Tunisia - 29 September 2010 (4)

Sfax

After the museum, we set off for Sfax, the second city of Tunisia and the commercial centre.  We hit town during the afternoon rush hour, so it was a slow drive to our hotel.  When we got there, I braved the traffic on the main road to get to a chemist on the other side.  It took a while, but I survived unscathed, made my purchase and then ventured back again, arriving before the cases were fully unloaded from the bus.

After just half an hour in the hotel, Lotfi took seven of us into the medina in the bus.  We went in through the south entrance and walked past lots of stalls.  There were some odd combinations.  For example, more than one stall displayed bottles of nail varnish between the spices.  We took a brief look at the mosque and then toured the fish market.  This was very smelly and, as it was the end of the day, had nearly sold out.

We then headed back towards the south wall to try a café which had been recommended.   On the way, we stopped for Caroline and Heuly to buy some top selling Arab music.   The café was highly over-rated.  It was in the wall of the medina and there was nowhere to sit outside and people watch like we wanted to do.  The main entertainment was the TV, which was on high volume and showed a football match.  Definitely not my idea of fun and it destroyed any atmosphere in the café.  There were not many other people in the café, but there were a few young men who were all smoking sheesha pipes.  I had an Arabic coffee and that was nice.

Just after we walked out, we spotted a restaurant and decided to have dinner there.  We said goodbye to Lotfi who was off to the supermarket and I took on the role of interpreter.  We were a bit worried about the cleanliness of the place, but we were reassured by a sink just in front of the kitchen area, which meant that people could wash their hands.  The menu was dominated by meat dishes including lamb cooked in several different ways.  Caroline and I had Tunisian salad and chips.  Her chips were hot, but mine came immediately and were cold.  The others ate lamb or chicken and said that their food was good.  All the meals were less than D9.000, so at least it was cheap.

After the meal, we headed out of the medina and, after a bit of a wait, were able to find taxis to take us back to the hotel.  Lotfi had said it would cost D5.000, but the fare was much lower than that.