It’s called Dar Saida Ajoula, and it’s located in the old Medina. Housed in what used to be a palace, it has dorm-style rooms with maybe 30 or 40 beds, eight in each room. It costs 12 Tunisian dinar per night (about $10), and that price includes dinner (around 8pm, often quite tasty) and breakfast (which finishes by around 8:30am.). Supposedly, there’s a curfew, but it doesn’t seem to be rigidly enforced.
There isn’t much information on this place on the Internet, so here’s what you need to know.
The address: Most guidebooks list it as 25 Rue Saida Ajoula. But if you get the free blue Tunis map from the tourism booth at the airport, the street is listed as “Rue Assaida Ajoula.” If you orient the Medina on your map so it looks like a wide oval with the main street in Tunis (Avenue de France, a.k.a. Avenue Habib Bourguiba) to the top, Rue Saida Ajoula is in the center bottom of the Medina.
How to get there: Any Tunisian will know where the Medina is. It’s a dense maze of narrow streets bustling with activity during the day. (Night is a different story. After dark, it’s a scary ghost town that ought to be the setting for a movie.) If you arrive at the main entrance to the Medina, walk through the giant arch and take the main road on the right side, right next to a restaurant with "Sucre" in the title. The road is called Rue de la Kasbah. Continue on that “road” for a long time. I tried to count my paces and I got to about 450 or 500 before losing track. You’ll pass through an enclosed market section, then up a hill. As you go up the hill, there will be a sign for the hostel up high, on the right side of the street. Turn right and continue another 50 or 75 meters, staying left at a fork. The hostel is under a set of arches, and it‘s marked with another sign.
If you get lost in the Medina, just ask people where the Auberge de la Jeunesse is. Eventually someone will know. Nobody seems to respond when you ask them where Dar Saida Ajoula is.
Two words of caution about the hostel. First, I wouldn’t try to go there for the first time after dark. The Medina completely shuts down at night; it’s nothing but shuttered shops, cats, and heaps of trash. It’s poorly lit, with lots of dark corners and alleyways. Having been here for a few days now, it actually seems fairly safe and policemen patrol regularly, but it’s daunting at first. Second, be aware that the youth hostel doubles as a wedding reception hall. For my first two nights, the bottom floor has been full of guests and live music. The celebrations and music are exciting to witness, but if you are hoping for an early night, think again: it’s loud, really loud. Here's one such wedding.
Not pictured is the band, which had a particularly extensive percussion section.
Here are two photos of the inside. It's pretty fantastic.
A sideways shot of the ceiling.
There's wi-fi in the lobby, but using the wired computer there costs a small fortune -- 7 dinars (about 10 US) for 24 hours. The guys who run the place are a little gruff at first, but I came to really like them.
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