As I was already in the neighbourhood, it was time to stop by. So, it was time to leave Morocco behind and move on to Tunisia. There was a direct flight from Casablanca to Tunis.
Wednesday
The flight was at 1.55 PM but better be safe than sorry. So, I started early and made it to the 9:50 airport train from Casa Port. I first had planned to take a taxi, but there seemed to be something strange going on with the taxis in the morning. The white ones were not allowed to take me to Casa Port and the red ones seemed to have a habit of also picking up other people for the same ride. As far as I understood there was this babbling grandmother with her grandchild that wanted also to the same small taxi with me. I said no thank you and opted to walk instead. It was close enough and the street was OK for the luggage wheels. After a 45 minutes train ride, I was already at the airport. The check-in gates were already open, so I dropped my bag there and went through the formalities as usual. Everything went smoothly and once I was on the other side I discovered that there was still a bottle of water in my backpack. Good work, everybody. As I had time then I spend an hour reading and then went to have lunch. This was probably the most expensive airport meal I ever had but at the same time, there was no currency exchange anywhere to change my Morocco dirhams into something usable. I also checked the similar items as I had purchased the day before from the souk and found them three times as expensive in the airport. So compared to that the lunch wasn’t expensive at all.
The flight to Tunis took 3 hours by Royal Air Marocco airline. The biggest surprise there was that they actually served food for everybody on that flight. I can’t even remember when I got a warm meal on one of my other 3-hour flights. It has been years. And it was actually delicious. I felt like royalty.
Tunis airport was quite small but again everything went very smoothly. This time they were also interested in my cameras but it was just a quick peek into my backpack. This airport already had an ATM machine next to the luggage carousel and gave me a nice stack of 20 TND notes. 1 Tunisian dinar is about 0,30 EUR or 1 EUR is about 3+ TND at the moment. Finally, my suitcase arrived as well and together we went outside the customs area to get back online with a local Orange SIM card. As soon it was done, I opened my Bolt app and found myself a taxi. The annoying part with Bolt in Tunis is that they only take cash, so you can’t pay with your card in the app as usual. The other thing I noticed here is that all the taxi drivers seem to call me through the app like I couldn’t find them otherwise or whatever they wanted to say. The reason to use the app in a foreign country and without speaking any local languages is the possibility not to talk but just enter the destination and not discuss the fee afterwards. So I just kept on ignoring all the calls. Taxis here are yellow and small and in bad condition. What else is new.
It was raining. Filippo, my host in the Airbnb arrived quickly and let me in the apartment. A quite nice one in fact with some interesting furniture (designed and made by the owners) and with a small balcony. The first order of business was to find some food for breakfast. There was a Carrefour nearby so I took my umbrella and went to search for it. There seem to be some milk crises in Tunisia because there wasn’t any milk or yoghurt in the store. Later I found out that all the milk products are actually exported out from Tunisia and the locals don’t seem to get a lot of it at all.
THURSDAY
The next morning the rain had stopped. I spent the first part of the day walking around the city centre of Tunis following a self-guided tour on my phone. I used the GPSmyCity app for that. This has a 3-day trial version which was all I needed for Tunisia. It took me along the large avenues into the older part of the town and narrow winding alleys in the souks down there. Somehow it was less annoying there compared to Morocco. The merchants were not as pushy and everything looked a bit nicer. But still, everything looked tired and broken and trash was everywhere…even with trash bins in sight. There were some demonstrations going on. I don’t know if was it because of that or if it’s normal, but everywhere were police officers and soldiers and some monuments had barricades around them.
Had lunch in one of the brasseries close to the apartment and went back afterwards. For dinner, I decided to look up one of the suggestions my host had sent me. The name of the restaurant had changed but I went in anyways. It looked good as well as the menu. Which was in fluent French and Arabic only. But for that reason, you have Google lens translator in your phone. I ordered lamb with rice and it was the best lamb and rice that I had ever eaten. Everything worked also very quickly and I was even able to pay with a card.
FRIDAY
It was stormy day with strong winds and hard rain. I didn’t do jack that day. Except stayed in the apartment and binge-watched Jack Reacher and Jack Ryan on Amazon Prime.
In the evening I was finally hungry enough to get to the nearest street corner and bring back a nice pepperoni pizza.
Sounds like a holiday.
SATURDAY
My last chance for sightseeing. The weather was beautiful. Sunny and up to 10 degrees Celsius. When staying in Tunis then the most obvious and closest attraction is the Carthage. To be honest, there is nothing left except some ruins here and there. But the name of the once powerful city still lives on. The ruins are not from the original Carthage but the Roman version of it. The best sights are actually the amphitheatre and some roman baths by the sea. But I’m getting ahead of myself. In the morning I took a taxi to the Carthage Museum location on top of the hill. It was wise even though the museum itself was closed. I bought the ticket from there, which works in seven different locations around the area for 12 TND and started to follow my self-guiding tour route down the hill. I used the GPSmyCity app for this area as well.
As I already said, the amphitheatre was quite a site. From there I walked up the hill again to the location of some roman villas. Actually, there was only one of those walls restored just a little some decades ago and is therefore now somewhat recognizable. But it was a great view from up there on the Mediterranean. The route went down to the necropolis and through the terms toward the sea. On the way was a small site with some artefacts found during the excavations. The Punic Port was the last on the list and is nowadays just a small round cove for some fishing boats and birds.
From there I took another taxi to take me some 3 km up the hill to the village of Sidi Bou Said. It’s a picturesque small village near Carthage, where they have applied the building style across the Mediterranean. All the houses are white with bright blue windows and doors (with some yellow exceptions). It’s popular among the locals as well as tourists. Walking around the narrow streets, sitting in cafes and buying stuff like local pottery is apparently something the locals are there for.
I had lunch in one of the restaurants where they served me a pan with some spaghetti with meatballs and some really nice herbs. After lunch, I went for half an hour’s walk towards the beach of La Marsa. Another popular destination for people in Tunis. It’s a small resort town with lots of restaurants and nightlife. I sat on the beach watching the waves, walked along the beachfront streets and enjoyed the nice day by the sea. Around 3 PM there was a train that took me back to Tunis for 0,8 TDN (dinar is subdivided into 1000 milim or millimes, so the train ticket cost only 800 millimes). To compare, the delicious eclair I bought a little while before cost 3 TDN. The train was cheap and tired-looking and stopped every few hundred metres to pick up more people. But in the end, it took us all to the city centre of Tunis straight over the causeway, where it was just a short walk back to the apartment.
After a shower and little rest, it was time to go hunting again for some food. I had an idea to finally find some couscous that had eluded me in Morocco (where they apparently only make it on Fridays and I didn’t know it on Friday yet). But the dish originates allegedly from Tunisia, so I expected to find it here more easily. I hadn’t however on the first days and now was my last chance. I found several places in the vicinity with couscous in the menu. But they were all out of it for today. Another place I got recommended was suddenly closed tonight. Another place that Tripadvisor recommended didn’t even exist anymore. But who said that hunting should be easy. So finally, I ended up at an Indian fast-food joint where they served me a huge escalope with rice and sauces and naan bread with some fries and a coke to go. It was a good meal but still no couscous. Maybe next time.
SUNDAY
Time to go home. I packed my stuff, ordered a taxi from Bolt app and arrived at the airport early enough. I had some 100 TND still left, so I changed these back to euros before the customs. Because on the other side of the security, it was only possible to pay with euros or cards. No more Tunisian money.
The flight was scheduled for 1:30 PM with boarding starting an hour before. When nothing happened, then I got a little gut feeling that this is going to be interesting again. My homecoming trips usually are. At 1 PM they changed the departure gates and moved the people to the other end of the airport. The staff over there didn’t seem to know anything about the flight to Milan, though. The information boards refused to declare a delay for the flight although all other TunisAir flights were already delayed by that time. At 1:22 the information screens declared that the flight had departed. Funny, guys. At 1:30 finally the screens said that the estimated departure time is 2:00 PM and soon after they actually started to let people on board. So around 2:10 PM the flight finally took off.
In Milan I had to self-transfer to another flight. Originally I had 2 hours between TunisAir flight to Milan and WizzAir direct flight back home. That would have been more than enough time. Thanks to the “funny guys” in Tunis with some “help” from the baggage staff in the Milan Airport I managed to get my suitcase less than 1 hour before my next flight. By that time I already knew that I couldn’t make it because the luggage drop-off/check-in counter was supposed to be closed 1 hour before that flight. I went and checked anyway but no luck. So I went to Skyscanner.com, searched for any flights from Milan towards home and found a Finnair flight scheduled to leave a few hours later. So I bought myself a new ticket, and went directly to the check-in counter to drop off my bag. There were many Finns returning from a ski holiday in the Alps and all of them had skis with them and too heavy bags. So it took a while before I managed to say goodbye to my bag. The customs part went easy and I went directly to find some food before my long flight home through Helsinki.
Again there seemed to be a slight delay with the departure time which was especially nerving because I had only 50 minutes in Helsinki between two flights. When we arrived then it had shrunken to around 35 minutes. The Finnair app said that we will arrive at gate 36A and the next departure gate was going to be 17. So I prepared myself for a long run through the airport. Luckily, before my run, I checked once more the local information screen and found to my surprise that the departure gate had been changed…to 36. So I screeched to a halt and turned around. I was already here. As my seat number on both flights was 8A, then I was wondering if they are going to use the same planes as well. But they didn’t. It was another plane. Still, the staff in the Helsinki airport is so efficient that they managed to get my bag from one plane to another in 30 minutes and it travelled safely with me for my last leg of the day. Arrived after midnight, but was still happy to be back home. Now I just need to hope that my travel insurance will cover the unexpected new plane ticket purchase.
It did. A month later. At least part of it because the airline responsible for the delay didn’t issue any reason for the delay. During the insurance process I found out that TunisAir is one of the least punctual airlines in the world. The same Tunis-Milan flight have once during past five months been on time. It’s like every time it comes as a surprise for them that they need to fly somewhere. One time there was even 546 minutes delay. That is over 9 hours. So good luck with your TunisAir flight. You are going to need it. Or just do not plan anything else for that day.
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