Tag: Giovanna

Heather and Anne went out to Hammamet the day before Giovanna and I arrived. Giovanna and I were held up by an invitation to dinner at Giovanna’s place by her host mom. One doesn’t miss a dinner invitation to Giovanna’s house!

To get to Hammamet, first Giovanna and I tried the train. Unfortunately, the first train wasn’t going to make the run until noon. We decided to try and take a Louage (shared long distance taxi), a shared taxi, to Hamammet. After about 10 minutes of looking for the Louage station, we found it, and within three minutes, we were underway. The trip to Hammamet took about 45 minutes. The louage was clean and the driver was safe.

The women going into the hammam (Turkish bath) in the hotel. We stayed in a 4 star hotel right on the beach called Hotel Oranger. It was a nice place. 80 Dinars a night for double occupancy rooms. That’s not so bad considering we got a sea view, two full meals, two swimming pools, a private beach, and many other amenities included for free. Originally, the price had been 113 dinar, but we negotiated down. Probably if we had a local with us, it’d have been more like 50 or so Dinars, but that’s okay.

An interesting note. This hammam is co-ed. In the cold room setup for sleeping, there were a bunch of old half-naked German tourists in different states of relaxation. We kept our bathing suits on throughout the hammam experience as some of us in the group of four were modest.

The forest of umbrellas on the private beach of the hotel.

Giovanna eating a cheese burger.

A guy trying to sell Heather the Tunisian equivalent of Boston Baked Beans.

Giovanna rides a camel for the first time. His name was Ali Babba.

Giovanna and Heather decided to take an inner tube ride in the sea. We could hear them all the way from shore as Heather screamed “oh my god oh my god oh my god we’re going to die!” It was rather entertaining for those of us on dry land.

Giovanna’s and my hotel room. We were borrowing Anne from Heather to watch CNN.