Guest Post!

Hello beautiful people! It's Amara and I'm taking over the blog for the next couple of weeks. I got here on Tuesday after a surprisingly smooth flight. Plus all my luggage arrived, which was a delightful perk considering my close calls with connections. I spent most of the week recovering from jet lag and enjoying our proximity to the Mediterranean while Ariel worked. We made outfitting Ariel's apartment our goal this week and that meant many visits to stores for curtains, sheets, kitchen supplies, etc. I think by now we've made good progress in replacing the crazed patterns with more tasteful ones. I am also expanding her culinary talents to include basic Thai and chickpea dishes. This is made somewhat harder by the fact that my genius sister managed to pick an apartment with a malfunctioning oven yet again, but I have high hopes that it will be fixed soon. We will post more pics once we get a cover for the new couch, but it's definitely looking better and the Internet has progressed from terrible to somewhat decent. As always, it's "inshallah" that something will happen within a specific period of time.

We finally got around to doing some touristy things over the weekend and went to some of the Carthage ruins. After reading some expat and travel blogs, I was prepared to be underwhelmed. Most of the feedback was negative and both Ariel and I had had similar experiences of disappointment at Delphi in Greece. We were in for a happy surprise. The main ruins are mostly ancient Roman baths and the architecture was amazing. We seemed to hit it in between the large tour groups so we had the place almost entirely to ourselves. The site is poorly set up and has very little signage, but the upside to that is most of the ruins are not blocked off and we could wander through the structures instead of just looking at them from a distance. The arches combined with the views of the water were pretty incredible. After that we headed home just to be cautious. There were sporadic protests in the region today and while we were more worried about not being able to find a taxi than actually concerned for our safety, we decided to play it more on the safe side. 

We hope to have more exciting tales over the next two weeks. My jet lag put a damper on social activities this week but as the apartment gains more order we will venture out more often.

Here are a few photos from the last few days:

Sidi Bou Said

A reconstructed column to show how

hight the whole structure once stood

Roman baths all to ourselves