Tunisia Day 2: I'm still not sure why I left there

Pay no attention to the fact that we've been home from this trip for almost six weeks now, and we (me) are just now getting around to telling you about Day 2. Good thing nothing interesting like Christmas, going to Luxor, or taking my mom all around Cairo has happened in the mean time. Oh...wait... At this rate we may finish this tale around Halloween.

Anyway, back to the story:

In case you weren't jealous enough of us getting a week away. Alone. With no kids. By ourselves. Nobody but us. This is the view we had from our hotel room:
Yes, that's the Mediterranean. It was so pretty there. A frequent comment I made to Kevan throughout the week was, "Tell me again why it is we can't live here?"

My favorite city that we visited there is called Sidi Bou Said. Sort of by accident, we found the palace an Austrian baron built for his wife. It's now a museum for Tunisian arts and music. They don't allow you to take pictures inside, but our guide really liked that Kevan could speak Arabic, so he let Kevan get off a few shots.

This is the main hallway, taken from the upstairs living quarters. The detailing is just amazing.
This is a close-up. See what I mean?This is one of the hallways in the living quarters.
And this is my favorite picture that Kevan took during our whole trip. It's looking out the front door of the palace. Love. It was raining most of the time we were in Sidi Bou Said, and this is one of the few breaks of sunshine we had. I told Kevan that if it had ever been consistently sunny while we were there, I likely would have gotten myself a table at a cafe and told him to go get the children; I'd wait right there.
After we (me = reluctantly) left there, we drove down the coast a little to Carthage. We were looking for the Roman amphitheater, but first we found this beach (you'll notice that not finding what we're looking for became a theme of this trip). For the record, some of these shots are mine. Though I owe my good shots more to my good camera than to any skillz I may or may not possess.

This is looking north toward Carthage:
Some cool fishing boats:


Kevan and I have a tradition of taking our own picture whenever we go somewhere. Part of the tradition involves doing our best to try to block whatever famous thing or beautiful scenery is behind us. This started by accident when we realized we had some really great pics of places we visited in Hawaii...all completely blocked by our smiling mugs. Since then it's become intentional. Sometimes we'll even take multiple pictures, because you can see whatever it is behind us too well. Someday maybe I'll create a montage of all the great things we've stood in front of. But for now, here's one from the beach. There will likely be more from throughout the trip.
Still looking for the amphitheater, we went to this cathedral that was right next to some Roman ruins. Really great doors (also a theme you will see running through the trip).
One of them, up close:
My other favorite part of this cathedral was the big poster you see there on the side. It's an ad for chocolate. Chocolate and church, my two passions.

Guess what! We still hadn't found the amphitheater! But here are some pictures from an ancient Roman village. I guess Kevan thought I should be photographed next to a piece of an ancient Roman column. Probably because I was taking 4.2 billion pictures of every column I saw.
And this is me going into an ancient Roman bathroom. It was surprisingly clean. Not by modern standards, mind you, but ancient Romans would have been proud.
And guess what else! We finally found the amphitheater!
The pseudo-guide guy who was following us around hoping for money, told us this is where they kept the lions:
After we had shooed him away and got to looking around a little more, we noticed this door. It's opposite the lions' cage, so I'm assuming that's where they kept the Christians.
About halfway in between the two, we found a tunnel. Looking out toward the main passage:
And looking down the tunnel and at Kev:
Hopefully the Christians didn't use this tunnel thinking it was their way out, because all it led to was an area with a high ceiling. Here, let Kevan demonstrate:
Now wasn't that exciting? No? We didn't really think so either, but it was kind of cool. Maybe not "the better part of the day spent looking for it" cool, but interesting nonetheless.

That evening we drove up to the north coast of Tunisia to the main port town, Bizerte. It was dark and raining when we got there, so we couldn't really see much of the town, other than the hoppin' Thursday night scene. There were throngs of people out everywhere. This is where I first started noticing something that we ended up seeing all over the country (and I'm pretty sure we drove all over the country)--restaurants and cafes filled with men, and not a single woman to be found. More on that later, maybe. This post took so long to get up, who knows if I'll ever get back to that topic.

Through more wanderings, we found a restaurant shaped like a ship, and I don't know why we didn't get a picture of it. We did however (and by "we" you know I mean "Kevan") get a picture of the lovely fish cart they brought by.
We were the only customers in the entire restaurant the whole time we were there, and yet it still took more than an hour between when we were seated and when we finally got our check. It was here, however, that we were introduced to the traditional Tunisian dish of Couscous, and for that the Old Timey Pirate Ship-Lookin' Restaurant with the Creepy Fish Cart (though that might not have been its real name) will always hold a special place in our hearts.

Stay tuned in February to maybe hear about our next day!