Tunisia in pictures part I

Your heart will break for me, I’m sure, when I share with you that I feel sad today because I can no longer expect for breakfast every day an egg chef, my daily almond croissant, delicious coffee and freshly squeezed orange or strawberry juice. Last week for me, was spent in Tunisia and hot damn it was nice. It wasn’t, conversely, very hot but after we got over the shock of not being able to throw our kids at the icy pool and read our books all day we embraced the idea of day tripping. And my house, now a place of patterned pots and a nicely shabby kilim rug, is pretty pleased we did. We were honestly a bit reticent about going so soon after the tragedy at Bardo museum, but I’m so pleased we did – and the friendly locals we met were glad we hadn’t been put off. Here are some of the best bits of the trip.

This is on a rooftop overlooking the medina in Tunis. Just casually on a rooftop, up past a shop full of rugs. Not seconds from here was a tile pile that with huge restraint I managed to photograph without cramming a few into my bag.

I would say that tiles and doors were a recurring theme of the trip with rooftops coming in at a close third. We didn’t have much time in Tunis and only really saw the Medina and a restaurant, the door of which was a real beaut.

After that first encounter with the tiled ruins on the roof, we went to a lovely antique arcade where I lost myself in rugs and ceramics while my youngest picked up breakable bongo drums giving the whole experience that heady edge of anxiety. I pushed through it, don’t worry and will share my travel tat with you later in the week. One of the gents in the antique shop told us to go up the last set of stairs to a locked door, which took us to the top of the building. We ended up in the most lovely roof garden I’ve ever set foot on – with a great view of the Zitouna mosque and the busy streets below. His motivation for urging this little trip seemed to be about showing off in only the most charming way. You would too if the roof were yours.

Where we were staying was around 30 mins from Tunis, closer to Sidi Bou Said, which is a beautiful blue-and-white village on a hill, known as the Santorini of North Africa (or at least Tunisia). Winding up the hills of the village we were bowled over by the doors – mostly blue – but when led inside some of the shops they opened up into pattern-clad riads. Here’s an impression of the place.

The last images I’ll leave you with are naturally going to be of tiles – with a couple of ruins thrown in. This is the ancient Phoenician city of Carthage once a major power in the Mediterranean but eventually destroyed by the Romans. We saw the main town and an old village – both cobbled remains of buildings poking up between grass with wild fennel growing all around like beautiful weeds – and then we saw the old Roman baths and an amphitheatre. There is of course a lot more to the place than my two-sentence summary.