The amphitheatre of El Jem is a creepy place, it's not a movie fiction but a true place of horrible events. It has been preserved quite well after all these years and you can still feel the atmosphere of big fights between gladiators and wild animals when only the winner left the stage alive. I walked through the basement where lions, gladiators and poor christians had been just before they went to the arena and I have to say that I'm lucky that I wasn't there 2000 years ago! 
 

As far as I knew and remembered according to history lessons at school long ago, Carthage was destroyed by the Romans. The place itself exists and I had an opportunity to visit there. The place is not far from the city of Tunis and there are many interesting historical places to explore, certainly worth visiting. When the Romans destroyed the city about 2200 years ago they built a new city on top of the ruins and now there are many modern buildings on top of those ruins of the Roman era.

The view from the Byrsa hill towards the harbour
 

I have to admit that I didn't beforehand know that I would visit Tattoine. It just happened as things use to happen. I was sitting in a minibus when travelling around southern Tunisia. Our lovely tour guide (sorry Nelly if my previous entry was a bit mean) mentioned that this is the area where the Star Wars were filmed (some parts of it). Wow! Suddenly, I was in the middle of my favourite movie landscapes. more 

The landscape was really deserted, hot and dry! I could almost believe that I was far far away...
 

Haven't I heard that before! Yes, it was in Egypt . It was the same in Tunisia! If you wanted to buy something you had to dicker and dicker and dicker. Hah, I made one salesman almost crazy when I bought a souvenir for my knees (a pirate knife) and used all my time and skills to lower the price. It took almost half an hour before we could shake hands and he even used Finnish swear word "perkele" you are not serious when I lowered the price dinar after dinar (he started from 195 dinars), finally we agreed 20 dinars deal which was still far too much but I wanted the knife and he was totally exhausted to bargain with me any more.

Have you heard what the price for a wife is? I've heard it's six camels (dromedaries to be exact). This nice guy tried to sell me a good wife but as I told I'm a hard bone to dicker. We couldn't agree the price and I didn't want to give my dromedaries away because they are so cute.

 

Here's a serious collection of my brand new travel photos from Tunisia and it's dedicated to all cat lovers.


The alley cat