various photos and trip to the beach

Some people have asked about our neighbourhood and I wanted to share some photos of the environment just outside our door. As you can see from the street sign here, we are on the shores of Lac Ontario...

Post-revolution Tunis has some issues with garbage collection and city maintenance. I have since noted that we do have garbage pick up on what we are affectionately calling garbage corner - some guys come by with a tractor and what looks like a hay wagon - we don't know what happens to it after that though.

It seems that stray cats and dogs get the first check at the trash and that helps with maintaining those populations.

In addition, we have noticed many unfinished building projects all over Tunis and we think it has something to do with people being unable to get loans for building materials and paying cash as they can to finish these projects.

We also live quite close to the airport which is great if you need to get to the airport fast and it also means that we can engage in a bit of plane spotting.

We did manage a quick trip to a beach after another trip to the Geant "hypermarket" in Ariana.  The beach is called Raoued Plage -- it seems to stretch for several kilometres across the northern coast of the city -- and the kids had a great time picking up shells and exploring the beach.  We had the beach mostly to ourselves it being winter here....ha! And there were a few fishermen and locals who were visiting that beach too.

Here are some views from the beach back to the houses that surround it.

All the kids were very happy at the beach and worked cooperatively to collect shells that are all now drying on our porch.

 Not sure what we will do with all these shells....

Please note the winter boots.....guess they work ocean side too!

We hope to have more adventures soon especially if we are allowed to rent another automatic vehicle from the embassy.  Tonight is New Years Eve and we wish everyone a happy celebration tonight- for our part in Tunis we will be celebrating with home made gluten free spinach pizza (Keegan says he is making it!) and playing games.  We will toast all our friends back in Canada and hope that 2014 will be a happy and healthy year for us all no matter where we are!!

Getting lost down town...

On Saturday, in our rented car Mr was our tour guide down town.....and we got lost.....not badly juste une peu.

Things started off well and then we took a bit of a wrong turn....

and we drove into the Medina

the traffic was a little scarier than we were used to- but Richard did a great job navigating us through the narrow streets and various road obstacles (sidewalks are optional for pedestrians to use, stop signs and red lights are considered to be suggestions, and motorcyclists don't have to obey one-way road directions)

The next few pics are from our car windows as we tried to recalculate where we were and where we were going.

Eventually we found our way into this scary tunnel 

And out the other side into a big roundabout. Out of the 8 possible choices of exits from the roundabout, Mr chose incorrectly, so after that we decided after that to give up on our idea of getting to the National museum (known as the Bardo Museum). We headed back in the rough direction of the airport, and we ended up bowling near our house instead. Kaitlyn got the best score, Kellan managed to deal with the adult-sized balls, and Keegan did well, too (despite trying not to try).

We went home after this and prepared to attend a dinner at the Canadian ambassador's house.

It was a lovely event and we met some of the Canadian and Tunisians working at the embassy here.  We got a little lost on the way to the dinner but it was only to make us fashionably late.

Keegan got to fill up on delicious turkey and there was plenty of buche de noel for the finale of the evening.

Kaitlyn even got to jump on the trampoline in the back yard (a highlight in her view!).

And the views from the hill where the house is situated are wonderful.  

We got home a bit later than we wanted and had trouble sleeping....which made a much later start to the day Sunday.....but we are still on vacation.  

We did visit the beach and hope to post those photos soon.

Love to all!

some sights seen

Our diplomatic cards came in yesterday and we headed down to the embassy to pick them up.  While we were there we rented a car.  After a failed attempt by Terrena to drive the manual (and very nice Volkswagen), we were offered an automatic instead, it was up to Mr. to take us on our tour!

We managed a very quick trip to the area around Carthage.

Some of the traffic directions here are in English and Arabic (not sure why the stop signs say STOP instead of ARRET).
Terrena learned an important lesson on her failed drive around the embassy - when there are two lanes going the same direction on a road - there may be 2 different rules for that road which was not immediately obvious.  One lane could have a stop sign and one could continue. It seems people frustrated with my lack of understanding of that rule still had the option to drive around me to turn left (across 2 lanes of traffic!)

Our first stop was a former port near the Carthage ruins.  There is a museum Dar el Hout, with replicas detailing history of the Punic ports of Carthage  (these were the naval and commercial ports of ancient Carthage)-we will have to explore another day when we have more time.

Not sure my photos do it justice but there is one semi-circular area and one rectangular area (where we played spot the kitties!).  Fascinating to think of the historical significance of that spot.

Of note to us as we wandered around was that we went through an open metal barricade and found ourselves face to face with a guy who had a machine gun on the other side. Apparently we stumbled onto a police barracks by mistake!  Note to self - pay more attention to your surroundings!

This is where we found the kitties (near the rectangular part of the port).  There were several moored boats here and it seems to be a popular spot for local fisherman.  And kitties as they expect fresh fish too!

We got back in the lovely embassy car and headed off to find more sights to see!

We were not disappointed we soon saw Roman ruins by the side of the road.

And we drove around more to find a spot to stop near the ocean.

Kellan was the first to spot an X marking the spot! No treasure there except the natural beauty of the ocean....

And we were not the only ones there - kitties knew it was a popular spot....and waited by the local cars for treats!

The views were fantastic!

And because the ground was full of a variety of things our two treasure hunters managed to fill their pockets with their first Tunis collection.  

After collecting what they could we set off to collect things for older brother Keegan who was still under the weather and stayed at home during our outing.  We found some images that were of interest to him

These finds happened to be right next to the Monoprix and we went in to collect more provisions for the hollow legs that seem to plague young Mr. Bennett!

We soon found ourselves running out of time and did a quick tour past some sights in Sidi Bou Said.

We drove past a beautiful mosque (not sure of its name yet!)

 More Roman ruins

And this is a fuzzy image (sorry!) of the typical Sidi Bou Said blue and white - this is a cafe near the road side.

When we came home we found young mister quite a bit better - at least better enough to give us these lovely faces!

So that was yesterday - this evening we have a dinner at the Canadian Ambassador's house to attend - and we hope that we are all on our best behaviour!!

We do hope that we get out today to have look at the museum downtown and see other sights of interest while we have a vehicle!