The Tunis Medina

During the day, the old town here in Tunis looks like many other medinas I've seen. It's full of shops and activity. One afternoon, I was caught in a narrow alley in a sea of people -- between the shoppers, the sidewalk displays, and the passers-by, there was a crazy bottleneck resulting in a mass of people pushing like crazy, and nobody moved anywhere. It lasted over 10 minutes, and it was quite impressive.

On any given day, you can find pretty much anything here. The more you learn about this maze of streets, the more impressive it is. There are amazing restaurants, tasty cafes, bizarre shops, fancy shops, an historic mosque, and probably dozens of things I don't know about. On any given street, you can walk by a bath, a few tailors, some woodworkers, some residences, and a cafe full of old men smoking shisha from huge pipes.

But the really interesting thing about this medina is how it completely shuts down at sunset. It becomes a ghost town at night. All you'll see is heaps of trash and feral cats.