Tunisia - El Jem and Mahdia

Well it's taken me a long time to get around to blogging our trip to Tunisia over Easter, with parents visiting and a busy time at work I simply haven't had the time to organise the photos and write some words.

Anyway, enough with the excuses. On the 4th April we flew out to Tunisia for 8 days of 'holiday' driving around the country to see what it had to offer.

Originally we saw Tunisia as a place with great potential for Roman ruins etc., given it's history as one-time competition for Rome in the region, but the more we read the more we became interested instead in the Berber and Arabic cultures in Tunisia.

This was put aside somewhat when we arrived at El Jem, south of Tunisia, which has an amazing Roman Amphitheatre, only slightly smaller than the Colosseum in Rome, and somewhat more accessible (once you'd navigated your way through the town itself, which didn't seem that interested in directing tourists in the right direction).

We stayed in El Jem until sunset, taking in the contrasting sights of the Roman ruins and the arabic styled town, before heading on to the fishing town of Mahdia where we planned to stay the night. We had the first of many dinners of white baguette bread, Harissa and Couscous.

The next morning in Mahdia we wandered around the town, getting our first taste of a Medina (old town centre) and wandering around the mosque before checking out the coastline.

The weather was very nice, but not nice enough to tempt us into the water!