[WillowTheWhisp]

Not being the kind of people to just sit around a pool or lounge on the beach all day we had decided to hire a car and explore some of the real Tunisia, having experienced the Sousse traffic from a taxi the first day we thought we'd try a short jaunt first of all and see if we could survive a trip to Monastir. There apparently are rules of th road but no-one takes much notice of them, including pedestrians who seem to prefer to walk in the road rather than on the pavement (which in some places is understandable)

We didn't like Monastir as much as Sousse and it was a bit smelly in places but we did discover the local market where they had the most wonderful fresh fruit for sale at ridiculously low prices. There was a label on a pile of strawberries which said "800". 800 millims? With 1000 millims to the dinar and a dinar equalling less than 50p we wondered how many strawberries could possibly be on offer for 800 millims. One? Or was that actually 800 dinars for the whole crate of them? The stall holder spoke only Arabic and the only Arabic I know is 'hello', 'goodbye', 'thank you' and 'no' so conversation was rather limited. Eventually we realised he was asking how many we wanted so we pointed to the sign and he began to scoop up piles of strawberries and fill a carrier bag sized white plastic bag while we cringed wondering how much that lot was going to cost................it was 800 millims! We bought a bag full of lovely sweet apricots too for one dinar. It was unbelievable. No wonder they make so many thick natural fruit drinks with fruit being so cheap and plentiful.

It was just outside of Monasatir where we thought we'd found evidence of the Arndale clock having been dismantled. On one of the roundabouts it looked for all the world like our familiar globe. Just about the right size too.