Eid Mabrouk!

This Wednesday and Thursday the Tunisians celebrated Eid, the end of Ramadan. During Eid, nearly everything is closed and everyone spends their time eating and celebrating with their families. Eleven of the students on the OSU program decided to take a mini-vacation to Hammamet, the best beach town in Tunisia. Hammamet is crowded with tourists from all over Europe, guaranteeing that at least some things in this area would be open.

Wednesday morning we caught a luage from Tunis to Hammamet. When the director of our program explained the luage system to us he used the English word “limo” interchangeably with “luage.” A luage is NOT an American-style limo, rather, it is a large, beat-up, white van that seats eight people. As you arrive at a busy luage station many drivers will pounce upon you yelling the name of different destinations. You choose a driver going to your destination, pay him a predetermined fee, and set off. I found the luages very easy to use and very cheap. It only cost me 4 dinars to make the hour-long journey. I was also fortunate enough to have the help of one of my host brothers in navigating the Tunis luage station.

Once we arrived in Hammamet we made our way to the Yasmine neighborhood. Yasmine is jammed with huge touristy resorts and miles of sun-drenched beaches. It is also home to Carthage Land and the newly opened Ali Baba Land. It is also known to be one of the areas in Tunisia with a vibrant nightlife… which wasn’t really active for us because our trip coincided with the holiday of Eid. Our hotel was a three star hotel a block from the beach that had been discovered and booked for us by one of my amazing host brothers. It had an indoor pool, outdoor pool, and fitness center and our 32.40 dinars a night also covered breakfast and dinner. Four of the students with us opted for a five star hotel further down the road, but Hotel Green Golf suited the rest of us just fine. And yes, before anyone thinks I spelled that wrong, it is Green Golf like golfing not like sea gulf… I’m not really sure why, I saw no golf course. Our hotel was located across the street from an ice skating rink that had a huge line of teenagers and pounding music from around 5-10pm. We weren’t sure if we would find a disco or an actual ice rink inside. It seemed to be the only club-like place open in the area.

Once we settled in we grabbed our belongings and met up with the five star kids at the beach. We ended up on a beach that didn’t belong to either of our hotels but to Hotel Mauradi. I think by the end of these two days the people that worked there just assumed (or didn’t care) that we weren’t actually paying for the beach.


We spent the rest of the afternoon lying on the beach and playing in the waves. One of the best parts of the beaches at Hammamet is that the sea actually has pretty large waves in it that you can bodysurf. The waves break close in to shore so I can’t imagine that actual surfing would be a possibility, but they certainly were fun to swim around in. It wasn’t very sunny out but we had some occasional sunbreaks and even though it was October we really weren’t too cold.



After dinner at our hotel we took taxis into the main part of Hammamet to an excellent café. The café, Café Sidi Bou Hdid was situated with the looming walls of the Kasbah on one side and the sea on the other. We sat on a terrace outside with water crashing on the rocks next to us and drank tons of tea, chatted with locals, and took many pictures. After this, most of the group continued on to a bar in Yasmine with music. I was feeling a bit dehydrated from my day at the beach so I called it an early night and headed back to the hotel to rest up.



This morning a majority of the group went back into Hammamet to explore the medina as I and three other students opted to spend the morning on the beach. We had a few hours of brilliant sun and spent most of the time thinking that the others had made a very bad choice. At around four we all caught luages back to Tunis.


It was a very short get away but we all had an excellent time. I figure this is probably one of the last times I’ll get to swim while I’m here as the days are getting colder and greyer so I was very happy to have some beach time. Now we’re back in Tunis, resting as Souad goes and visits her new grand daughter, Mariam (or Marian? Myriam?), who was born last night. We’ll get to see her tomorrow afternoon when she goes home from the hospital.

This is me with a fake elephant in front of Carthage Land.