July 3 Tunis, Tunisia

 A new city and country today! And being history buffs, we choose to visit Carthage of Punic Wars fame. Hannibal and his elephants began their conquest of Rome from here.

 First stop is the Tophet de Salammbo which is an ancient sacred area dedicated to the Phoenician deities Tanit and Baal. Carthage dates back to era when the Phoenicians ruled the Mediterranean.

The tophet is both a sanctuary and necropolis and contains a large number of children's tombs which, according to some interpretations, were sacrificed or buried here after their untimely death. Our guide gave us several interpretations, and archeology is ongoing at the site. 

One of the stella marking the gravesite of a child.

 

Excavation at the lowest level includes this cave

Just down the street from the tophet is the ancient Punic port.

 

Surprisingly, to me at least, the Catholic Cathedral is on top of the hill overlooking the ancient port. Ninety percent of Tunisia is Muslim -- so how did the Catholics get such a prime spot?

The street that leads to the port.

Our next stop is the Roman Baths of Carthage, the largest baths in Africa and third largest of all Roman baths. It's also emblematic of the eventual domination of Carthage by the Romans.

There was a display of the stella and container for the remains of children from the tophet. 

I did a panorama of the baths. Like all Roman baths there were at least 3 different rooms for hot, tepid and cool water. All that remains today was originally underground -- where the plumbing and heating would have been. The building holding the baths would have been as high as the columns that you see.

Closer view of the remains.

The baths needed water, as did the residents of Carthage. Rain water was erratic and a Roman's bath was sacrosanct. So in the second century CE they built an aqueduct 132km long to bring water from the mountains. And lacking electric pumps to lift the water it had to be a gentle downhill slope all the way. Impressive engineering!

This is a remaining section of the aqueduct. 

A forgotten theater of WW2 for the Americans is North Africa. The American Cemetery contains 2841 graves from that time. One wall of the cemetery lists 3724 names of soldiers missing in action from the North Africa conflict.

The final stop was the blue and white city of Sidi Bou Said. We were taken to the market and offered the opportunity to purchase something. Like most market just about anything was available.

Most buildings in Sidi Bou Said are white with blue trim. Just like Santorini.

These birdcages are the symbol of Sidi Bou Said.

Fortunately we were led to this particular shop -- no doubt an arrangement with the tour operator. It was fortunate because the air conditioning was potent in the shop. We were here for most of the time until it was departure time.

Arriving back at the port there appeared to be a falconry exhibition about to start, or it just finished. A guy with heavy leather gloves had a bird, and these guys were just sitting around looking hungrily at a small dog walking nearby.