Tunis is the bustling capital city of Tunisia. It's near the ancient site of Carthage, its Bardo museum has the most valuable artifacts from all over the country, and its medina is a World Heritage site.

We stayed in Sidi Bou Said, a fairly affluent area near Carthage. Tourists came here from Tunis to see the blue and white architecture. People sell them things.

Plates, for example.

blue; white.

We stayed at Hotel Sidi Abou Fares. All of the walls were covered with this tile, which was bright and exciting.

Cats at a restaurant where we ate the night we arrived. Whenever it seemed they were getting too close to our food, the owner stomped a stick on the ground, and they scampered away.

The Bardo Museum is the national archeological museum of Tunisia. It has the arrowheads and pottery and statues you find at most such museums, but what it really has is mosaics. Almost every room's walls, and in some cases floors, are covered with them. They're enormous, very well preserved, and in most cases come from the various Roman cities that were built in what is now Tunisia. The downside of this is that when you go to the original sites you see a flat square hole in the ground.

This is a replica of an important pile of rocks. The original is either where they found it, or it got sold on Craigslist, or the British Museum. It has to do with Neolithic religion. how long do you have to study before you can look at this, and see that?

Daniel in the lion's den.

A sea monster.

A mosaic from Sousse. The great Latin poet Virgil holding a volume on which is written the Aenid. On either side stand the two muses Clio (History) and Melpomene (Tragedy).

And you thought centaurs were all boys.

Nothing beside remains. When you travel among the antiquities of the antipodes, Shelley's words are never far from your mind. You can even hum them to the tune of "My Old Kentucky Home": "Weep no more, my lady, Oh weep no more today! 'Round the decay of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away." The book Dave is reading must say which sands this particular pedestal was rescued from. That's a pretty hip looking sandal by the way.

A mosaic from El Jem. Dionysus, holding a gecko by a leash, is surrounded by animals. (El Jem has its own museum with many mosaics, mostly from the villa of one yuppie collector). Notice that Dionysus's eyelids are drawn very close to the way that Garry Trudeau used to draw the Doonesbury characters in the 1970's, before he was rich enough to hire more talented South Koreans to do it for him.

Oceanus, a couple of stories high. It's hard to take good pictures in here although for a dinar they let you do it. The colors are not set off particularly well by the sun through the smog toned air.

An illustration of ancient Carthage. We were staying out toward that point. A train runs into into Carthage from Sidi Bou Said. I take these pictures at an angle to keep the flash off them, and then use the "Perspective Tool" to make them square. But my version of Photoshop 3 doesn't have a "Remove Barrel Distortion From Marginal But Versatile Tamron Lens" tool which is why a lot of these pictures are the shape of an old television screen.

Carthage was pretty completely destroyed by the Romans. Here are some of the foundations near the top of the hill. The Romans rebuilt it a couple of hundred years later, it was just too good a harbor to let go to waste.

A complex of thermal baths next to the Mediterranean. We couldn't turn left to take pictures, since that was the direction of the president's house. A bunch of other tourists did. I don't see them at Guantánamo. Selective enforcement maybe. More from Carthage...

One of the main shopping streets in the medina of Tunis, the "old town" area of narrow passages. During the day, the shopping streets are extremely crowded, and the chief danger is pickpockets. At night, it's empty; the danger isn't specified, but the nice restaurants inside provide transportation on a golf cart out to the edge. On the taxi ride back from the medina, where we had dinner one night, the radio was tuned to a pop station which played a song whose lyrics concerned someone whose gesture language made the singer's "pipi" go "boing boing boing". It was kind of Arab beat sounding, and you could easily imagine it to be just the sort of pop tune that a French children's artist might record in English as being the raciest thing he could get onto a North African radio station. When I got back to the US I googled it and found that it was Eminem. Is this his Kindergarten Cop phase before he runs for office?

A mausoleum in the medina, with headstones in the shape of traditional hats. The more important the deceased, the fancier the hat headstone.

A detail from a grave.

A headstone. More Medina sights...

Tunisia had tons of distinctive doors, and especially the medina in Tunis. More doors from the Tunis medina...

On to Dougga and Sbeitla