Tunisia Day 3: I can't think of a clever subtitle, sorry

The next morning we got up early so that we could be on our way as soon as possible. Several people had told Kevan that we shouldn't miss the Roman ruins in Dougga, so we scrapped our plans to drive down the coastline and headed for the interior. On our way out of the Tunis area though, we went into the Medina one more time to try to see the Great Mosque there. The first time we tried, it took us forever to find it and by the time we did, it had just closed. The second time, it wasn't open for non-Muslims. We checked and rechecked every source of information that we could find on it, and we were fairly certain that on our third try we would be able to find it, it would be open, and we would be able to go inside. So we set off.

On our way into the city, we (Kevan) pulled over to the side of the freeway and got out so that we (Kevan) could get a picture of the sunrise. Ever since we moved to Egypt, we've joked that sending us to live in the Middle East is really just a recipe for an international incident waiting to happen. And this is the picture that almost caused one:
Ok, not really, but there was a police officer who was very concerned about what Kevan was doing and stopped traffic so he could come and find out. Once Kevan started speaking to him in Arabic and explained what he was doing, he was fine with it. Now if it were me, I probably would have tried to be a little more discreet and maybe not climbed up on top of the traffic barrier. But that's just me.

Once we got back on our way, we got into the center of town, found a place to park, headed into the Medina, and walked straight to the mosque. Which was being cleaned. Three strikes.

This is a picture of one of the streets we walked through. I loved how deserted it is (quite the contrast to what it was like the first two times we were there) and how the just-hosed-down street actually looks clean (it's not, mind you, but at least it looks like it here).
This is one of the original gates of the Medina with the early-morning sky behind it.
And here is the bab with our early-morning faces in front of it. (It's hard to block something big when you're close to it, but we did our best.)
On our way out of the city we took a wrong turn (that actually worked out better than our originally planned route, perhaps the only time that happened the whole trip) and drove by this government building. The contrast between the white domes and the dark sky was quite stunning, so we (Kevan) stopped again to get another picture. Despite the fact the we (Kevan) stopped practically right in the middle of the street and then stood on a low wall to get the shot, somehow we (Kevan) remained unnoticed by any form of law enforcement.Getting out of Tunis and getting on the right road to boot, was quite the undertaking, but somehow we did it. About halfway to Dougga, we drove though a town that had a neat-looking mosque. I've never seen one before that looked quite so medieval.
This is another side-of-the-road shot that we got of what we noticed was a pretty common form of property boundary--cacti, really tall cacti. We saw it not just around property, but also in between fields and orchards. I guess that's as good a way as any to keep goats or whatnot out.
Once we found the right road, we drove right to Dougga. Well, I should say, the town right next to Dougga, Teboursouk. Then we drove all over the town looking for the road to Dougga. Our favorite thing in the town was this guy:
Best we could figure out, he's part of a national campaign to get people to recycle. We saw statues of him all over the country, each in various states of disrepair. This one was in probably the best condition we saw.

We finally found Dougga, and what we heard about it was true. The guidebook calls it "the best-preserved Roman ruins in North Africa," and that is one thing the book got right. Have I mentioned that we had a really bad guidebook? Something we said to each other frequently was, "Sure glad we didn't pay for this thing." Anyway, these ruins were really cool. And you know what's great about visiting sights like these in a country that's not America? Nobody cares if you climb all over them. Which exactly what we did.

These are some pictures of the amphitheater:



And this is a picture of Kevan standing on the very top of it:
And this is a picture of Kevan orating from the floor:
And this is a picture of Kevan standing on top of a column to get some pictures:
Hi Kev!
And this is us at the top, looking down: (Sorry that you can still kind of see it there behind us.)
This is a temple on the grounds. There were a bunch of birds nesting around the top of it, and we tried to get some shots with them flying, but this is the best one:
Gratefully, the shot Kevan didn't get is of me, trying to get the birds to fly away. Or if he did, he's a smart man and isn't letting on.

More of the temple:


This is part of the mosaic floor in the courtyard in front of the temple:
I think my feelings for columns have been well established, so there's no need for me to explain this picture:
This was just a cool stone lying on the ground:
After sufficiently tramping all over history, we got back in the car and drove south to a town called Le Kef. We were planning on just driving through the town, but we saw a really cool-looking fort and decided to stop and go in. Problem was, we couldn't figure out how to actually get in.

This is one of the doors that wasn't the entrance:
And this is Kevan on a wall, taking a picture of something else:
After taking those pictures (and not finding any doors we could actually walk through), we walked around to the other side of the fort. The fort is at the top of a hill, and around the side we saw the greatest view of the surrounding area. You could even see the Algerian mountains off in the distance (Le Kef is only about 30 miles from the Algerian border). We got some good pictures of the view, but Kevan, bless his heart, loaded these pictures on to the blog and didn't put one of those pictures on. I would add it now, but they're on his computer and he's on his way to Oman for 2 weeks, so maybe when he gets back.

Anyway, we also came upon a group of boys playing soccer (though they would probably tell you they were playing football). Kevan went over to them to ask where the entrance was, and as soon as he starting speaking Arabic to them, they swarmed him. Swarmed. They could not get over this white American who was speaking to them in Arabic. It was fun to watch. They also loved his camera and had us both take a bunch of pictures of them. Every time the picture would take, they would rush over and jockey for position to see the shot.
They told Kevan that the fort was closed that day (figures) and then walked with us back to our car. The boy in red and the shorter one in the white sweater were the loudest of the bunch. Somehow American politics came up, and I told Kevan to tell the one in red that he looked like Obama. Oh man, did he love that. Then the one in white told Kevan to tell me to tell him (Kevan) to tell him (the boy)(did you follow that?) that he looks like Sarkozy. Nobody seemed to care about looking like the Tunisian president, but that's neither here nor there, I suppose.
After we left Kef, we drove and drove and drove. We decided that since we were sort of in the vicinity, we would go to the city of Kairouan. In the vein of, "if you don't have anything nice to say..." I'm not going to talk much about this town. There was some semi-interesting architecture, and we saw some cool doors, but that was about it that we liked about it. Also there was this guy and his loom; he was nice enough:
The guy who made our experience in that city most unpleasant told us several times over that Kairouan is the 4th most holy city in Islam, but later in the trip someone told Kevan that the only people he had ever heard that from were people from Kairouan.

On the road out of town (which we took as soon as we could find the darn thing), had building after building (mostly houses) with strings of peppers drying on them. The man here came out and turned his lights on when he saw that Kevan was taking pictures of them.
We drove for a couple more hours south and east to the coast and ended up in a town called Gabes. We weren't too impressed with it, either, but there was a really great view of the full moon over the ocean from the balcony of our hotel room.