Tunis is the capital of Tunisia. I ran out of my all-inclusive hotel and got myself a hotel in the old town of Tunis, the El Jeld. This turned out to be a true palace, with courtyard gardens, mosaic rooms that would make a mosque proud, rooftop terraces, and a quite good restaurant. Food in Tunisia, even outside the all-inclusive purgatory, is occasionally ok but not great, so this was very welcome.
The old town has several streets roofed over, turning them into enormous markets. It took me a day before I got them figured out and no longer got lost and ended up on the wrong side of town. Outside the quite large old town, Tunis is a modern city with traffic and noise (last photo), but inside it doesn’t appear to have changed much in a thousand years. Several merchant palaces, like Dar Othman, can be visited. I congratulate Tunis for preserving its heritage!
