This time we all sat in the bus at 7 am, to drive 200 km from Kairouan to Tunis the capital of Tunesia
along the highway we saw storks which had built their nests on electricity pylons ! It was so funny to see a stork nest on each pylon !
Then we arrived in Tunis around 10.30 am, and our guide took us to the Medina, the old town center. It looked like a Souk, one junk shop besides the other and we were quickly fed up to see all the time the same things. As usual he didn't explain nothing about the history of this place, and when somebody asked a question he didn't know. He increased the inhabitants of Tunis from 2,412,500 inhabitants to 9 million, when somebody asked him how big the city was. As nobody knew better we believed it. Except me, because since he mixed up tomatoes with melons and pretended that a river was dry because Algeria had cut the water off (!!) I checked with dear Wikipedia and learned that whole Tunesia has just under 10.7 million inhabitants !
In the "Medina" the wallet of a man of our group was stolen by a pickpocket, with all his papers and even the flight ticket. How stupid of him not to have left at least his passport and flight ticket in the bus !
Our little mad guide lost completely his head and ran around like a headless chicken. Finally the driver took the situation over and helped the guy to go the police to inform them that the papers were stolen etc etc. which made us wait for 2 h in the bus, while our efficient guide called his boss to ask what to do and how to change the program !
Finally they tried to catch up the lost time and we had Spaghettis as lunch in a 3* hotel, which was awful. In these North African countries you have to have 4* to get a correct hotel.
After the Spaghettis he took us to the
Bardo National Museum without knowing the opening and closing times so that we arrived rather late and had to run through the museum, fortunately the guide there was a nice Tunisian girl, but our efficient guide had to translate for the Flemish speaking people, although they all understood French. Question of principles. Therefore our guide translated everything what the girl said into dutch/flemish, by adding things the girl hadn't even said. Result was nobody listened and went away taking pictures !
When our Marathon run through the Bardo museum was over we were driven to the Roman ruins of
Carthage There he continued to explain flowers and some stones but very few about the history of the site. We decided to take photos and read the history later ! What you see on the pictures is an overlook and I am sitting on a urn of I don't know whom, I didn't know the guide only told me that later. I hope the ashes of the Roman was not upset by my bottom on his ashes.
When we finished our running through the ruins fortunately without any incident, he took a not very happy group back to the coach and we drove to Sidi Bou Said, a very charming little old town, the houses all paint white and the windows and doors in blue.
We visited one house of a wealthy family which had now transformed their house into a little museum. It was the best thing I really have enjoyed ! Of course I will write about this very special home later.
Tomorrow the roundtrip is over and I hope our guide will return to school to learn a little more about his country ! Besides reading 5 times his program without keeping it, and sleeping during the trip, he wasn't a big help ! I had never ever had such a lousy roundtrip ! First thing I do when I come home is to write to our travel agency, to tell them that it is better if we take a book about Tunesia along instead of an incompetent guy with black outs ! I certainly have some funny stories to tell later !
