The Tunis Medina

The Tunis medina is a maze of narrow alleyways closed to motor traffic, packed with shoppers.  Although many of the shoppers are tourists, only a minority of those are European and we only occasionally heard shoppers speaking English.  In the more crowded lanes one bobs along in a sea of Arabic.  But the shop keepers are sharp-eared polyglots – “Where you from?  English?  Look my shop!  Cheap.  Everything for nothing!”  Sometimes they guess wrong and address us in German or French, skipping from one language to another.  Pauline and Tony speak Arabic, and Pauline seemed to know a substantial proportion of the shop keepers.

View from the roof of a carpet shop in the medina.

Another such view.

A traditional tea and coffee shop in the medina.

One of two mosque minarettes visible from the medina.

The other.  Tony told us that the different designs indicate different sects.

Fruit syrups in a medina shop.

One of innumerable such displays of shoes in the medina.

A chechia maker named Othello puts the finishing touches on a chechia (traditional Tunisian hat).  We bought several.