Christmas Eve and more Roman ruins

Since Andrea unfortunately had to work on Christmas Eve I joined up with some of her friend's (Matt and Laura) along with Matt's mom who was in town for the holidays for some more sight-seeing. The first stop for the day was a town on the east coast of Tunisia called Nabeul that is known for its handicrafts (pottery, baskets, etc.). The main reason for this stop was to visit a basket weavers workshop owned by the family member of one of Matt's Arabic teachers. Unfortunately, since road names, and road signs aren't really used or even seem to exist in Tunisia we spent a good hour wandering around looking for the shop unsuccessfully before we just gave up and had lunch.

After lunch we continued south to an ancient Roman city called Oudna and somehow, like every other Roman site in Tunisia we had the entire place to ourselves. We started the explorations by wandering through a Roman ampitheater where we had complete freedom to go everywhere including the catacombs underneath the structure (where the animals were kept prior to their release in gladiatorial contests).



Some of the other highlights of Oudna included the remnants of the old Roman Capital.



The remains of a Hammam that had been bombed during WWII but which we still managed to find our way down inside to the basement sections where light was pouring in and reflecting off the mosaics still intact on the floors and walls.


What made the visit even more striking was the incredible sunset that we witnessed at the end of our visit.




After finishing up at the main Oudna site we drove a couple more miles to get to an amazing set of aqueducts that during the Roman era was used to provide water for Tunis. We were able to actually climb up inside the aqueducts and walk for probably a quarter mile down the channel that used to be used for water. Amazing.


The one very sad thing from this site was the obvious disregard the Tunisians show for their Roman heritage. The aquaducts which at one point in time were probably 50 miles or longer (stretching from the mountains to present-day Tunis) had been dynamited repeatedly for convenience sake regardless of the impact on these impressive ruins. For example, at the section of the aqueducts which we crawled through it should have been possible to go 2 or 3 times further except that the a large section of this 2000+ year old monument was blown-up to make it easier for train tracks to pass through rather than just adjusting the tracks so the trains could pass through one of the aqueduct's arches.