Stuart managed to leave the rings in the hotel room safe and had to run up many flights of stairs in order to rescue them. In 30’c heat. Just before the ceremony was due to start. Oh how we laughed. He returned saying “Don’t anybody tell Hannah, she will kill me”.

On the day before I was due to fly back to the UK my parents and I visited Rhodes town, looking around the harbour and also the old town. The Knights of St John spent over two hundred years in Rhodes and built a large castle, called the Grand Master’s Palace, next to the harbour. This building, and in fact the entire walls of the old town, were very impressive and you could imagine soldiers having sword fights on the huge marble covered staircase.

I left the Bardo feeling as though I had had a whistlestop tour of the inside without really being allowed to let the enormity of the exhibits sink in. While doing the day trips gives you a good taste of Tunisia it doesn’t really let you discover the detail behind the attractions. The Bardo is certanly one place I would revisit if I ever go back to the country.

The last stop on my one day tour of the north of Tunisia was at the medina of Tunis. Since 1979 the medina has been a UNESCO world heritage site, its origins dating back to before the 7^th century. The medina consists of a maze of narrow alleyways, covered passages, mosques and monuments. The tour group entered the medina close to the prime minister’s building where a market trader showed us how to make a fez. There are many different styles of fez from the comic depictions as portrayed by Tommy Cooper to the more sombre looking hat that is almost flush with the shape of the head.

The Tunisian Fez is made from a large woollen balaclava style knitted material. The material is boiled overnight to shrink it down to the correct size. This has the added effect of solidifying the fibres together making what feels like a tough felt like material. It is dyed a dark red, almost maroon, colour before being brushed into shape on a wooden stand.

Wandering around the medina is like trying to navigate a maze. It is very easy to get yourself thoroughly lost, with the winding alleys aiding the destruction of your sense of direction. The medina of Tunis feels completely different to that of Hammamet. Hammamet’s medina is devoted almost completely to the tourist industry whereas the Tunis medina is the exact opposite. One of the alleys that I walked down was devoted solely to selling jewellery. The Tunis medina felt much more relaxed and the “come into my shop, no pressure, just look” that you were badgered with all the time in Hammamet just wasn’t present in Tunis.

Wednesday arrived. My final day in Tunisia. I always get jittery on the day I am due to fly out of anywhere. I have a big problem with getting to airports on time in that I must get there on time or the world will end and I find it very difficult to settle until I am checked in. To alleviate some of my obsessive compulsiveness I decided that it was time to go shopping for some tourist tat. Based on previous experiences the best place to do this was in Hammamet. I caught a taxi to the medina in Hammamet. You learn quickly not to expect working seatbelts when travelling around Tunisia and this taxi was no exception. The up side is that it only costs about 3TD for a ten minute taxi ride – far better value than in Bristol or any UK city.

I am generally anti-haggling. I like things to be a fixed price and I have never got the hang of asking for money off a product. In the souk this can only lead to problems and I think I might have been ripped off a little bit for the things that I bought. Ah well, it is all an experience at the end of the day. I got some tourist tat for James and Roz, Becky and Dave and Rosie as well as a replica traditional Tunisian door for myself. All in all a pretty successful trip.

My holiday was over and it was time to go home. I finally arrived back at my flat in Bristol at 3am Thursday morning, regretting not taking the morning off work and realising that in only four hours my alarm clock would be waking me up.

Simply one of the most amazing holidays I have ever had. There is so much to see and do in the country – far more than I thought there would have been. The contrast between the north and south is quite pronounced and the culture difference is something that the Tunisians will have to continue to work with to maintain harmony within the country. I would go back.

I would also like to go to some other African countries. High on my list are Morocco and Egypt.

Heh, I finished on part 7

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.

The final leg of our two day Sahara adventure was upon us. A north easterly drive up the country brought us to the ancient city of Kairouan. Founded during the latter half of the first century AD the city of Kairouan is not Tunisia’s oldest Arab city but is also considered to be the fourth holiest city in the Islamic world, after Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. Our coach stopped just outside the walls of the medina, close to the Great Mosque – one of the oldest, largest and most important mosques in the country. We didn’t have long at this stop, only fifteen minutes, which allowed me enough time to walk around the walls of the mosque taking photos of the minaret and the Lalla Rihana Gate. While we were there the call for afternoon prayers was sounded and I managed to capture a small section on my camera.

When our 15 minutes were up we were shuttled around to the other side of the medina where a carpet salesman proceeded to show us a vast array of Tunisian carpets. A small, 1 metre by 1.5 metre, carpet made of silk cost over £600! I decided not to make any purchases but that didn’t stop a few of the people on the tour flexing their credit cards.With the two day tour over I was returned to my hotel in the early evening. I was completely shattered but at the same time very satisfied that I had managed to see so much of Tunisia in such a short time. The south of the country is poor in money but rich in culture and tradition dating back many centuries.

Only three days of holiday left but stay tuned for Tunis, Carthage and Sidi Bou Said!

An old style rotary telephone rings its bell, a quaint noise not often heard in these days of digital electronics and automated systems. It is 5am on Sunday morning. I answer the phone and the night porter tells me something in an unfamiliar language. I interpret this as French and the message as “this is your wake-up call”. I thank him, in half-awake English, before stumbling blearily into the shower. I re-pack my overnight bag and then eat an unappetising breakfast in the hotel restaurant.

At 6am prompt the coach left the hotel towards Tozeur and Chott el Jerid, an immense salt lake stretching out in all directions as far as the eye can see. The vastness of the lake is difficult to describe and even the photos do not do it justice. Breathtaking is about the only word I can use. Unfortunately cloud cover prevented us from seeing the sun rise. A single road traverses the salt pan, which is covered with a shallow layer of water for only a few months of the year. Halfway along the road the coach stopped so that we could take photos and have another opportunity to buy stuff from a ramshackle gift shop. The lake provides another of Tunisia’s products – salt. Salt is extracted from the lake and exported to England for use on the roads in winter.

The coach stopped in the town of Tozeur and we were directed into horse drawn carts which whisked us off into the middle of a date palm oasis, covering around 10 square kilometres and planted with over 200,000 palms. The oasis also allows for other crops such as miniature bananas, figs, pomegranates and almonds growing under the date palm canopy. We were lead around the oasis by a guide who showed us an old man climb up a palm tree and do a little dance at the top.

Gosh, I didn’t realise I would have so much to write about, and I am only up to Sunday. More tomorrow!

Travelling into the south of Tunisia on the GP1 you will notice five litre containers of liquid being sold on the side of the road. They are usually stacked on top of planks of wood and barrels. These actually contain petrol that the locals have bought in Libya, where the price of fuel is very low, and then imported into Tunisia. There are hundreds of these unofficial petrol stations along the road. You pull up in your car and they will put a funnel into the fuel tank, tip the petrol into the funnel, and then charge you less than the Esso or Mobil price.

Matmata, named after the Berber tribe that inhabits the region, is the largest of the troglodyte communities in the world. Surrounded on all sides by rocky hills this village is quickly becoming a tourist trap with coach tours, such as the one I was on, visiting on a daily basis. We stopped in the village for a quick lunch and then got back on the bus, taking a more westerly direction, into the sand deserts beyond.

Along the road to Matmata you pass a planted oasis of date palms. Next to the oasis, and on the side of the road, men have set up small shacks and sell a drink made from the sap of the date palm tree mixed with sugar and water. The drink is sickly sweet but also very thin. It was drinkable but I wouldn’t want it in any vast quantity.

We eventually arrived at a camel stop just outside the town of Douz. We were invited to dress in traditional clothing and then set off on an hour long camel ride into the desert. All you could see was sand for miles around and I am glad that the guides knew where they were as I completely lost my sense of direction. Riding a camel is really quite uncomfortable, especially when the one following yours decides that your saddle, made of straw covered in sacking, is a pretty tasty snack! I collected some of the Saharan sand into a water bottle and brought it back to the UK with me.

A natural spring producing approximately 1000 litres of fresh water per second can support an oasis of around 300,000 date palm trees. However when a farmer wishes to plant more trees, or in areas where a natural spring can not be located, other water sources need to be found. In the Nefzaoua area they have dug down to the water table, 2.5km underground, and extract the water using large pumps. However when water is taken from that depth it is extremely hot, requiring cooling before it can be used to irrigate the oasis. The hot water is pumped to the top of a cooling tower where it then drops through the air while being broken up into water droplets. By the time it reaches ground level it will be warm rather than hot. Local people then do their laundry and also bathe in this warm water.

More tomorrow!

One thing that I noticed when doing these coach pickups for various tours is that you can guess the nationality of the people getting onto the coach based on how ready they are. Germans wait outside their hotels and are very quickly on the bus. The English generally wait in the lobby until the coach arrives and then walk out to check if it is theirs or not. The French run on their own time zone and have to be chivvied along by the tour guide so as not to make everything run late. More often than not this social stereotyping was correct. I was only caught out once when what I thought was a French couple, mainly due to their use of the French language, were ready for the bus as it pulled up outside their hotel. It turned out that the lady of the couple was English but had a French boyfriend.

We left Yasmine Hammamet at around 7am and began the hour and a half journey down the GP1 to the town of El Djem. The town is situated within a very flat expanse of scrubland and olive orchards. As you drive towards the town the horizon slowly fills with the silhouette of the third largest Roman amphitheatre ever built. In its heyday the colossal structure would have had a seating capacity of around 35,000 people and the stone used in construction completely covered in marble.

Driving around Tunisia you notice that a large number of houses are in some way incomplete. What looks like a bungalow will have metal rods sticking out of the flat roof awaiting the addition of a first floor. Concrete structures with no brickwork or half finished brickwork adorn the skyline of many a town. On inquiring of the guide why the houses appeared unfinished he said that it was because people just couldn’t afford to complete the buildings. Tunisian banks are reluctant to lend money unless you can prove to them a reliable source of income. For the less affluent people this can sometimes prove difficult and therefore instead of taking out a mortgage they will build their houses bit by bit, adding extra floors and rooms as and when they have the money to do so. Our guide told us that his own home took eight years to complete. The advantage of this slow building process is that once your home is complete you do not owe anyone any money. While a mortgage may end up costing you three times as much as the original build price these people owned their homes outright and only paid what it cost for the construction.

After looking around the amphitheatre at El Djem the tour continued into the south of the country. The further south you go the hotter and dryer the land becomes. You move from the relatively fertile north into scrubland rocky desert which slowly gives way to sand when you get into the Saharan zone. Another few hours on the road brought us to the outskirts of the village of Matmata where the Berber people have built Troglodyte cave homes into the ground. The homes consist of a pit approximately seven to fifteen meters in diameter and seven meters deep. Caves are excavated into the walls of the pit to act as rooms while access is provided either by a ramp or, where the home is built into the side of a hill, through a tunnel with a door on the front. The walls of the home are whitewashed to prevent the soil from collapsing inwards. We were offered traditionally baked bread, which we dipped into a mixture of olive oil and honey, and drank mint tea. These cave homes were the inspiration for the home of Beru Lars and Owen Lars, Luke Skywalker’s Aunt and Uncle in the film Star Wars.

Part three is coming tomorrow.

Tunisia is a North African country bordering Libya to the east and Algeria to the west. 40% of the country is in the Sahara Desert while the more prosperous and fertile north is divided from the south by the Atlas mountain range.

I stayed in a package-holiday hotel just outside of the tourist town of Hammamet. The hotel was rated four stars and had all the usual things such as pools, bars, sauna, spa and hammam. The beach and the Mediterranean Sea was only a short five minute walk away.

When you visit an Islamic country your immediate thought is that there would be no alcohol available anywhere. However in Tunisia this is not the case. The president himself has over a 40% stake in the local beer producer. The country itself produces a range of red, white and rose wines as well as a few spirits and liqueurs. However these sales are mainly for the tourist trade as well as export.

When I arrived at Monastir airport I made my way to the coach transfer. On the coach I met a Keith who had also won a free holiday and was going to be staying in my hotel. Keith and I spent a fair amount of the holiday together and it was nice to have someone to travel around with and see the sights.

One thing that you notice when arriving in Tunisia and especially in the south, and more traditional part of the country, is the lack of visible women. It is almost as if they do not exist. Men loiter in cafés and on street corners. Shop assistants are predominantly male as was the majority of staff in the hotel. It is only when you get into the capital Tunis that this disparity begins to even out. For the lone traveller it can be quite intimidating in some instances.

The day after arrival I spent lazing around the hotel, visiting the beach and sitting by the pool. I met the representative, Shirley, from the booking operator, med hotels, who sold me a number of excursions. Shirley had been living in Tunisia for about four years and earns around 300TD a month from her job which she supplements by selling day trips. 300TD is approximately £135. Her monthly rent and bills were approximately 250TD. The cost of living in Tunisia is cheap compared to the UK as long as you are not in the tourist areas. In a tourist area a can of coke costs around 1.5TD while in a non tourist area you could get a can for around a third of a dinar.

Friday came and Keith and went and had a look around Yasmine Hammamet, a new development of over 40 hotels catering specifically for tourists. The problem with Yasmine Hammamet is that it feels very bland. It is catering specifically for the foreign tourist market and as such as no real life about it. In the afternoon we went into Hammamet to look around the medina. A medina is essentially a walled town in which you find houses, mosques, markets (souks) and in the case of Hammamet a fort. The medina is very touristy and all the shops in the souk sell much the same tourist tat. Keith and I walked up Avenue de la Republique which took us away from the tourist area and into the town itself, giving us an insight into the real lives of Tunisians. The usual mobile phone shops and banks were interspersed with carpenters, food outlets and clothes sellers. I didn’t once see an estate agent.

My first ‘trip’ that I had booked with the rep was ‘Arabian Nights’. This took place on the Friday evening where we were bundled into a coach and taken to a small village about 30 minutes drive from Hammamet. We were shown around a mock Berber village before being ushered into a tent where a large circle of sand with a stage at one side was surrounded by tables. I sat down with Keith and an English couple, Petra and Mike, who were also staying at my hotel. We were next to two girls who worked at the hospital in Stoke on Trent. A traditional Tunisian meal was served consisting of Brik followed by lamb couscous and mint tea. Tunisian red wine flowed in abundance and the evening’s entertainment was provided by dancers, horse riders, fire eaters, snake charmers and men who liked beds of nails, swords and broken glass. One of the funniest things I saw was a man who liked to balance china pots on his head. I also had some snakes put around my neck by the snake charmer. I went to bed at midnight with a slightly uneasy feeling that I had to be up at 5am the next day for my two day tour of the south of Tunisia and the Sahara desert.

Part two tomorrow but if you want a sneeky preview of what I got up to then I have put all my photos online.