Suß Sousse

February 2025

My Tunisia travels, for this (and some of the next) blog ...

Heading South

I sort of had intended to take a train to the city of Sousse early the next morning, but the train had already left before I even woke up in Tunis, the Tunisian capital, and that gave me the chance to hang with the Posse for brekky up on the terrace.

The most efficient way to get around Tunisia is to take a louage, which is basically a shared van. They all leave from designated louage stations, you buy fixed price tickets, and they leave when they're full, which, so far, seems to generally happen quite frequently within daylight hours.

First I took a local louage to the main station in Tunis.

There's not much room in there, and I didn't get much of a view, but it was only for a couple of hours.

My louage stopped in the middle of somewhere, and I decided to walk to my hotel, about an hour's walk.

My district was called Hammam Sousse. A hammam is basically a public bath, and there's a few in my district.

Carob.

Süß Sousse (Sweet Sousse)

Sousse is actually a city of over 300,000 people, which isn't that much smaller than the Tunisian capital of Tunis, which houses half a million. It's pretty spread out here too, as there's virtually no high rise. Like Tunis, it sits right on the Mediterranean coast.

Poor chickens

And yeah, from the signage you can probably guess it was once a French colony. France ruled the country from 1881 till 1956.

I arranged to meet my guesthouse owner, Toutou, here at this café, as his place was a little difficult to find.

My guest house entrance

Most buildings here have an inner courtyard which is open to the weather. It's a pretty dry place most of the time.

My little room. It was actually pretty cold in there. It's warm outside in the sun though.

I headed out pretty much straight away, and found this place to get a mlawi, a stuffed flat bread, for lunch.

Seriously good, and loads of veg things to stuff it with.

Yep, real live lantana

I eventually made it to the old city, and went to the ribat, the ancient fortress, which was constructed in the early 800s.

It was built to provide defences against invading armies, who always seemed to arrive by ship. As with most structures around here, it contains an inner courtyard, which is surrounded by various dwellings and rooms, and is protected by fortified outer walls with watchtowers.

Taken from the precarious top of the highest watchtower, looking down onto the equally ancient and magnificent Great Mosque of Sousse, which was completed in 851.

I wandered into the medina.

There's a million cats here.

There's loads of tea and coffee houses around, frequented primarily by cigarette smoking men.

Old school music store. They were pumping out great Arabic music by these guys.

Strolling to the beach. This hotel never made it to the final stages of construction, maybe because of Covid.

This little girl was going around selling tissues for a donation, which is what the poor and homeless do around here. It's sorta nice, they make a small amount of money on each transaction and don't have to give out the beggar vibe.

Although there's a few beggars around too. Even some normal kids, definitely not poor, ask for a dinar here and there. I just laugh at them dumbfoundedly. Not a good habit for them to get into.

Tunisia is full of cafés. Which are full of men. Men, coffee, tea and cigarettes. Not une femme in sight.

Actually, there's plenty of different kinds of cafés. Some are for everyone.

But there seems to be more of the men-only ones, for some reason.

El Jem

Before coming to Tunisia there was only one place I knew that I really wanted to see, and that was the amphitheatre at El Jem, a small town west of Sousse, in the interior. So the next day off I went.

Well, first I had an incredible breakfast, lovingly prepared by Toutou, of course, and shared with a Dutch/Swedish family who now live in London.

And then I had a quick jam with Toutou. Such a lovely guy. Don't ask me what I'm singing at this point.

Strolling to the louage stop.

I took a louage to the main louage station, and then hopped on another one to El Jem. It's all very organised, with various ticket offices for different places, and everything well signposted.

El Jem's a small town. It was quite hot out there in the sun. Now that's a pleasant change.

Local mosque

So sad. That's his tongue hanging out by the way. Someone'll probably make a soup out of that.

The citrus is absolutely divine here at the moment. So plentiful, so cheap and so juicy. There's juice stalls everywhere, and they serve fresh orange juice at all the cafés and restos.

Mosaics are big in this country. How big? We'll get to that later on.

Eventually I bumped into the amphitheatre.

The World Heritage listed El Jem amphitheatre is the largest amphitheatre in Africa, and one of the largest in the world.

It was unbelievable to see it with my own one-and-two-thirds eyes.

It was built around 238 AD, and is one of the best preserved Roman stone ruins in the world.

And there's hardly anyone there.

Once upon a time the El Jem amphitheatre could house 35,000 spectators, and they had major events there, including gladiatorial conquests and hunts. It's the second largest Roman amphitheatre in the world, after the Colosseum.

The amphitheatre was so incredibly important that they even filmed Gladiator there. I actually think I may have stepped on the very same ground that Russell Crowe has. I could hardly think straight afterwards.

The building is incredibly tall, there were at least five double flights of stone steps leading up to the top stand.

They were preparing the cricket pitch way below

After hanging there for ages I wandered off to the nearby museum.

They're into live animal transport here. I've noticed butchers sometimes have animals tethered outside their shops.

Least you know it's fresh I guess.

The local museum blew me away, with its incredible collection of original mosaics.

Tunisia has the largest collection of original Roman mosaics in the world. I was gobsmacked by the number and quality in just this small museum. The Bardo Museum in Tunis has the world's largest collection in the world, but I was bummed because I didn't make it there due to an unplanned late return to Tunis, and it was closed.

But this one was amazing anyway, still one of the best in the world.

There's a huge history to the mosaics, and the ones in this museum were created from the early 2nd Century AD, and through many years afterwards. The styles, subjects, and artistic features changed over time, and this museum showcases mosaics that represent many of the main mosaic styles.

Dionysus riding a lion. He's the Greek God of wine, fertility, festivity and ritual madness, among other things. Around him a Bacchanta is dancing and playing the tambourine, two sartyrs are around him, Silenus is perched on a camel, his favoured panther is nearby, and so is Mystis his horse. I know you know all those characters, unlike me.

There was also a preserved ancient house in one part of the museum. It had original Roman mosaics on the floors of many of the rooms. It's quite incredible to see. To be actually allowed to walk on these ancient Roman mosaic floors really astounded me.

Zinedine is a famous name in world football, being the first name of the one time French football captain and superstar, Zinedane Zidane, who led them to World Cup triumph in 1998.

Yeah, he was a Tunisian dude, and his fame unfortunately became infamy because he head butted an Italian defender during extra time in the 2006 World Cup final and was sent off. France lost the game on penalties.

It was Zinedine's last ever game for France. Not because of the head butt, but because he was old.

I was super lucky to meet French Canadian Suzanne and American Avi at the louage station. They're both super nice, we had a really nice chat on the way back to Sousse. Suzanne left Canada when she was in her twenties, and now lives somewhere between Lille and Dunquirque, in northern France, where she teaches yoga and does creative things.

Avi lives in Pittsburg, and himself has been avi-dly practicing yoga for the past 50 years. He's now in his 70s, and has travelled a lot, including with his son, whom he home-schooled.

Once we arrived back I reunited with the Tunis posse - Vroni, Luis and Göksagun, who were at a resto. It was great to see the guys again. We were all really happy about it actually. To celebrate, we ate too much.

The food is so good here, and so cheap. This is a delicious tomato and red pepper spicy dish called kafteji, so good!

Later I caught a local bus back to my hotel, which was in a much quieter district of Sousse, called Hammam Sousse. There were no rooms in the hotel the other guys were staying at, which is actually in the medina in the centre of the city, but I'll move there tomorrow.

I met an amazing young Tunisian woman on the bus who spoke to me for the whole journey in really good English. It was really inspiring to listen to her, she's super switched on, given that society here is pretty conservative, in the main.

At my hotel I met English Raf, whose parents are Bengali, and we went out to eat together. It was great to chat with him, he's a really interesting guy, an IT developer who lives in Northhampton, and is also a keen traveller.

Sousseing About

I've made what I regard to be a wise decision, and will base myself in this beautiful town of Sousse. It's so nice here.

It's got a super friendly vibe, it's not too big, it's not too small, it's cheap, and the food's great.

But the best thing about it of course is that the posse's here, and it's super easy for us to go out for day trips from here, instead of packing up every morning and constantly migrating with all our gear.

I'm planning on spending at least the next few nights here, I love it.

And I don't just love this place, I love Tunisia. It's cruisey, it has some beautiful places, people are friendly and hospitable, and it's pretty cheap too.

Yeah, this country has been a hugely pleasant surprise.

Can't wait to explore more of it❤️

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By the way, my website template's been super annoying lately, so I've needed to make changes to the way I upload photos etc. Sorry if it doesn't look as good. I prefer not condensing the pics into galleries, but it seems to be the only way to get photos in there relatively quickly.

After this blog there'll be mainly galleries from now on.

But you can click on any pic to zoom in, and then scroll through the whole blog's pics if you want.

Not my ideal presentation, but I don't have other options right now, and don't have the motivation to change to another site provider, because I'm not sure what will happen with all my past blogs if I stop my current subscription.

Anyway, you get the gist of what I'm up to. Enjoy the read!💥🌏