Trip to Southern Tunisia

The day after Christmas I went on a four day trip to Southern Tunisia with a group of about 45 U.S. Embassy employees, families and friends. Unfortunately, Andrea found out just a few days prior to the trip that she had to work on the 29th making it impossible for her to join us. The trip started early in the morning on the 26th with a LOT of driving (7 painful hours to be specific), but on the bright-side we stopped every couple of hours at various sites which broke up the monotony quite a bit and the bus wasn't completely full which meant I could stretch out in two seats. Even better, the crowd from the embassy were a really nice and down-to-earth group of people that was fun to hang out with.

The first stop of the day was a town called Kairouan which is known as the "spiritual capital" of Tunisia. Kairouan has what is apparently the first mosque, and actually the first Arab building in all of Tunisia (and I believe North Africa). The Mosque was pretty cool as it was built with over 600 foraged roman columns that the Arabs had collected from all over the country making the mosque in essence also a museum of Roman columns.



Apart from that Mosque we made a few other stops in the city including a visit to the Medina which was kind of pathetic since its only claim to fame was a well in a small room where a very sad camel walks in a circle to get water that supposedly “comes from Mecca”.


The final stop in Kairouan was a Mausoleum for a famous Islamic historical figure (someone who was the Prophets barber and “best friend”). The mauseleum was built in the 18th century in Andalusian style and it was somewhat interesting but not nearly as nice as a lot of things in present day Andalusia.

After Kairouan we had lunch and then it was back in the bus for a few more hours of driving before we got to the ruins of the town of Sbeitla. The ruins were quite cool, and what was most impressive was how you could see the history behind the town's transformation from one religion to another over time based on the architectural remains. After about an hour or so at the site we were off again for the final stretch of two hours to our hotel.