A Day In Hammamet: A Fort and Wine Tasting

Today was our first day of touring activities. A short drive took us to the centre of Hammamet. It is located right on the Mediterranean which means that it has had many different invaders. The main attraction was the Medina. A Medina is the old walled part of a North African town although we encountered the same in Sicily last year. The fortress wall surrounds this old section of town. The medina has very narrow streets with many intersecting twisting walkways. It would be easy to get lost in it but this one was very small.

The upper levels had some very expensive living areas, the lower levels were occupied by old houses with interesting doors. An interesting fact is that the doors have 3 different knockers. A lower small one is for use by children. Bigger ones and shoulder lever are for women to knock (on the left) and a larger one on the right for men. They each make a different sound so the occupant knows who is at the door. If a woman knocks a woman would answer. We did stop at the Dar Khadija very small museum. It had displays of various time periods from Tunisia's history. After that we stopped at the fort. The high wall afforded a nice view of the city but there was not much else of interest in fort.After about an hour bus ride we arrived at the winery for a tour.

Having visited a number of wineries in the past, as a tourist attraction it has a ways to go. We were treated to a wine tasting. A number of bottles of there wines were on a long display table and we just helped ourselves to as much or whatever we wanted. Lunch was in the same room with again long tables in the middle of all the large wine casks. Lunch was OK but it does to upgrade a lot to be a big attraction. We did buy a bottle to have in our room. Dinner tonight was the full buffet as usual. We were treated to a wine or beer by SDTours.

Tomorrow we have a very full schedule leaving at 6:30. Tunisia's garden peninsula and a preserved Phoenician town are on the schedule.