Tunisia - a first and last?

We got married 16th January 2010 and we agreed we would never do anniversary cards or presents for each other. Instead we would use it as an excuse to see the world and would book a trip for each anniversary. In the notion of trying new things, and admittedly trying to keep costs down just after getting married, we decided to book an all inclusive holiday to Tunisia.

Winter sun

Just what we needed!

We were booked into the Sahara Beach hotel for 11 nights 12/01 - 23/01 for our anniversary we had decided to book an overnight excursion where we would visit El Jem Roman Colosseum, Matmata - Enjoy a typical Tunisian lunch in what was Luke Skywalkers home in the movie Star Wars, An overnight stay in Douz - The gateway to the Sahara desert with a camel ride, Salt Lakes at Chott El Djerid to watch the sunrise, Toyota 4x4 Landcruisers near Onk Jemal with a visit to another Star wars film location, then we'd head back to the resort.

Sounds great right, after an uneventful flight over the alps

We arrive in a new country, a new continent. Ready to relax, recharge and explore Wednesday 12th January. We had a coach transfer to our hotel, checked in to our room with a sea view...

It was basic but clean and had a decent bathroom so we were happy enough. We spent a little time by the pool and mostly chilled out.

Thu 13th was another relaxing quiet pool day. There was a lot of security around but having never done this type of trip before everything just seemed normal so we were having a very chilled time around the hotel

We chilled by the pool, checked out the beach and enjoyed some beers and really didn't do much at all. Mostly kept ourselves to ourselves.

By the Friday (2nd full day 3rd night) we became aware that something wasn't right and waited to see our rep... riots had broken out over Tunisia and we spent most of the time trying to find out what was going on and when to expect to come home. As the day went on there was an increasing presence of military personnel there to look after us. My young naive mind felt completely safe with them there, I'm not sure I would feel the same if it happened again.

The rep didn't really know what was going to happen or if we would leave as it was believed to just be in the major cities and we would be safe so we headed back to our room and packed all but a couple things we could throw in if needed and tried to enjoy our day/evening of more relaxing and eating

That evening we went to the bar for some beers and cards before dinner when we saw smoke so went to our room to see if we could see what it was

We later learnt that a bomb had gone off at the petrol station across the street!

At this point everyone is on edge waiting for news on what was going to happen. The rep could only tell us coaches were coming to collect us in the morning and flights were scheduled to get us all home. I used the phonebox to call my parents - seems it was reported on the news back there a lot more and everyone was very worried about us. We knew we were being collected in the morning we decided to try and get some sleep.

I didn't sleep well, understandably, but we did get some. I turned my phone on and had not received any notifications so we got dressed and went for breakfast. We got to the hotel foyer and it was just packed with people and cases ready for the coaches. We spoke to the rep who advised it would still be a few hours so we decided to have something to eat then go back to collect our cases we then joined the rest of the hotel with a long wait in the lobby.

A few coaches arrive and we got on swiftly and made the journey to the airport. We knew there were 4 flights and it was basically first come first served. there was 1 flight for Gatwick - where we had come from, one for Birmingham, one for Manchester and one for Edinburgh. We just knew we had to get onto the Gatwick flight as we really wanted to avoid having to spend a day travelling back to Gatwick to collect the car. so we hatched a plan. Carl would get off and get the cases whilst I headed toward the terminal to get our place in the queue. It. Was. Packed.

We headed straight to the Gatwick queues and joined the back. As we were getting toward the front we noticed one of the queues was a little shorter than us so we thought about switching. Luckily we didn't as ours moved quicker and we got the last 2 seats on the Gatwick! I felt a little sorry for the couple next to us as they wanted Gatwick too and technically they were ahead of us but because the people in front of us were faster we got the seats and they didn't.

From the moment of checking in to get our seats to actually sitting in them took under 10 minutes. We were so glad to be on the plane

We were little anxious our cases might end up somewhere else so we watched the bags being loaded to see if we could spot them

Phew!

As we took off you could see pockets of smoke from where prisons and other places had been bombed...

For this trip we had left our car at one of the airport car parks so when we did arrive we had a while to wait as they had not been expecting us back. Whilst we were waiting we were able to watch the news and see just how bad it really was. We were so glad to be home in safe ol blighty.

What about celebrating your anniversary?? I hear you cry.

Well we decided to keep a few of our holiday days and went to Bristol for a meal and to the cinema.

On our very first date way back in 2006 (seems such a long time ago considering I am writing this in 2019) we went to the cinema to see Narnia the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe so it had become a sort of special film for us. Because of that we decided to watch

Not quite the night in the dessert and visiting historical sites we had planned but we were safe, happy and together :-)

As I mentioned above I am writing this from memory and photos in 2019 so 8 years later. To this date we have not been inclined to travel back to that part of the world or do another similar holiday hence the title. Although we did make up for this bad experience later in 2011...