Day 74/188: Civitavecchia to Rome to Tunisia — Seeing (the world) 2̶0̶2̶0̶ 2022!

Day 74 (yesterday) was weird enough that it gets its own post. There was so much going on that I don’t want to forget any of it. Now that we’re this far into the trip, I’m fully aware of what a blur this will be two countries from now. I think we’re already eleven countries in since early July? Twelve if you count our bus ride that we think brought us through Andorra briefly, but that feels like an asterisk at best.

About a week ago, Mike and I figured it was time to book something for the day we got off our cruise, and also for the few unplanned weeks after that. Sagan surprised us by asking to go somewhere more “different” or “exotic,” which made us really happy. One of our major goals of this trip was to show our kids that getting off the beaten path is doable and can be fun. I guess it’s sinking in a bit!

Mike took the reins on this stretch, probably because he could see that my brain is overloaded. I’ve been the primary planner for this whole adventure, so there are days when I really need to be a sheep instead of a shepherd. (That’s not a complaint. I usually enjoy the planning, and Mike is very appreciative of it. But I know my limits and some days this introvert has to shut down.)

Anyway, we knew Croatia would be our next-next stop, but what about our next stop? So Mike looked at the map and then at flights/trains/ferries to/from various nearby destinations. Then he asked, “Should we go to Tunisia?” Not gonna lie, Tunisia is another place like Malta that I barely knew or remembered exists. I wasn’t even sure whether it was in Europe or the Middle East or Africa (answer: kind of all of those, but more on that in a bit).

It’s an African country but really close to Italy. Just a hop across the Mediterranean. An hour flight. A cheap flight, too. I think all-in for four round-trip, fairly last-minute tickets cost us less than a thousand bucks. Housing was cheap, too. AirBnBs in the under-$100/day range. We googled to see if it is a safe place to visit, and the reviews were (mostly) yes. We went for it.

Off the cruise, we spent two nights back at our same hotel as last time in Civitavecchia. This allowed us to do laundry and repack, do some homeschooling, etc. Then we haggled with a taxi driver for a cheap(er) ride to the Rome airport. The hotel front desk guy was adamant that there was no way were paying less than 200 euros for the 45-minute drive. “Is impossible.” But the taxi van parked immediately outside the hotel, in full view of that same front desk guy, agreed to 150 euros. It still seems like a high price to us, given that the cruise shuttles less than a mile away cost 25 euros per person. But in the moment, an extra 50 euros was totally worth us not having to take a single extra step carrying our luggage in the heat, to shuttles that may or may not be there. Plus, we still got to prove the grumpy desk clerk wrong, so it felt like a win.

These are the faces of four people feeling smug about probably still getting ripped off.

The Rome airport was surprisingly nice, as honestly, we haven’t been overly impressed with how things run in Italy. In fact, I’d say it was a close second to our #1 airport experience so far (Copenhagen efficiency FTW!). We were able to check in 4 hours early. Security was smooth. There was free wi-fi. There were chargers that actually worked (Get it together, Denver Airport!), good restaurant options with good prices, and even some beautiful ancient artifacts from the 3rd century (not the snail in the photo below, in case you were wondering). We got some homeschooling done and still had plenty of time to relax and catch our collective breath.

They checked our passports when we checked in, then again as we boarded the plane. These would turn out to be fewer than half the times they were checked before the end of our travel day.

Story’s friend Rina (Hi, Rina!) texted to see where we were just as we were boarding, so we sent her this picture as an answer.

The flight itself was fine and normal. ITA Airways was unremarkable in a good way. Story and I watched out the window and got so excited when we could see land and know that we were on a whole new continent!

Once we landed, all the relative calm and peace of the day ended, and some real travel began. Sagan wanted different and exotic? Here we go!

We got off the plane and followed the signs, all in English alongside Arabic and French. But using the same language doesn’t always mean you’ll understand each other. We didn’t see anything about baggage claim. We did see one arrow leading to Transit (Did we want that? To find a taxi?) and another leading to Police Control. Ummm? Those were our choices. Most people seemed to be heading towards Police Control, so we followed the herd.

Ah, yes. Police Control means “Customs.” Gotcha. Okay, and the line is long, but some people are grabbing little scraps of paper and scribbling furiously on them, in a hurry to join the long line. So we grabbed our own scraps of paper and discovered that they were forms where you filled out your name, passport number, etc. We sat down, dug out a pen, and filled out one for each of us. (Story took it upon herself to fill out her own, which was awesome.)

Then we got in the line, which was S-L-O-W and hot. Not a lot of a/c, or probably none. Who knows? But it was all fine. Just normal standing in line kind of stuff. Just a few minutes after we got to the end of the line, another flight arrived and a whole new herd of people came in behind us. So glad we beat them to it. Whew! It got warmer, and then briefly more exciting when two dudes got into a shouting match about god knows what. Arabic is one of those languages like German or Korean that sounds very dramatic no matter what they were saying. Like us, everyone else in line just sort of watched the show and enjoyed the bit of entertainment it brought. It didn’t appear to be anything big. Just testosterone-fueled men swinging their dicks around, I guess. Sagan laughed when the guys stopped yelling because they were no longer next to each other. “When they wind back through the lines, are they gonna start up again?”

When it was our turn, the guy took our passports and little forms, and immediately slid the little forms back to us without looking at them. (Okay, so we filled those out why…?) He stamped the passports (yay, stamps!) and pointed us through. We put away our passports, then went to the next stop, which was…hold up…security again? And they wanted to see our passports again, too? Okay, passports back out. Still no need for the little forms. And the bags went through an x-ray while we went through a metal detector.

Finally, we’d made it through the gauntlet and to the baggage claim area. Yes, we did check a bag this time, thank you for asking! We haven’t done that at all this entire trip, but we weren’t entirely clear what would qualify as carry-on for ITA, and I just really wanted to have one time where we weren’t trying to cram two skateboards, two helmets, and seven bags with shoes and jackets lashed to them into an overhead bin. So I’d bought a big duffel the day before, and we dumped all the weird extra stuff into it to check. It actually worked out quite well and made things a bit more streamlined.

Or, we thought it did, anyway. That is until we went to go grab our bag, which was sitting alone next to the carousel. Just to be sure, I checked the luggage tag on the bag, and it did not say our names on it. Shit. Mohammed somebody. This bag sure looked a heck of a lot like our bag. I realized pretty quickly that Mohammed almost definitely had our bag, and we now had his.

We went over to the lost luggage folks, and they did whatever lost luggagey things they do, ultimately deciding that our guess was probably correct. They contacted the guy, who had just realized his mistake as well. I can only imagine him opening up the bag to two skateboards and being super confused.

Let me back up a bit, though. That whole process wasn’t as quick as I made it sound. There were definitely some moments of mild panic before it was sorted. And in the meantime, our AirBnB host was calling me through WhatsApp to make sure we’d landed and knew how to get to the apartment. He was very warm and friendly. Also very chatty, which I love but which was also a little confusing in the moment. Story was trying to listen in on the conversation. Mike was trying to get my attention about the bag. It was a lot happening all at once.

Story tried to help with this other ongoing baggage situation, but at some point it was hopeless. This poor guy didn’t even work at the airport.

The host, Ridha, told me that a taxi should be 25-30 dinar. Definitely no more than 40. And he would talk to the driver if I gave him my phone, so that he could tell the driver exactly where to go. He had planned to meet us at the apartment himself, but between our flight being delayed a bit and now our luggage situation slowing us down more, he’d left the cleaning lady in his place.

Oh, and dinar! The Tunisian money. That’s a whole thing, too. The Tunisian government won’t let their currency leave the country at all. Not even a coin. They want to keep it all within their economy. The good news is, it’s relatively easy to exchange money at the airport, and the exchange rate is set by the government and is the same everywhere. Mike changed some of our money out during all this other chaos.

So, back to the luggage. Mohammed did show up within about 20 minutes of his discovery, hurrying in and apologizing to us for the error. He was very sweet, and we all had a good laugh about it. Here’s the crazy thing: our bags were IDENTICAL. Same brand. Same color and size. Neither of them had the longer carrying strap on them. And - get this - both of them still had the little plastic thingy that had had the price tag on them. We had each bought them they day before and had quickly torn off the tag without even bothering to clip off the plastic. He said, “You bought yours in Rome, too? How much did you pay? I paid 20 euros.” I told him we got a better deal at 14.90, and he was like, “Ohh, nice!”

These identical bags were bought in different cities (Rome and Civitavecchia) on the same day, but not in some Target or Walmart place. They were in random little cheap boutique stores. How weird is that?!

Miraculously, nobody else needed to see our passports. So with dinar(s?) and luggage in hand, we walked out to the taxi station. Predictably, a small horde of taxi drivers rushed up to us to offer us a ride, all friendly and pushy. The first guy in line was eagerly putting our bags in the car as we were telling him we wanted to know the price first. I also put him on the phone with Ridha, so he could give him directions and (I’d hoped) convinced him to give us a good price. No dice on that last part, but they chatted for a bit, and the guy knew where to go. The only problem was he wanted to charge us 60 dinar instead of the “40 maximum” we’d been told.

There are few things I hate as much as haggling. Mike wanted us to keep going to the next drivers to get a lower price. He wasn’t wrong, but this had turned into a long day. It was hot. We’d already lost our chance to be greeted by an English speaking host. I didn’t want to have to repeat the phone call directions situation with another driver. And besides, 60 dinar is, like, 20 bucks instead of 10. As with the taxi price earlier in the day, it was worth it to me. (Man, I do miss me some Lyft!) Editor’s note: Mike swears it was 70 dinar.

We rode in somewhat awkward silence, seeing as we had probably insulted the driver, and we didn’t trust him a whole lot, either. As with every taxi driver we’ve had since we left the States, he was literally all over the place. The kids practiced the sign of the cross in the backseat with me, which was hilarious. They have clearly not been raised Catholic because they were terrible at it. Also, way to wait till we’re in a 99% Muslim country to start doing obvious Christian acts in public, kids.

Anyway, it was all fine. We got to the place, listened to the driver tell the guards (yes, guards) at the apartment entrance why we were there. We found the right apartment and saw a lady waiting outside for us, smiling and waving.

All of a sudden, the driver decided to point out to us that we were nowhere near anything we could walk to for food or anything else. It was so abrupt, and the timing was so odd, we were very skeptical. We mostly ignored him, but then he spoke with the lady in Arabic for a bit, and then she was quickly showing us the keys to the doors and there was something going on about him taking her or us or all of us maybe to get groceries nearby. For some inexplicable reason, the lady (who spoke no English and just kept trying French with us in case it would suddenly take) tried giving Mike money. (Huh?) I then remembered that I could call Ridha back and have him speak to her or the driver or anyone who might make sense of what was going on.

Since the lady seemed to be offering to go to the store with us, I was ready to kick Mike and Sagan out the door to get food. Sagan asked, “Why do I have to go?’ I said, “You wanted exotic. This is it.” I called Ridha and handed Mike the phone to hand to the lady. I started looking around inside, and minute or two passed. Then Mike and Sagan walked back in. The lady had left with the taxi driver (Huh?), and Mike said Ridha was going to come to us and take us to get groceries.

Below: Some pics of our cool apartment. Yes, the windows and doors can all basically seal themselves up behind two layers of metal, but it still manages to be pretty.

What the actual f**k was going on?

I was happy to be able to meet Ridha, who had been lovely as can be from the get-go. But we were all utterly confused about every bit of this. I’d love to tell you that there was some explanation I could give you now, but you’ll just have to be confused with us.

But a few minutes later, sure enough, Ridha showed up. Sweetest guy ever. Reminded me of a mush of a few people in my life, but for some reason there was a lot of my best friend’s dad Ed in there. He did actually drive us to a sort of mall/market place a few miles away. Keep in mind that it was pretty late by this point - after 8pm, I think. So most of the mall was closed, but there was still a bakery, a restaurant, and a grocery store open. Also keep in mind that all of this was happening really fast. It was a blur of activity. I hadn’t even peed since Rome.

In a scramble, we picked a bunch of stuff from the bakery, assuming we’d need food for the next day. We grabbed four sandwiches, a donut, and god only knows how many croissants. It was like three bags of food or so. After we’d picked it all, Ridha said, “Okay, this is my gift to you.” And that man went and bought all our food. Insanity. We could see there was no fighting him on it, but holy cow was that unnecessary. Hilarious and so sweet.

We then went into the grocery store, and it felt like those old game shows where you had to grab as many groceries as you could in 30 seconds. It was like we were in Gilead because we had to rely on pictures to know what we were buying. “I think this one’s milk!” We did not let Ridha pay for those groceries, though he did offer. Mike said to him, “Man, you really want a good review on AirBnB.” Ha! He did take our picture and send it to his daughter, who actually owns the AirBnB apartment. And he did that thing parents do where he handed me the phone to make the two of us talk. My mom does that to my siblings and me, and all three of us hate it (But we love her, so we usually go along with it anyway. Love you, Mom!). I didn’t mind it this time. It was sweet. I told her her dad is wonderful and thanked her for letting us stay in her cool place.

We look pretty frazzled here, but not nearly as frazzled as we actually were.

You might think we’d be done for the night at this point, but no. Ridha also wanted to take us to dinner. His treat again (ay ay ay, this guy!). We went to the open restaurant in the mall. He offered to get the kids sodas. We all said, no, water was fine. So of course he ordered water and two sodas. And then two more sodas for us. Then appetizers. Then our entrees. Then more water. And how about four more sodas? And now a huge dish of mixed fruits. We were stuffed to the gills by the time we left.

He was so much fun to talk to. He’d lived in the US for a stretch and loved Americans. He speaks French, Arabic, English (quite well, though he says he’s rusty), Italian, and Swedish. We talked politics - American and Tunisian. He had such interesting opinions. He doesn’t like Biden, didn’t like Trump but preferred him over Biden, but he really loved Obama the best of them all. He didn’t specifically say it, but he’s clearly not religious. We asked him about the call to prayers and whether or not we would hear them. He said we wouldn’t where we were staying, “but where I live, they never let me sleep!” We asked a ton of questions about Tunisia. Do women have to dress differently? No, especially not in urban areas. Is alcohol forbidden? No, but you can’t buy it on Fridays. Can we drink the water? No, buy the bottled stuff. (The internet mostly disagrees with him on this, so we’ve opted to boil the tap water and call it good enough.)

Ridha is so charming that even the waiter who he beckoned to bring us stuff about 500 times seemed to find him entertaining more than exhausting. We loved hanging with him. But we were also very, very tired. We told him we needed to get Story to bed, which wasn’t a lie. She was dying to get home at the end (though she loved him, too). He drove us home, and we said our goodbyes. I told him we’d love to have dinner again with him this week, but only if we could pay. Or he needs to come visit us in Colorado, so we can repay his amazing hosting duties.

We got into the apartment, unpacked only what was essential for the night, put away the groceries, and all passed out for a long, deep sleep. And today, I have not left the apartment at all. I needed a day to recover, not just from yesterday but from travel life in general. The kids did some schoolwork. Mike went on a run. Sagan checked out the beach. And Mike and Story wandered to the neighboring hotel to see what was over there. I stayed home and wrote this post. Now you’re all caught up!

I do realize my impression of Tunisia is based purely on one very strange 24-hour stretch so far, so it might change drastically before we leave. So far, though, I like this different, exotic place.