Tunisia - 26 September 2010 (1)

Bardo Museum

Getting ready for company

Although our room was a bit more pleasant when we got back because Caroline had managed to get us a fan, I woke up at 02.10 with a nightmare and then found it very difficult to get back to sleep.  During the briefing session, someone had pointed out that we needed $1,000 or a credit card with a similar amount to get into Libya.  As you do in the middle of the night, I started to worry because I had no dollars and only the equivalent of £500 in cash.  I had also forgotten to ring the bank and the credit card company to let them know that I would be going abroad, so would I be able to get any money out on my cards?  I spent hours turning things around in my head and finally got to sleep at 05.00.  The alarm went off at 06.00.

A God and the Four Seasons

We were all on the bus well before the due time.  The bus was large which meant that we were able to get our luggage inside and have lots of spare seats to spread out on.  I sat next to Werner and gave him my BBC History magazine.  Unfortunately, he took this as a much too positive sign and not just that I had felt sorry for him the previous evening.  With his bad breath and his suggestive comments, I resolved not to sit next to him again.

Food for thought

Our new guide, who was to remain with us until the border, was called Lotfi.  Again, he was an excellent guide and did the guiding on all the sites we visited.  If I have a complaint, it was that he knew so much and wanted to tell us everything, so we spent a long time listening to him and not just exploring the sites and feeling the atmosphere – but that is not really a complaint.  Our driver was called Hammadi.

Our first stop was the Bardo Museum, which is still in Tunis.  The museum was being refurbished and, if all the new rooms are as good as the ones already open for our visit, it will be spectacular.

Fishing

Baptismal Font

 Most of the items in the museum were mosaics, some of them of a very exceptional standard, using tiny tesserae, which made the pictures look much more true to life than the average mosaic.  The mosaics covered a range of subjects, the best being the everyday scenes of things like food, fishing, farming and a lady’s dressing room.  There were also some Christian mosaics and some that covered mythological scenes.  The new extension gave good, well lit views of the mosaics, which could be seen from both above and below as you wandered round the galleries.  One room had the heads of some Roman Emperors – Septimus Severus, Augustus, Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius.  Other rooms in the old part of the museum had some ornate baptismal fonts.

After the museum, we went for a drink in the nearby café and watched two tiny kittens having a wrestling match.

Wrestling Kittens