but with luck it’s being preserved as if in amber, just waiting for its DNA to be extracted and brought back to vibrant life.

But What About My Tattoo?

In discussing my tattoo, we looked through a ton of Manel’s source material: books, photographs, and her original research. We discussed the meaning of the different symbols, and we settled on grounding my piece on iconography associated with strength and protection. No fertility symbols. Nothing girly. We made an appointment for later that week to do the work, with a promise to send me a design for approval beforehand.

I could not imagine having notes for her on the design. At this point I wanted a piece by Manel as much as I wanted a Berber design. The integrity of her work is amazing, and whatever she wants to do will be the right thing to do. If she came back to me with a motif of chickens, I’d say yes, and unapologetically defend it to anyone asking why I had Berber chickens tattooed on my arm.

I’d brought Manel several pictures I’d scraped online as inspiration. Here’s the one that most thoroughly captured what caught my eye about the Berber designs. Manel’s design is first and foremost about the meaning of the symbols she chose based on our conversation. Then it’s about finding an appropriate and harmonious balance of those elements. As expected, no notes. And no chickens. Home run.

Each of the components of the tattoo has a specific meaning.

Which I got from Manel’s explanation.

This site has information about many of the other Berber symbols, but not all of the ones Manel used.

And, the final result. A tattoo I’m proud to have. Thanks so much to Manel, for a beautiful tattoo and a great experience. I’m proud to carry a little piece of Berber heritage with me wherever I go.

Marrakech has been a continuously settled city for almost a thousand years. Carthage was settled by the Phoenicians in 814 BC. We’re a block from the ancient Ports Puniques, which were built by the Carthaginians between 300 and 200 BC. The Romans sacked Carthage and destroyed the Punic Ports, along with everything else, in the Third Punic War. In 146 BC.

And if that’s not enough, the Amazigh (they don’t like to be called Berbers, which is from the Latin for Barbarian), who are the only people who can legitimately call this home, have been living here for around 10,000 years. Of course, that part is true for Morocco, as well, as the Amazigh settled all across the Maghreb: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.

That all seems especially old to an American, as our history is so brief, compared to the rest of civilization. But only if you forget indigenous Americans, as we are taught to do. North America was settled between 16,000 and 25,000 years ago. We were just super attentive in Colonist School, and did a more thorough job of obliterating indigenous culture than our counterparts. Hooray for the slightly less brutal colonialists, who left a rich Amazigh culture largely intact.

Speaking of obliterating, it’s not like the Romans left any of Phoenician Carthage to paw through. Or Phoenicians. Carthage had a population estimated between 250,000 and 450,000 when the Third Punic War started. By the time the Romans were done, only 50,000 survived. And every one of those 50,000, man, woman, and child, was sold into slavery.

The vast majority of what we think of as the ancient ruins of Carthage is the residue of the Romans rebuilding the city about a hundred years after they erased the Phoenician Carthaginians. The Romans were nothing if not thorough, so pretty much all we have left is what they built.

Which, if it’s possible to put the context aside, is spectacular. There are Roman ruins all around Tunisia, and I’ll write separately about the ones we visit. But for now, I can fill up an entire meaty post just focusing on Carthage.

It is very hard to set foot here without stumbling over ancient history. In fact, one of the most notable aspects is how casually the locals seem to treat the ruins. I think it’s the confluence of how very much of it there is, and how very little it has to do with the current inhabitants.

The stump in the picture above is the base of a Roman column. One of about half a dozen, hanging out on the Hannibal train station platform.

Rome’s ruins belong to the Italians. Roman ruins in Tunisia are just… here. There doesn’t seem to be any sense of ownership or patrimony, so the sites themselves are very lightly managed. You can pretty much clamber and climb wherever you like, and you have to work pretty hard to avoid picking up potsherds and mosaic tiles just sitting on the ground. It feels like one of those ponds stocked with fish so kids are sure to get a catch, except the fields haven’t actually been seeded. There’s just more material than science can absorb.

Our first morning here we walked to the local supermarché, and as we turned the corner on our block, we were walking alongside a field full of yellow daisies. And stone ruins. Turns out it’s the Paleochristian Museum. We didn’t know Paleochristians were a thing, and we weren’t expecting ruins literally on our corner.

After the grocery trip, one block towards the water brought us to the Punic Ports. Some of the spots are far enough away that we’ll take a cheap taxi, so we don’t wear our legs out getting to and from, leaving us too knackered to actually enjoy the experience. But if we were younger, the entire span of Carthaginian ruins would be walkable.

There’s a huge range in the ruins, from sprawling public facilities to pocket parks to entire residential neighborhoods. Let’s take a tour.

Thermes d’Antonin

The Baths of Antoninus, completed in 162 AD, are the third largest Roman baths in the world, and the largest outside of Italy.

What’s mostly left of the baths is the foundation, but that’s plenty epic in scale. One of the eight pillars that held up the Frigidarium in the center has been stood back up in what was the Palestre on the right. It’s 50 feet tall (the capital alone weighs eight tons), but that’s about it for verticality. You can walk through the smaller rooms in the top center, so there’s still an incredibly strong sense of the layout and scale of the structure.

We’re going to El Jem soon, a largely intact colosseum well south of Tunis, which I’m sure will be more jawdroppingly epic. Until then, the Baths of Antoninus are doing a fine job of filling the Holy Cow slot.

Floors

More than merely floor mosaics, these are actual floors. That you can walk on. That you’re meant to walk on.

Carved Stone & Decoration

The decorative work is amazing and detailed. I can only imagine what the baths were like intact. Because, sadly, I couldn’t find any artist’s renderings, so imagining is what’s left.

Marble

There’s a ton of natural marble columns scattered throughout the site. The marble itself qualifies as a work of art.

Le Quartier des Villas Romaines

The Roman Villas was the high-end residential neighborhood on the hill just above the Baths of Antoninus. What’s impressive about this site is the scale. It is for real an entire neighborhood, and had not only its own Odeon for performances, but even boasted a nymphaeum. Which, sadly, was merely a shrine to nymphs, and not the place where they lived. Only the toniest neighborhoods had their own nymphaeum. Movin’ on up!

Even though mostly what’s left is the foundations, there’s still more than enough to get across the extent of the grounds.

Floors

Just like the Baths of Antoninus, there’s plenty of floor mosaic here, almost all of which is actually floor. Walking on it isn’t merely encouraged, it’s required in some places just to get from Point A to B. I guess when you have the embarrassment of riches these sites are drowning in, some of this stuff is just floor.

Mosaics

But the true star of the show here is the mosaics. There are so many wall and floor pieces here, they are literally sitting in a field, leaning against walls and supports. For scale, each of the pieces in the picture below is between about four and six feet in each direction.

What follows are Greatest Hits from the Roman Villas. There are hundreds and hundreds of these mosaic slabs, and this is truly just a taste.

Les Ports Puniques

The Baths of Antoninus win the Carthage d’Or (which I just invented) for grandeur, and the Roman Villas take the prize for art. But the history award goes to the Punic Ports.

Rome nursed a hard-on for Carthage for ages. The First Punic War in 264 BC erupted over Sicily. No archdukes back then, so they worked with what they had. Rome defeated Carthage in 241 BC, taking Sicily and exacting reparations.

Punic War the Second broke out in 218 BC, and featured everyone’s favorite bedtime story, Carthaginian general Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps with elephants. The classics. Despite Hannibal’s early success, Carthage was again defeated, suing for peace in 202 BC. No one remembers that part.

The cause of the Third Punic War was, in large part, the Punic Ports. The peace treaty signed in 201 BC called for Carthage to demilitarize, so the Romans viewed the building out of the port as an act of war. The port could accommodate 220 warships, between the docks on the island and the shore, with a central pavilion from which the governing admiral could view the sea approach without incoming ships being able to see the port.

Merchant ships entered the military horseshoe port for inspection before being guided through a canal (top right of the horseshoe) to the rectangular commercial port.

The Romans declared war in 149 BC, and the sacking of Carthage was complete by 146. There was no Fourth Punic War.

Roman Amphitheater

While there’s next to nothing left of it vertically, this is still a substantial structure, the fourth largest amphitheater in the Roman Empire. It presented a variety of popular entertainments: venationes (animal hunts), gladiatorum munera (just what you think), and damnationes ad bestias (condemnation to beasts, the crowd pleasingest form of capital punishment in Olde Rome).

One of the interesting recurring motifs is the Christian Chi-Rho of Constantine, which can be seen in several photos below. It wouldn’t have been original to the amphitheater, as the symbol was first used in AD 213 and the amphitheater was built in the first century AD. It was expanded to its current footprint in the third century, and that’s when it may have picked up the symbols.

After that expansion, by the way, capacity was about 30,000.

Roman Theater

This is hardly Colosseum scale, but, unlike the Colosseum, it’s been restored for modern use. There’s a control booth, a modular stage, and a pretty substantial lighting rig. They host concert and events, and still seat to the original capacity, about 5,000.

Baths of Gargilius

Apparently, no one is 100% sure that these are, in fact, the Baths of Gargilius. There was such a thing, it was probably near here, and this might well be it. If it is said baths, it played a minor role in Christian history, as the site where St. Augustine called a conference of bishops in 411 (Nothing says “Here for business” like meeting in the baths).

Or not.

Either way, it’s notable for two reasons: 1) it sits literally on the roadside of a major thoroughfare, just hanging out. And 2) the gate below is the only attempt to manage control, which is a joke. The gate is unlocked, the site is unmanned, and the back end of the site opens into hiking trails through parklands. You could probably take a pickaxe to one of the columns to shear off a souvenir and no one would notice.

That said, it’s a lovely setting for what, in the context of Carthage, is a site so modest it’s not even worth locking up.

The Cisterns of La Maalga

Tucked up not far from the Baths of Gargilius are the Cisterns of La Maalga and the Carthage end of the Aqueduct of Zaghouan. The aqueduct brought water from Mount Zaghouan, about 56 km away, but the aqueduct’s route covered about 130 km. In addition to filling the cisterns for drinking water, the aqueduct also supplied the water for the Baths of Antoninus.

The cisterns were the primary water source for Carthage, and covered about 50 acres. With a capacity of 44,000 square meters, the 16 tanks, each about 100 meters long, were the largest cisterns in the Roman Empire.

Maison de la Chasse au Sanglier

This is literally hanging out on a street corner. It may warrant locking up, unlike The Baths of Gargilius, but it apparently doesn’t warrant any information. Not only is it lacking in explanatory signage of any kind, including its name (it’s a POI on Google Maps), there isn’t even any information on the interwebs about it. I can prove that it exists, but there’s pretty much nothing else.

Google Translate says it’s Wild Boar Hunting House. Sure. Why not.

Salammbô Tophet

This is a creepy little necropolis, and one of the few pre-Roman sites left. Dedicated to the Phoenician deities Tanit and Baal (even the Romans knew not to fuck around with Baal), the site is dominated by a cluster of child-sized stelae, either as funerary offerings or god tribute. The stelae appear to be child-sized for a reason: the funerary stelae were for the children entombed at the site.

It was long believed that the site was dedicated to child sacrifice, but the winners write the history, and the Romans had ample reason to demonize the Phoenicians. Even the name, Tophet, puts its thumb on the scale, as it refers to a place near Jerusalem synonymous with Hell.

We’ll never know, as the site is pretty jumbled up at this point, the land having been upheaved both by the native marsh it’s built on and the encroachment of urban development. The site butts right up against housing. Would it be awesome or terrible to have your deck overlook the possible site of child sacrifice? Please vote in the Comments below.

Musée Paléochrétien

I don’t mean to be all, “Meh, more ruins,” but The Paleochristian Museum isn’t particularly impressive. Nor particularly expressive about how it’s a museum or how it’s connected to Paleo-Christians. It’s notable to us primarily because it is, however minor, legitimate ruins right on our corner.

While “Paleo-Christian” evokes a laughably ahistoric image, the site was built around 400 AD, and the foundations represent what’s left over from a basilica and baptistry. So, yeah. Christians.

Quartier Magon

The Magon District is interesting because it represents one of the few sites where the Romans left enough of the Punic buildings intact to repurpose them to their own ends. Mostly, they just reused the land and the building materials, as they did at the Ports.

The site had originally been Punic residential artisans’ quarters dating back to the fifth century BC. Post-sacking, the Romans repurposed it as workshops for their own craftsmen.

Bardo National Museum

The Bardo is in Tunis, but many of its treasures came from Carthage. The collection includes everything from Punic jewels to Roman sarcophagi to Christian baptisteries. But the highlight, to my mind, is the preposterous collection of Roman mosaic pieces, most of which originated in Carthage, many of them from the Roman Villas. They’re mostly in the 300-400 BC range, but there’s a handful of newer pieces.

And there truly isn’t very much to say about them. They speak for themselves so much better than I could.

The Site

We haven’t yet been to any buildings that were over the top, like the medersas and palaces of Morocco, so the Bardo was a delight. Built in the 15th century as a palace for the Hafsid Bey, it’s housed the museum since 1888.

Floors

I keep saying this, but it’s truly hard to get over the fact that you can just walk around on 2,000 year old mosaics. I have a feeling that will never not feel weird.

Artifacts & Sculpture

It’s not all mosaics. They’re just what tends to sear into the eyeballs.

Religous Representation

As one of the central commercial centers for the entire Mediterranean, and a major power, Tunisia was historically a crossroads that brought peoples from all over the Mediterranean and beyond. It is a distinctly tolerant culture, and it has been welcoming to people of all religious beliefs. It’s no surprise that the Bardo features artifacts from Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

The Mosaics

The Bardo has an outstanding collection, although I think it suffers from not being presented chronologically and telling Tunisia’s story. There’s art from throughout Tunisia’s history, but there’s no attempt at narrative, which feels like a missed opportunity. It definitely leans more art museum than history museum, but it’s an amazing art museum, so it’s hard to complain.

For me, the absolute standout is the ridiculous hoard of Roman mosaics. I’m not claiming the mosaics are the most important Tunisian art, simply that this particular collection of Roman mosaics is objectively mind-blowing. There are pieces both epic in their scale and delicate in their execution. The quality of the craftsmanship aside, it’s hard to wrap your head around the sheer effort required to create these pieces.

There’s a lot here, but sorry, not sorry. I thought it better to err on the side of showing the incredible range of the collection than to brutally cut it down to a few supposed highlights. So, please enjoy these, and let your mind be blown.

Epic in Scale

It’s not clear whether these pieces were originally wall or floor mosaics, but they’re displayed vertically, and they’re all in the two story tall range.

People & Figures

Animals

Still Life & Geometrics

This time we’re staying out in the suburbs, Carthage to be precise. Although you’d think of Carthage as an ancient city, and you’d be right, it’s also the name of the current town in which the ruins of the old Carthage reside. We’re still part of the Tunis Governorate (Tunisia has 24 Governorates, placing them somewhere between county and state), but Carthage is its own city.

The sting was supposed to be taken out of that by the light rail system (TGM: Tunis-Goulette-Marsa) that runs literally behind our apartment. The Airbnb reviews were pretty clear that you can hear that lonesome train rumble past, but it’s just not an issue. The train’s relatively smooth Doppler is easy to ignore, as opposed to the random spikes of shouting, fighting, and singing (sometimes all at once) that peppered the air outside our apartment in Marrakech’s Medina. Until all hours.

The Byrsa station is a short block from our apartment, so we can go north to Sidi Bou Said and La Marsa or south to Tunis. A quick 20 minute train ride gets us right to the hustle and bustle of the Old City and the Medina, just off the Tunis city center.

Or so we thought.

That red bar below the Khereddine station in the map above is the point past which the trains aren’t running right now. We’re headed southbound for our first trip to the Medina and the train just stops, no announcement, and everyone debarks. We’re not sure what’s happening, so we finally get out when we realize there’s no driver in the train, so it can’t exactly leave without us if it starts back up again. We go to the station agent, who explains to us, largely through gestures, as neither our Arabic or French is up to the task, that we have to walk to the next station.

Except that the bridge we’re supposed to cross to get to the other side of the canal and reach the next station doesn’t exist. Oh, it’s being worked on, but not in a way that builds confidence that it will be completed before we leave in three months. I’m sure it’s related to the track outage, so that also seems unlikely to get fixed while we’re here. We cross the canal at the next bridge and make our way back to the station where the train to Tunis restarts.

On the return trip we got picked up by some rando at the Tunis train station who tried to get us on a bus instead of the train. We were having none of it, being seasoned travelers and recognizing a scam when we see one. We’d take the train as far north as we could, and then either walk to the next station or take a taxi. Can’t trick us onto a bus.

Sadly, when I asked for deux billets a Byrsa, I was handed tickets and told to take the bus. That may be the first time I’ve ever taken a bus sheepishly. It’s also the first municipal bus we’ve taken on our travels. We’ve taken coaches to get from one city to the next, but this is the first bus bus we’ve taken. It was… fine. Just what you’d expect: crowded and jouncy.

Thank goodness the taxis are cheap here, and easy to call with their local Uber equivalent, Bolt. We’ll use the TGM for our side of the burbs (the fare is 16¢), but it’s only a $4-5 cab ride to the Medina. We don’t score points for making it harder than necessary, so taxis it is.

Ramadan

So far, our entire experience of Tunisia has been colored by Ramadan, which started the day after we arrived. Or at least it did here. Fun fact about Ramadan: it starts whenever the local religious authorities spot the crescent moon that signifies the new lunar month. In theory, Saudi Arabia’s Majmaah University Astronomical Observatory is supposed to be the official arbiter, but in practice localities often go their own way. Cloudy? Can’t see the moon? I guess Ramadan hasn’t quite started yet.

But it has officially started here, and things seem very slow. We have literally nothing to compare it to, since it coincided with our arrival, but shops aren’t open at all during the day, at least out in the burbs. We visited the Medina, which was its own kind of fail, and it seemed that merchants were largely open for business. Out here the little convenience stores are open, but not much else.

We waited for a late dinner one night, hoping to go out to a restaurant in our neighborhood after sundown. We’d seen a few open on evening walks, but we hadn’t noticed that the people sitting there were only drinking tea. No food was being served.

The narrative we’ve settled on is that breaking fast for Ramadan is a big family deal, so people don’t eat out. After that, gentlemen retire to the cafes for tea and conversation. But whatever the reason, we’ve home cooked all but two meals since we’ve been here. We don’t like eating out all the time like tourists, but never seems like the wrong cadence.

By the way, you can buy alcohol in Tunisia. Not big fans themselves, but they’re happy for you to do you. Except… during Ramadan. So, as if enough insult hadn’t been heaped upon injury, we’re dry for Ramadan, too. One of our goals for travel has been to stay long enough in each place that we had no choice but to fall into the local rhythms and live as much like locals as possible. Done and done for Tunisia.

Despite the tourist attractions, Carthage feels very residential and suburban. We expect that the areas that most cater to tourists are more active. We’ve been told that the Medina comes alive at night during Ramadan, which claim we were forced to check for veracity.

Iftar

Iftar is the evening meal that breaks Ramadan’s day-long fast, and it’s a corker. We went to a luxury hotel in La Marsa for iftar, and it reminded us of nothing so much as the Russian restaurants in Brighton Beach/Little Odessa, where the only choice is what quality of vodka you want. The dishes just arrive, and keep coming. Here, the only option was meat or fish for the main course. Other than that, we were just strapped in for the ride.

I’m not entirely certain how to count courses, but I came up with eleven: six appetizer, two main courses, and three dessert. Not a lot of pictures, because the emphasis was on quality and quantity, not plating.

The table was set with starting appetizers (Course 1): Dinner rolls, spiced olives with tuna, and cream cheese stuffed dates. Once we’d sat down we were served Mlewi, hot, delicious traditional Tunisian roasted flatbreads, kind of like chapatis, with an amazing smoky flavor (Course 2). Course 3: Shorbat Frik (Tunisian tomato/beef-based freekeh soup), with a mild but perfect amount of heat from the ras el hanout spices. While we were souping, Course 4 came out: a delicately fried (if that’s a thing) Brik au Thon, a turnover filled with cheese, hard boiled egg, and tuna.

Nothing had been finished or cleared when Courses 5 and 6 were served. Little mini quiches (5) and a trio of tuna salads (6): eggplant, green peppers, and carrot. The tuna was incredible, and all three were completely different flavor profiles, each one outstanding. But we legitimately felt like we were drowning.

Finally! The main course. Dorothy got pasta with roasted filet of grouper and I got pasta with roasted lamb (Course 7). Unaccountably, we were also served lamb liver in a rich lamb ragout to share for Course 8.

Well, that all needed a palate cleanser, so we were fortunate to get three flights of different desserts.

Post-dinner, we enjoyed a healthy debate as to whether lumber or waddle more accurately described our gait. That was the only healthy outcome. Thankfully, there was room under the porch for both of us when we got home.

Well, we’d been craving a meal out. We just had two weeks worth of eating out calories in a single meal. So we’re even!

The Apartment

Our apartment is great. It’s not fancy, but it may be the most practical apartment we’ve rented since we started this adventure. It’s three full rooms with an eat-in kitchen (which is very well equipped – the only thing we had to buy was a dish drainer), a bedroom with closet and bureau storage, and a living room with a pair of sofas and a separate work desk. The bathroom is at the opposite end of the apartment from the bedroom, which is lovely, and features a nice shower and plenty of hot water. We are living way down at the bottom of Maslow.

It has wifi, for which we’re deliriously grateful after the Marrakech Debacle (that’s the last time I don’t check the Airbnb listing carefully under Amenities), as well as a patio with an awning. Not high style, but everything we could hope for otherwise. And the proximity to the train tracks is fully offset by the proximity to the train station. Even if it doesn’t go to Tunis.

Our apartment is on Rue Ibn Khaldoun in Carthage. Ibn Khaldoun is a big deal here, with streets, neighborhoods, and buildings named after him, and a statue in downtown Tunis. Why is he so famous? He invented sociology in the 1300s. And he’s Tunisian.

Yep. They revere the father of the social sciences. But we’re no strangers to worshipping our greatest heroes. After all, a new Kobe Bryant statue just went up in LA.

The Neighborhood

The common architectural threads here appear to be whitewash and right angles. It’s true everywhere we’ve been in the burbs, with the exception of Sidi Bou Said, which is whitewash and right angles with blue doors and windows, like Chefchaouen in Morocco or Santorini in Greece. Outside the Old City there’s the occasional nod to Arabic vernacular design, but it’s more garnish than main course.

Signage & Products

Discovering local signage and product design is always a treat for us. There is always both sublime and ridiculous.

Grocery Shopping

There’s a supermarché the equivalent of a few blocks away, a Monoprix, but it’s weird. First, everything isn’t one price, as its name would suggest. Mostly, though, it has weird gaps. It has a gourmet cheese and deli counter and a bakery. But no olive oil. When I asked, I was given not only a non but a finger wag to boot. Not sure what that was about.

But here’s the weirdest: no milk. Dairy products, yes. Yogurt, cheese, butter… But no milk. In this part of the world the milk is pretty exclusively ultra pasteurized in cryopaks, so all that’s necessary is shelf storage. The other supermarché, the Carrefour, carries milk. So… weird. Sadly, the Carrefour is a cab ride away, not a two block walk.

*Update* On our third visit to the Monoprix, milk appeared. A Ramadan-related supply chain shortage that resolved itself? Big Dairy being brought to heel? Elves? Who knows?

We were delighted to find that Tunis has covered markets, like Mexico’s mercados. Morocco had supermarchés and street vendors, but none of what we think of as local markets. That made food shopping awkward. Carthage itself is something of a food desert for both produce and restaurants, other than the Monoprix, which has grocery store quality produce. But La Marsa, the beach town just north, has a lovely small Marché Centrale.

The major Marché Centrale is just outside the Old City in Tunis, and boy is it an experience. So far, the Mexico City Central de Abasto is the only one we’ve seen larger. We walked in and felt just like we were home.

There’s also an exceptionally large street market one train stop and about an extra kilometer walk.

Espace Sophonisbe

We found a gallery open in our neighborhood. It exclusively features Roman-style mosaic art, which seems a little weird. I can understand it as a form of municipal branding, like at the train stations. The Roman ruins are one of the primary attractions here, so playing it up makes sense. It’s for the tourists.

But it’s not like ancient Roman art is part of the cultural heritage of the current inhabitants of Tunisia. The Phoenicians settled Carthage around 800 BC (led by Dido, so check that off on your bingo card). The Romans finally sacked Carthage and took over in the third Punic War in 146 BC, then hung around until about 439 AD, a pretty good run. Then the Vandals had it, but for less than 100 years. Then it was Byzantine, Ottoman, and French, before finally becoming its very own place in 1956.

And yet.

Mosaics are a thing here.

The only constant, culturally and ethnically, is the Berbers, who were here at least 5,000 years before the Phoenicians, and are the only legitimate locals. At this point, Tunisia’s population is almost completely Berber or Berber/Arab. None of the people who live here now have any connection to ancient Roman mosaic art except physical proximity.

Espace Sophonisbe specializes in modern Roman-style mosaic art. It’s actually really cool. I would love a piece, obviously smaller than their monsters, but the weight. It would be hard to pack a mosaic piece.

I’ve convinced Dorothy that we can find someone who’ll make a custom mosaic portrait of us. I have no idea if it’s true, but the concept somehow terrifies her. If it does turn out to be true, well, do we really have a choice?

Walking Around

We’ve noticed a few interesting things just from being out and about.

Traditional Dress

Unlike Marrakech and Morocco, Tunis is characterized by Western clothes. There are a fair number of head scarves on the women, but that’s religiously traditional, not sartorially traditional. There are fancy caftans for sale in the souks, but they’re clearly not daywear. We expected to see more people dressed in traditional clothes in the Old City, but not so much. I’m guessing that most of the traditional clothes for sale are for the tourists. A surprise after Morocco, where Western-style clothes were much less common.

We haven’t located the Tunis fashion scene, which I suspect is in boutiques scattered about the city, as opposed to concentrated in the Medina, like it was in Marrakech. I promise to document it once we’ve tracked it down.

Money

They do a very strange thing with their money here. They denominate in thousandths, not hundredths. So prices are expressed like this: 5,425, which is not quite 5 1/2 dinars. What’s weird is that the dinar isn’t super valuable, worth about US 32¢. So a dime, or 100 millimes, is about 3¢. Why on earth would you divvy that up into thousandths?

Most prices don’t actually go all the way to three decimals. Prices are more likely to read 5,420 than 5,425. But grocery stores and taxi meters, that we know of, run to the third decimal. I’m sure there are others.

Except, and here’s the thing, there are no three decimal coins in common circulation. They exist. There’s a 5 milim coin, but I haven’t seen it yet. And it’s worth about .15¢. Not 15¢. Point 15 cents. Even more fun, they usually round change to the tenths, not even the hundredths. So if your tab is 14,370 and you give 15, you’ll get 600 millimes in change, not 630. Those pennies add up!

What’s the point? Maybe the currency has been devalued over time, but the current system seems more than a little nutty.

Language

After spending three months in Morocco investing in learning Moroccan Arabic, or Darija, we now find ourselves in Tunisia, with its own brand of Arabic, Tunsi. There’s a lot of overlap, but about half the words in our limited vocabularies are different. Which adds an extra layer of complexity to learning the new words, because we also have to unlearn the old ones. Sadly, we’re falling back on French, which is its own challenge. I frequently find myself assembling sentences from a random assortment of French, English, and Arabic.

On our first visit to the La Marsa Marché Centrale we were speaking to one vendor and I managed to squeeze something out in intelligible French. He was surprised, and asked, in French, if I spoke French. I answered “a little.” In Arabic. It took a second to register, but then he totally cracked up. That appears to be our most consistently amusing trick: speaking badly in multiple languages. We are the dancing bears of tourists.

Sidi Bou Said

Much of Sidi Bou Said is up on a hill, so we walked up towards a Google Maps POI labeled Panorama Méditerranéen, and it did not disappoint.

There’s conflicting information about the origins of the blue and white color scheme that wraps Sidi Bou Said in a fluffy veneer of adorable. A French artist, Rodolph d’Erlanger, is usually credited with introducing the color scheme in the 1920s. However, some sources say the colors predated him, and that his contribution was having the palette recognized as a cultural touchstone, culminating in UNESCO designating it a World Heritage Site in 1979.

I tend to think it predated him, although the brass of showing up, repainting the town, and then loudly proclaiming it cultural patrimony is quintessentially French.

However it happened, the whitewashed walls set off by the blue of the sky, the blue of the Mediterranean, and the blue of the doors makes for a heartbreakingly beautiful sight.

The Beach

The real beach here is in La Marsa, but we are staying right on the fucking Mediterranean. We’re a five minute walk from the Punic Ports that were built in 300 BC. I’m doing a whole post on ancient Carthage, but here’s the view of the Mediterranean just past the entrance to the horseshoe-shaped port.

Hammams

After falling in love with Morocco’s version of hammams, or Turkish Baths, I promised to visit and report on them in all of the Arabic countries we visit. Crossing Tunisia off the list. After a single visit.

Dar el Marsa is a luxury hotel right near the beach in La Marsa (it’s where we enjoyed our iftar meal). I booked a hammam at their very nicely appointed spa, expecting a sumptuous experience akin to Morocco’s hammams. While the surroundings were lush, the experience left me cold. Well, hot actually. Unimpressed. Let’s go with unimpressed.

It starts with a sauna. I’ve never really liked saunas. I don’t like sitting in hot, wet air and struggling to breathe. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the hot rooms in Morocco’s hammams, and thought, “Well, maybe I like saunas after all.” I don’t.

Turns out the Moroccan hammams use a dry heat, and in Tunisia they use a traditional wet sauna. So, not a good start. After sitting unattended for some indeterminate period while my lungs sweat, I was brought into a cooler room, where a nice lady daubed me briefly with soap. And then sent me back into the sauna. To sit. For awhile. Then she came back and told me to shower off the soap. A little tough with no washcloth. Next step was the exfoliation. Which was done with no particular sense of commitment and over in five minutes. Then I was told to shower off and leave.

All very politely (I think – it’s hard to tell with French) and professionally. But entirely without the time, attention (and rinsing) that’s the calling card of the Moroccan hammams. Holding out for Istanbul…

[UPDATE: During our overnight stay in Tunis in-between Istanbul and Chicago, I gave our hotel spa a shot at a hammam, and they delivered in spades. They nailed the thoroughness and attention I found in Moroccan hammams, so I guess my first experience was just a shitty hammam.

The wet sauna is definitely a Tunisian feature, so it gets dinged for that, but the service was excellent. I think I still prefer the Turkish hammam overall, but they probably have an unfair advantage, having invented it.]

The Medina

Our first trip to the Medina was a fail. We got there all right, despite the train excitement, but we thought our understanding of Marrakech’s Medina would transfer, and we couldn’t have been more wrong.

Marrakech’s Medina is fractal. It doesn’t matter where you enter or which way you turn, you’re going to see pretty much the same thing: ceramics, traditional garments, modern fashion, brass, babouches, woodworking, leather… All of the various crafts repeat in shops in every souk over and over throughout the Medina.

That’s how we thought Medinas worked, so we didn’t bring any particular plan of attack to our visit here. We figured we’d be fine if we just walked to whatever Google Maps identified as Medina. Which is what we did. So our first view of the Medina was of sneakers and manufactured Chinese crap.

We were baffled. It wasn’t that it was shut down for Ramadan. The shops were open and the alleys were jammed. But we didn’t see anything like art or handicrafts. It was super confusing.

It turns out that the Tunis Medina is actually organized. There’s a jewelry district, a textile district, a carpet district, and, among others, a sneaker and Chinese crap district, which is randomly where we happened to enter, coloring our view. For our second visit we were more strategic, and found the kind of artisanal hoohah we were seeking.

Streets & Doors

The Carpet Experience

We got sucked into a carpet seller experience. Because we don’t live here. But we went through the wringer in Marrakech, so we were prepared. We said we weren’t going to buy a rug, he said he just wanted to show us beautiful rugs. Then at the end when he started pushing us on price, I reminded him that we’d said at the beginning that we weren’t buying a rug, and he relented. I’m sure this skill has to be of general utility, but so far it’s only paid off for us in the souks.

To be fair, though, he had beautiful rugs. We’re going to Kairouan soon, which is a weaving center, and we want to get a rug closer to the source. But if we don’t find anything we like better, we may come back for the rug on the right.

The shop had a rooftop terrace with crazy tile installation and a stunning view.

Since he couldn’t sell us a rug, he took us to his family’s shop that made perfume and essential oils. Dorothy got a cactus-derived perfume, both as a consolation prize and because she really liked the scent.

We’re planning trips out to some of the towns where they actually make things, like Nabeul for ceramics and Kairouan for carpets, so we may not buy much in Tunis, but we’re definitely enjoying it. Now that we know how to avoid the sneakers and Chinese crap.

Souk des Chechias

Chechias are Fez-like hats. They’re shorter and less stiff than Fezs, but they’re pretty similar. The souk was built in the 17th century when chechia manufacture was at its peak, with over 15,000 craftsmen producing over a million chechias per year. There’s only a handful left, but the souk itself is a marvel. The shops are incredibly atmospheric, and the non-chechia storefronts are full of wonders. Dorothy bought a felt cloche at a chechia maker who’d branched out into modern shapes, and we spent a wonderful half hour in a ceramics shop. We didn’t buy anything (holding out for when we visit Nabeul), but we got a fascinating history lesson from the shop owner (it’s how we learned about Ibn Khaldoun). He gave us a loaf of bread when we left.

The Call To Prayer

We happened to be in an antique store in the Medina as the afternoon call to prayer kicked off. It was literally next door to the major mosque in the Old City, and the proprietor let us onto his roof deck to take it in.

Our experience with the call to prayer in Marrakech wasn’t great. There were a metric buttload of mosques, all kicking off the call to prayer at more or less the same time, so it kind of bounced around the old city. Plus, it was all recordings. It sounded like 8-track tapes of 20s field recordings fed through an amp made of old sweatsocks. We thought that was just how call to prayer sounded.

Imagine our surprise when we could only hear a couple of mosques, and they both featured live singers. Rather than what seemed like an exhortation to kill our mothers, the Tunisian call to prayer was… sweet. I apologize for the sound of the wind (field recordings, am I right?), but I think it’s worth it to hear a truly beautiful sound.

The Medina At Night

While the city is pretty shut down in the daytime during Ramadan, we’ve been told it comes alive at night. We’d read that the Medina starts perking up at 8:00, so we headed down one evening about two weeks into our stay. We got there at about 7:30, figuring we’d catch it as it sprang to life. We were also desperate for a restaurant meal, and we were under the impression that sundown represented the end of the fast, so we expected restaurants to be open.

What we didn’t know is that “comes to life at 8:00” actually means “it’s still completely dead at 7:59.” And at 7:30 it looked like a morgue. There was no foot traffic, all of the shops in the Medina were closed, and the streets were unlit. Very, very, uninviting.

We figured we’d walk around until 8:00 to see what happened. And sure enough, at 8:00 things started picking up. Foot traffic increased, lights came on, and shops started opening. I’d have bet against it at 7:30, but there it was. We figured we’d follow the people, and joined up as folks started entering the Medina.

Shops were starting to open, but there was absolutely no sign of open restaurants. We walked back out and finally found an open restaurant outside the Old City. It was close to 9:00 by the time we got dinner, and we were more than ready.

And yes, we ate at a restaurant called Beurre King, which was awesome in its own right. But it wasn’t fast food. We got perfectly credible chicken cutlets with local slaw, rice, and fries. Not a fine dining experience, but a delight nonetheless to finally eat a meal we didn’t prepare ourselves. And by “ourselves,” I of course mean Dorothy.

It was clear as dinner ended at about 9:30 that what we’d been told was correct. The place was starting to hop. But we just weren’t up for a return trip to see what the Medina was doing. I think the trick is to have dinner at home at a reasonable hour and then head out to get there closer to 10:00. It really is a late night party the entire month of Ramadan. We’ll see if we can shift our sleep schedule to take advantage of the evening wonders.

The other thing this excursion provided was some perspective on venturing out of Tunis. Prior to that evening we’d been thinking of spending two weeks, basically the last part of Ramadan, traveling about. Now, I think we’re going to wait until Ramadan is over. We’ve figured out how to feed ourselves in Carthage, but figuring that out in multiple cities, with no restaurants as a lifeline while we get our bearings, just sounds too hard.

So we’ll stay put until Ramadan passes, and lean into the things that are open here, like museums, parks, and ruins. Then when everything opens back up, we’ll hit the open road and absorb more of Tunisia.

We did get back one evening for a concert, and while we were waiting for the house to open, we stumbled on this. This is the La Palmerium Mall in downtown Tunis, and people were queued up outside it. At the stroke of 9:00 PM, the doors opened.

This is the scene inside, literally at 9:01. I have no idea how late they stay open, but it was a madhouse at opening.

Burying The Lede

The most important part of our trip actually happened before we even left Marrakech. There are cats in the Marrakech airport! So even though there are otherwise no cats in this post (except the ones with saws), we’ve now met our interwebs mandated quota.