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Saladman posted:You will probably want one less day in Aswan and one more day in Luxor - 3 full days in Luxor does not leave enough time for all the "must sees", although 4 days does. That’s even with one of those Aswan days being an Abu Simbel day. The city is beautiful and if you just want some chill time and think you’ll get templed out though, then Aswan is a good place for that as you can walk anywhere in the city, including the souk, without people bothering you. Appreciate the input - I've cut a day off Aswan and added it to Luxor. And yeah, I was planning on getting a driver to Luxor and stopping at Edfu + Kom Ombo. For Alexandria, you've kind of hit the nail on the head for me on wanting the Mediterranean comparison. I also like the history of the city, so I figure a day trip on a day I would be doing nothing is cool with me. Not a chill day kind of person on my trips!
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Aug 29, 2023 16:30
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My wife and I just booked a two week (three for her) trip to northern & northeastern Tunisia for February/March, leaving just after Ramadan starts. We're mostly planning to hit parts of the country that are off the normal tourist path, as we've been to all the main tourist highlights except El Jem which we've tried & failed to visit twice. Plan is to spend 3 nights in Tabarka, 4 in Monastir, 3 in Nabeul, and then the rest of the time in Tunis (which we both know very well & have lived there for a few months). I booked it this far in advance partly because we don't have any other plans in the next 5 months and I wanted something concrete planned to look forward to, and partly because I found some really dope AirBnBs that I'm psyched for. And... they're all huge like 2-3 bedroom places, so I'm hoping to get another friend to come with. I don't think anyone in T&T has ever talked about Tunisia, but in the off chance anyone has been around Cap Bon, Tabarka, or the Mahdia area, interested to hear about any favorites. I think my main thing I'm not sure about is whether Utica, Dougga, and Bulla Regia within 3 days is too many same-y ruins, so I might cut out Bulla Regia. Anyway, I'll give a trip update in March when I'm back. Probably there is a reason these areas aren't on typical Tunisia tourist itineraries, but we've been around pretty much all of the rest of the country. Spontaneous unplanned interactions can be more fun than planned "top 10" lists too, especially when you're way out of the normal tourist paths and speak Derja.
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Sep 26, 2023 22:18
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Looks like a cool trip! I was in Tunisia like... 15 years ago? Mostly just on the beach with a few day trips and don't remember poo poo. It seems like you already know the country so I definitely can't help you with any suggestions or recommendations  A lot of the same type of stuff does get old though, whether it's ruins, temples, etc. So if you're going to have your own car I probably just wouldn't plan anything too firmly and adjust it as you go along. I kind of put it all off after the Arab Spring situation but Tunisia seems to be doing ok and I'd love to go back and explore it a bit more. There are some direct flights to Tunis (as well as other North Africa options) but I already booked a trip to Korea & Japan for March and was hoping to fit in Guatemala before the end of the year so another Africa trip would be... challenging.
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Sep 27, 2023 22:44
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Are there any recommendations in Africa where one can rent a car and go on a 7 to 10 day road trip? Preferably somewhere more green rather than desert.
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Dec 15, 2023 04:51
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Busy Bee posted:Are there any recommendations in Africa where one can rent a car and go on a 7 to 10 day road trip? Preferably somewhere more green rather than desert. You can rent a car in a fair amount of Africa, although it may be complicated in some countries (it was very complicated in Ethiopia, for instance) many countries also have regular international rental agencies like Europcar and Budget. Morocco, Tunisia, and South Africa would be the most common for "green more than desert" self-drive roadtrips. Despite the incorrect stereotype, many parts of North Africa -- like around Chefchaouen Morocco, Algiers Algeria, and Tabarka Tunisia, get a similar amount of annual rainfall as London and Paris (and Austin and San Antonio) -- 60-80 cm/yr. Consequently there is really a lot of lush countryside and beautiful mountain scenes, it's just that tourists to Morocco and Tunisia (and Namibia) tend to go to the desert or semi-desert areas since they tend to have the more spectacularly unique scenery than the coastal areas, which look just like northern Italy or southern France. For more "stereotypically green" places, you can also rent a car and drive in Tanzania, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and South Africa although driving in national parks may be restricted (not sure) and except for South Africa, it requires decent offroads driving experience when allowed, since the roads there are not usually paved outside of main highways. In that case you'd generally have to go shortly after the rainy season to get greenery, although it depends where in each country. There are also places much more off the beaten path that you could do, like Cameroon or Angola, but then a 7-10 day roadtrip will be rather short and logistically rather complicated, especially if you don't speak the local lingua franca. I don't know what you're looking for besides "green, scenery" but for a one-week trip from the US (?) then I'd think that Morocco would make the most sense as it's close and "green Morocco" is fairly compact. Any time from mid-November to mid-April is going to be extremely lush and green everywhere in the Rabat-Meknes-Fes-Chefchaouen-Tangier triangle, which would be great for 7-10 days. If you want to go more off the beaten path, then Algeria is top-notch and you can see my posts about it on the previous page. E: On that topic, we just finished booking places this week for our trip to Tunisia in Feb/March that we booked flights for back in late Sept. We're doing this as a roadtrip for 12 days (not counting the my wife's 5 days in Tunis and our 4 days in Carthage, where we are mostly just hanging out), so similar to what you asked about.  The Cap Bon (Nabeul) - Tunis - Tabarka area will all be a vibrant green at that time of year. El Kef - Sousse - Monastir will be fairly stereotypically-steppe-like. You also can't get much more African than that part of Tunisia, which is what the continent of Africa is named after. Saladman fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Dec 15, 2023 |
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Dec 15, 2023 16:16
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We're done with our roadtrip in Tunisia, and headed back home on Sunday morning. We've now been pretty much all over Tunisia, except for Djerba and Sfax. I'l do a more detailed writeup probably on Sunday, but in the meantime: cats. - Flight from Brussels to Tunis, cat was on her lap most of the flight.  - I got in pretty late, and the only place still open was the Baguette fast food chain. Which on the seating area on the first floor (2nd for Americans), had a cat calmly sitting on the counter next to a couple eating their French tacos.  - The next morning, a cat very insistently wants to come in our house. It makes itself at home. I check the AirBnB, it mentions that you can let an orange cat in the house, but don't let the grey cat in. - That evening, we go out to get shisha with my wife's cousin in a fancy cafe in Lac II, which conveniently has cat toilets next to the dining tables. This was a sealed, heated dining area, so it must have somehow run in the front door. - Our AirBnB in Monastir also came with a cat -- we opened the door, cat ran in and followed us around. Turns out it is the owner's cat, and she lives next door and the cat makes itself at home in her parents old home, which is now an AirBnB.  - Same house, different day, different cat. Kept meowing at the door, insisting to be let in. - I was sitting in the ribat of Monastir, waiting for my wife who likes to read all the information panels in museums, and a kitten came and snuggled up to me. - In a different nice restaurant, they opened the door and turned off the music during the maghreb prayer. A kitten ran in, and made itself comfortable.  - These adorable cats in Jendouba - we were walking by the road and the mom cat kept meowing at us to look at her kittens or something. They seemed fine, no idea what she wanted.Long story short: if you're significantly allergic to cats, then get hosed. Also in relevant politics, we talked to a lot of people and we usually pick up hitchhikers so we've talked to a lot of people across all spectrums. The only person who ever mentioned Gaza was her cousin, which was an aside when talking about trying to get a work visa to Canada when "all this poo poo with Israel" is finished. A lot of people spontaneously mentioned that they liked life under Ben Ali, which is bullshit because the economy sucked then too and Tunisia is way better developed and significantly less corrupt now, but rosy memories of the past are pretty universal, I guess. There were a lot of other signs of Palestinian support that I never remember seeing before - and they all looked new, like this graffiti in Mahdia.  And of course there was a lot of the virtue signaling type stuff from businesses. Support Gaza. Drink coke! This was from a digital display in the mall of Sousse, that every 5 minutes showed Palestine's flags, between advertisements for global capital.  
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Mar 8, 2024 19:20
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So, when I draw it out on a map, it looks like there's still a lot of Tunisia I've never been to! But, mostly places without anything of interest... I guess I've spent about 6 "tourist weeks" in those yellow highlighted areas (2 in the south, 1 northwest, 2 east coast, 1 northeast coast), plus another ~4 weeks in the Tunis area as a non-tourist. There's always fun stuff to find and photograph in Tunis though, like this ruined house on piles in the sea in La Marsa, which I don't remember but obviously has been there for decades.  We had put off going to Tabarka for years, because while Tunisians rave about how lovely it is, we always thought it looked like southeast France / northwest Italy... which while those are indeed incredible places, if I personally want that scenery I'd drive to France/Italy, and not fly way down to Tunisia. Plus, restaurants are way better in Europe and the beaches one billion times less dirty. But, it is very beautiful and I see why Tunisians love it!  Tabarka is also the only area where I really notice that tourism dying has decimated the local area. The town had a bunch of nice features, but they were slowly decaying and/or actively being eaten by flocks of goats and sheep:  There's a neat old Spanish fortress in town (the Spanish controlled Tabarka from like 1500-1750), but it's a closed military site... that we were able to get into, as is so often the case in countries like this. What was nice though, it's SO un touristy that the guy didn't even want baksheesh, just saw us wandering around and showed us around the fort, and we gave him a lift into town so he could get lunch for him and the other guard. The town has a lot of potential, but also a lot of active ruin, like these construction machines decaying into the sea.  The countryside is positively bucolic, and very cold/rainy (the hills above Tabarka get twice as much annual rain as Paris, and the city itself gets 20% more rain than Paris). It was also freezing cold, and snowed at the pass between Algeria and Tunisia when we were there. We ate in a café in Ain Draham and it was so cold inside - probably around 7°C - we could see our breath. This is not exceptionally cold for that area, they just have absolute garbage insulation.  - Again, very beautiful, but if you're a European tourist, not really worth going to Tunisia for when you could drive for 3 hours to see the same.A couple hours south of Tabarka, near El Kef, there are quite a few pretty spectacular Roman ruins. The city itself is pretty neat, perched on a hill about 700 masl (and maybe 200m above the plains)  This view is taken from yet another closed old fortress, that the guard just happened to see us, opened the door and let us wander around. There's a radar installation at the top, but the rest of the fort is super tourist friendly, and it's just two guards for the whole site so it's not like it's an active military base particularly... In any case, the ruins of Dougga are nearby, which are neat and extremely extensive, although quite similar to a dozen other Roman sites so I've gotten a bit blasé  And more interestingly to me, Bulla Regia which had these fantastic underground mansions (originally built underground, not due to landfill over millennia)  And some fantastic mosaics still in situ being gradually destroyed by rain and tourists' feet - not that there were many tourists. We were in Bulla Regia for 2 hours, saw one other foreign tourist and two Tunisian couples.  One of the other highlights of Tunisia, which we'd missed several times over the years driving by, is the coliseum at El Jem, which is pretty impressive -- the second-largest still standing after the one in Rome.   This was the only place we saw any significant number of tourists, since the first Sunday of the month is free for Tunisians, so there were quite a number of Tunisians there (although still certainly <1% the number of people the Colosseum gets every day). We also went to Sousse again, which has a lovely medina  And what I noticed for the first time, there are quite a number of shops in the souk that advertise "fixed prices" and the fixed prices they have are actually the correct price that a Tunisian would pay. Like a ceramic painted dinner plate is the equivalent of $1.25, a small throw carpet is $10, a fouta (Tunisian towel) is $3.50, etc. It definitely pays to look for a place like that, as many places will try and charge you triple or quintuple the correct price if you look like a tourist. My general rule of thumb for shopping is that I will only go into shops and browse if the shopowner gives zero fucks about me and is more concerned with their cell phone than with me as a client. If someone says more than "hi, welcome" then I strongly recommend immediately walking out (after politely saying "thanks, just looking"), as shopowners who interact with you are like 10x more likely to also be ripping you off. Anyway, we then went to the mountains around Zaghouan, tried and failed to climb up Jebel Zaghouan, the highest accessible mountain in Tunisia (1300m); we got to about 1100m before bailing out due to time constraints and also my wife's lack of confidence in finding our own way up to the summit - it is very steep and lol at the idea of signed, recommended paths. It would have definitely been possible to DIY to the top, but we were running late in the day anyway. The countryside south of Zaghouan is nice though, but by the time we were near the summit the visibility was garbage anyway. So, here's a view from south of it earlier in the day:  (Takrouna, facing NNW)We had also avoided going to Cap Bon a number of times, and decided this trip to finally check it out. Most of the peninsula was honestly pretty boring, but the far N end at Al Haouria was quite nice, and we go to see the lighthouse of Cap Bon, which if you eat harissa, is quite famous.  We drove up to the top of the road, yet again a closed military site and some military guys told us to leave, but we were able to backtrack a bit and take photos near the summit, facing towards the lighthouse. This is the first time we've really done a trip around northern Tunisia since 2016, and we also noticed (and confirmed by my wife's family) that there are a LOT more upscale / trendy cafes and restaurants than there were 10 years ago. Even in places that get zero tourists ever, like Zaghouan, you'll find really nice and upscale cafes that would be popular in Paris or Milan. Before that, most cafes were "men's cafes" which while not explicitly for men, were of the atmosphere of "here are a bunch of 50+ guys chain smoking cigs in an unventilated space loudly yelling at each other about politics/sports/whatever." To be honest I find that the less touristy (but still middle/upper middle class Tunisian) areas actually have nicer and trendier places than mixed cafés (i.e. not-mens) in mega-touristic places like Hammamet or Sidi Bou Said, which mostly stick to either French colonial atmosphere, or the generic 1001 Nights Arabian/Maghreb atmosphere. Anyway, we knew we were hitting mostly "B-sites" on this trip, but we had a good time, and I really like chaotic driving, and we both like going to different places we've never been before. Definitely for a tourist visiting Tunisia I would strongly, strongly recommend prioritizing the far south and the Tunis area (possibly also + Sousse) and skipping basically everywhere else I mention in this post. Except maybe Dougga + Bulla Regia for people who are really into Roman ruins.
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Mar 10, 2024 17:27
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Great photos, I just finished up a trip from Tunisia as well last week, my first time visiting. It was a shorter stay, three nights, spent mostly in Sidi Bou Said/Carthage/Tunis. I was very impressed, honestly. Tunisians were far more chill than Moroccans with respects to tourism and being aggressive about selling. It was similar to Algeria, which I last visited probably six years ago. The Ministry of Tourism has been ambitious about getting more UNESCO designations for various sites and developing north-south tourist circuits. But from my impression and experience, transport is a huge difficulty in the country still. I used mostly Bolt to get around, but also tried the metro and rail. Some of which is barely being held together. And yes, cats. Cats everywhere.
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Mar 13, 2024 21:06
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i fly airplanes posted:Great photos, I just finished up a trip from Tunisia as well last week, my first time visiting. It was a shorter stay, three nights, spent mostly in Sidi Bou Said/Carthage/Tunis. I was very impressed, honestly. Tunisians were far more chill than Moroccans with respects to tourism and being aggressive about selling. It was similar to Algeria, which I last visited probably six years ago. Intercity transport is vaguely okay with the louage system, but you have to know how to use it, and you have to either speak French, read Arabic (destination signage is - unusually for Tunisia - exclusively in Arabic script) or be confident with charades. I know there are large intercity buses that would be more comfortable / familiar for tourists to take, but never been on one and I very, very rarely notice them when driving - and I was even looking this trip. Within Tunis I usually also use Bolt or taxis. This time we drove around Tunis the whole time, honestly parking is pretty easy except *right* in Centre, but only since I’d already rented a car. On shorter ~4 day trips to Tunis we just use Bolt - it’s more convenient and cheaper than renting a car, even if we use it a lot. I haven’t used the TGM metro in years, it’s kinda fun as a novelty once but it’s crazy slow and held together by tape and bubble gum. For trips to the south I would recommend 100% of people to rent a car and self drive, eg for Djerba-Tataouine-Douz-Tozeur. For the Tunis-Sousse-El Jem-Dougga northern circuit it’s much more hectic and I wouldn’t generally recommend self drive to everyone. Driving at night is also pretty dangerous due to potholes on many roads for intercity routes (although main highways and big roads are all in good repair), and dangerous within cities due to the many motorcyclists who are *constantly* trying to commit suicide.
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Mar 13, 2024 22:31
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