The world according to Valkenburg: Tunisia 1 - part 1/4

TUNISIA BABY! Yeah!

Well the internet at my home isn't working again - STOOPID Chorus / NTL / UPC or whatever they call themselves - so I am forced to update my blog from work. As if I get any free time at work! So I'll keep this short and basically just explain photies for the most-part. You prefer it short huh?

For those that don't know, Cath and I zipped off to Tunisia for a week in mid-May. The plan was to just somma lie on the beach for the entire trip, soak up the sun and head back refreshed. It turns out that cath and I are not 'lie on the beach' people (I already knew I wasn't) and instead of relaxing, we ended up doing things almost every day, getting to see a bit of the real Tunisia - away from our resort. Twas great!

I've put up a few blog entries for this trip so they might not be in the order in which we did things, but it'll be easier to explain... We've had so many requests to see photos that i just thought I'd put them up and sort out the smaller details later.

After a long sleep to get back in sync, we headed to the beach where we were accosted by Tom, Dick and Harry and a few other locals, all offering us various things. They can spot a newcomer a mile off and allied to the fact that we were still polite enough at this stage to stop when they approached, we were whiter than snow. Very white snow.

We were offered fruit, nuts, trips parachuting or quad biking, despite
actually having no local money at this stage.

We buggered around but the weather wasn't so great so we headed back a bit later and had a good meal at the hotel. Walking around we saw...

The next day we headed to Sousse, one of the four biggest cities in Tunisia, to do some shopping. It has a massive medina where we went shopping - and again we were bugged every three steps. "Come into my shop, no not his shop, my shop. I make good price - better than Asda, Brown Thomas quality. Yes I know that the last shop you looked in has exactly, EXACTLY the same stuff as my shop, but come into mine anyway." Sigh. It was tiring walking aroiund. Still, it was an interesting experience.

Me outside mosque and Cath in medina.

Cath stands at one of the roads just outside the medina.

"Excuse me Sir, I don't think you're supposed to ride your motorbike down the narrow alleys INSIDE the Medin... oh, I see, it's quite the norm... pardon me"

We found a cool place for lunch - upstairs at the top of the town with agreat view. Now despite being pretty poor-looking while we were walking around, it was interesting to note that almost every home had a satellite dish on their roof (click on the pic on the left for a closer look).

After lunch we walked around more, took a few more snaps - including these ones of a falvon on Cath's shoulder - headed to the pool at our hotel before we grabbed some cocktails somewhere.

(Cath and I like these 'caturing the locals doing what they do' shots)

There was just about enough time to head to the marina before we had to be back for supper...

There was a sing and dance job on at a nearby hotel so we went along and watched a bit of samba, ramba and one 'different' version of 'in the jungle'. They should have let me do it...

The next day saw great weather. So after an all over body massage for me and an exfoliation thingy-majigy for Cath...

... we headed off. We'd brought our racquets with us so we got in a few hours of tennis and I made cath run around and she gave me a lesson in how to hit a stunning forehand!