Hello From The Plaza Corniche in La Marsa, Tunisie

First I apologize for the layout of this post. I thought it would look different. and second the pictures should be in reverse order.

We were slow to start our day at 1pm in the afternoon. We struggled ordering our lunch without lora as this country is not english friendly. We saw our first sunrise at 515am this morning after driving back from the discotech in Hammamet after watching one of loras friends cousins perform at a club.

The first day here we met the owner of the hotel(who is from NY) we are staying at until we go to lora's apt on the 4th. We then had a tour of tunis with his friend Hassan who owns a shipping and tourism company here. We then had dinner and drinks at his house and ended our first day here in grand fashion. The next morning, our new friend Hassan let us use one of the cars from his company for the next 21 days, at no charge. It is a black volkswagon polo (little bit smaller than the volkswagon golf). Lora was the driver at first but after a few stalls(cars are pretty much all stickshift), and a shaky ride around the crazy traffic in tunis she was voted out of the drivers seat and James took over. One thing to know about driving in tunisia is that it makes New York City look like a child's play. There are no traffic laws, and more importantly on many roads they do not have marked lanes. Speeds are all in kilometers as are distances. It is like a video game to drive here. For example, we were in traffic on a road and there was not much traffic on the other side, so some of the drivers decided to make a lane in on coming traffic, and learning the ways of tunisie quickly I drove into the other lane and followed them. It is basically a free for all.

The police pull you over randomly, they dont really enforce any traffic laws. We were signaled to pullover last night on the way back from the club (they stand on the side of the road and point to your car when they want you over) if you dont speak french they dont really bother you so I handed them my passport and license and when they couldnt understand me they let me go.

2 days ago we went to a town called el Houriah, which is basically the most northern point of africa. We ate lunch at a restaurant on the Mediterranean, where you could swim right off the dining area. We then drove up a mountain to the top where the view was just spectacular. It was about 5 hours of driving total and its only 100 miles away from La Marsa (the town in tunis where we are staying).

Yesterday we went to the beach in Hammamet (1 hour drive), which is the hamptons of tunis. The city folk and tourists go here on the weekends to escape to the beautiful beaches and resorts. Before driving out, we had "breakfast" at our hotel which consisted of bread and coffee. They dont eat breakfast like we do in the states. The waiter asked us whether we would like coffee or tea and we declined but lora had tea and when the waiter came out he had a plate with tea and bread on it for 1 person. Apparently that is what breakfast at a nice hotel consists of, we were not happy.

Our lunch on the beach consisted of a mixed grille plate, which everyone who ate it was dissatisfied with. The meats were not cooked and the food tasted like crap. We did try cows liver though. After spending about 6 hours at the beach in the salty and warm waters of the Mediterranean, we and by we I mean mark, james, lora and 7 of her friends(1 Nigerian, 1 Tanzanian, 1 Senegalese, 1 Argentinean, and 3 French) went to go get dinner before the concert. at dinner we waited awhile before being served and then again we waited about an hour before our meal came out only to learn that 4 of our chicken plates were inedible because they were pink and an order of mussels was drenched in salt (you would think they wouldnt add salt to a dish which comes from an already very salty Sea).

We decided after that we would try our luck with gelati, but the gods did not want us to be full yesterday, the dessert was sub par and we all left a little agitated. We then drove to the disco tech 20 minutes away. Where we had a nice table and got to see what a disco tech in tunisie was like. The clubs in tunisia love American music(they even played soldier boy, the song from alisons wedding that chris and james danced to). We danced our asses off and had an incredible time. It was more fun than most places in the states. Around 3am the hip hop group (apparently extremely popular in france) finally came on. They played a few songs and we left the club around 415. We got home just in time to watch the sunrise, and it was beautiful.

We are having a lazy day today as we are still a bit jet lagged. We are heading to the beach in a few to relax for the rest of the day. The weather is 95 and sunny everyday. We apologize for the lack of grammar and lack of organization in the blog, we are both tired. We do not know whats on the agenda for the rest of the week but we will upload some pictures from the past few days and blog again soon. We hope all is well in the states and we love and miss you all.

Ciao,

James and Mark