Tunisia Attractions

Cap Bon Peninsula

This fertile peninsula stretches out into the Mediterranean Sea to the north-east of Tunis. Geologists speculate that it once stretched all the way to Sicily, providing a land link to Europe that sank beneath the sea as recently as 30,000 years ago.

Today, Cap Bon - particularly the southeastern beaches around Hammamet and Nabeul - is Tunisia's primary package tour destination. A summer's stroll down the streets of Hammamet is likely to turn up 10 tourists to every local, and the pace never slackens except briefly during the middle of winter.

Tunis

Arabian, African and Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and European, yet curiously provincial - the laidback capital of Tunis has two distinct hearts. The new city is an orderly European grid, with wrought-iron balconies, cafés and pâtisseries bordering the boulevards. The city's main drag, palm-lined ave Habib Bourguiba, is prime territory for promenading, coffee-drinking, gossiping and idly watching the passing human traffic. Founded by the Arabs in the 8th century, the medina, the old city, is the city's historic and symbolic heart. Here you enter a tangled maze of narrow streets, winding and arched, with giant keyhole-shaped doors, scattering cats, alley communities, workshops and glittering souqs selling everything but your mother. Here all the lanes, however twisted, will eventually lead to the great mosque. People watch people go by from within kaleidoscopic-tiled coffeehouses, suckling on hubbly-bubbly pipes and indulging in chat, chequers and chess.