Four days of my Tunisia holiday behind me and I find myself waking up in my hotel bedroom wondering what to do with the day. I end up spending most of it on the beach and at the bar, relaxing the day away with a good book. The hotel has an entertainment staff of around 10 young adults. The hotel refers to them as the Animation Team and they are responsible for making sure you have fun while you are on holiday. They organise dance sessions, put on a cabaret, bingo and a variety of other things for the kids. The most impressive thing about the animation team is their ability to switch fluently between five or six different languages including English, French, Arabic, German, Italian and Spanish. Multi-language bingo is something that has to be experienced at least once. Monday evening heralded a search for dinner that ended with a trip to a restaurant next door to the hotel called Restaurant Bedouina. I had a gorgeous fillet steak and I would recommend the restaurant to anyone visiting the area.

Tuesday morning arrives and I am signed up for another day trip. This time the plan is to visit the north, more liberal and westernised, of the country including the capital city Tunis and the remains of Roman baths at Carthage. Another early start, 7am, followed by a tour of the hotels picking up people for the trip, and we were on our way up the A1 motorway to Carthage. As you travel along the motorway you notice people selling fruit from buckets on the hard shoulder as well as people walking along the hard shoulder waving bin bags. At first you wonder what they are doing and then you realise. Hitchhiking. They are walking along the motorway, nowhere near a junction, trying to hitch a lift while cars wiz past them at 120km/h. You wouldn’t get away with that in the UK!

After an hour on the road we arrive at our first destination. Scattered in-between the houses of the Tunisian upper middle classes you will find the remains of the ancient city of Carthage. The tour bus stopped outside the entrance to what is left of the Roman baths on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. On this site the Romans constructed a huge bath house, the Antoinine Thermal baths, one of the largest built under the Roman empire. You have to be very careful taking photographs in this area as it is illegal to photograph the presidential palace, anything related to the military and policemen in uniform. Helpfully they located the presidential palace next to the Roman baths. The sheer scale of these remains is vast and the building when complete must have been formidable even by today’s standards. Many photos of marble carvings later we get back onto the coach and drive to our next destination, the picturesque town of Sidi Bou Said.

Characterised by its use of pale blue and white paint on the outside of all the buildings the town of Sidi Bou Said brings another dimension to the diversity of Tunisia. The town is a world apart from the desolate landscapes of the south of the country, showing off the opulence of the upper classes with a form of tourism seen in places such as Portmeirion in the UK. We were taken to the home of an aristocratic family that has now been converted into a museum with some very scary looking mannequins modelling traditional wedding dress. The views from the top of this house were remarkable, stretching over to the heart of the capital city.

Part 7 tomorrow including the Medina of Tunis, the Bardo Museum and my triumphant return to the UK.