Log in
Join travelers community
Your Profile
Logout
West Africa, Malta and the Balkans in 1999
TUNISIA (North)
Bec2004-09-19 14:21:06
Displayed times (last time: )
Tunis
I was delighted to stroll down Habib Bourguiba Avenue once more and surprised to see that it had not changed much in the 35 years since that I had come here on business. The old Tunisia Palace were I used to stay had been transformed into a shopping center but the trendy Café de Paris and the ill famed Monseigneur Nightclub were still there.
I enjoyed a nostalgic visit to the Medina behind this gate on Place de la Victoire.
The remarkable social revolution carried out by Habib Bourguiba is well illustrated by this policewoman blowing her whistle to control traffic on the corner of Avenue Habib Bourguiba and Avenue de Paris. In no other Arab country have I seen a woman traffic cop! On the corner behind her, you can see the landmark Café de Paris that I have mentioned earlier.
After the Medina, I stopped at the Canadian Embassy to have them stamp an official Arabic translation of my passport's first page into it to satisfy the Libyan authorities. Then I left it at the Libyan Embassy to have it stamped with the visa that had been arranged for me by a Libyan tourist agency that I had contacted through the Internet. With these bureaucratic rituals behind me, I took the time to enjoy the remarkable collection of Roman mosaics and statues of the Bardo Museum of which there is a sample below.
The Medina and the city center had not changed much but Tunis had grown considerably since my last visit. It was now connected to Carthage and the other beachside suburbs by a rapid transit system and it boasted of many modern buildings like this inverted pyramid.
Carthage
The Romans so completely destroyed Carthage that there's nothing of it left today. The earth moving they did here prompted one of their historians, I forget which, to write: "We have conquered, we have filled in the valleys and have flattened the mountaintops".
After razing the
...
See photographs from:
Tunisia Gallery
