Wednesday, November 17/2010

Four alarm beginning. That is, the alarm on the mobile goes off at four, so that we can leave at ten to five. The street is smoother than the sidewalk, which gives us a good surface to wheel the suitcases on as there's no traffic yet. First train out of Swiss Cottage gets us to London Bridge station in time for the 5:50 train to Gatwick, actually ahead of the morning rush hour.


Our flight is at nine from Gatwick's north termminal and it's not at all full. I've booked - with some difficulty online 24 hours before - the window and middle seats on exit row 12. Had I known that the plane would be half empty I'd have gambled on booking the window and aisle seats. But visions of conducting conversations over the girth of a stranger seated between us who might be, unaccountably, not willing to trade seats. It's supposed to be a three hour flight - therefore short haul, meriting only a cold bun with cream cheese and tomato, and a cup of coffee.

We're in to Tunis early. Long queues at unprepared immigration desks and a hand baggage x-ray on exit. Well, of course there was the time a man flew in to Gatwick with a live grenade. Checked luggage still not unloaded forty inutes after landing, but that leaves time to find the WCs and take out some Tunisian dinars from the cash point. The transfer man is waiting for us. We seem to be his only passengers, but a man with two silver coloured cases, who clearly hasn't booked a transfer but wants a ride to Sousse, turns up. Much loud dispute in French, but in the end he comes. The driver is a young man in a dark suit - the car an extremely dirty (outside) five seater. Interesting. In Canada - outside Toronto - the driver might have worn jeans but the car would have been clean. It's a good hour and a half drive, on six lane highway past spiky little palm trees, olive groves and flowering shrubs.

Sousse is a spreading city, Tunisia's third largest, on the coast, the signs mostly in Arabic or French - though there is the Amen Bank as well as The English Pub for those who don't qute want to get away from it all.

We register at the hotel, on a form that wants all the info on the immigration form and then some. I leave some blanks - our date of marriage, for instance. Why do they want to know that anyway? It would be easier to invent a date than to buy a gold ring if decency is their concern. The hotel itself (Sousse Palace) seems fairly large, though there are only three storeys of rooms, most if not all with sea view. We're on the second floor, looking out over the key-shaped pool and, immediately behind it, the Mediterranean beach. Downstairs the lobby is enormous with endless marble, massive crystal chandelier and loud sports TV screens and thick cigarette smoke, though some tables - it would seem individual tables rather than areas - are marked no smoking. The happy discovery after dinner is that the lobby area, though not the rooms, has free wifi.

Dinner is from seven to nine, with lots of choice, none of it especially exciting. In spite of the fact that the time is an hour later than GMT, we don't last long after dinner but fall asleep watching BBC World, another happy surprise.