Tunisian wedding

This weekend I went to my first Tunisian wedding.

Two years ago, when I came to Paris for work for the first time, I met a Tunisian (now former) co-worker and he was awesome! We walked around the gardens of Paris taking pictures, we watched the Avengers in a pre-premier in the cinema and he introduced me to most of our colleagues. Basically, he made me feel super comfortable here in Paris and I can only be thankful for this.

After hearing about this girlfriend of his for quite some time, last year they came to Lisbon in August and it was my turn to show them around my lovely city.

At the time they were already talking about getting married in 2017 and how it would be awesome if we (me and some other Portuguese friends) could make it to Tunis for the wedding.

Tunisia... I'd never been there and I was of course extremely curious. The only Arabic country I had ever visited in my life was Turkey, also to attend two weddings at the time.

Side note: my friends' weddings and wedding parties have taken me to Germany, Lanzarote, Turkey (Istanbul and Bodrum), Brussels, Lake Tahoe and even Portugal (when I was living in Germany).

Back to Tunisia
This is a land of legends and historically speaking very interesting to me. Old Carthage... Yes, Carthage was been destroyed, but there are so many ruins that I wish I had had the time to visit.

Back to the wedding
Altogether this was to a be a bit of a crazy weekend.
We were flying out on Friday at 8 a.m. and flying back on Sunday at 12 p.m.
I so wish we could have stayed there longer!
9 friends flew from Paris to the wedding and we had a few different nationalities: French, French/Moroccan, French from Martinique, Burkina Faso/French, Mauritanian and Portuguese (I hope I ain't missing anyone). We have a friend from Cameroon that had also booked the trip, but didn't manage to get the Visa - so unfortunate!

Our friend (the groom) had organised things in a way that he could spend the whole Friday with us and then have  a couple of his friends looking out for us and driving us around to and from the wedding, to visit the city, etc. It all worked out really well.

Highlights of this trip:

- delicious food (that also tasted like home - portanto pude matar saudades longe de casa!);
- Sidi Bou Said with the while walls and blue doors and windows (that beautiful view of the marina and the sea);
- the hotel (super expensive, but super comfy!);
- the warm weather (Paris clearly hasn't realised that it's Spring and during the weekend in Tunis we had 25 degress);
- the (super) quick swim in the sea and the pool;
- trying to visit the ruins before the sunset;
- seeing Tunisian men dance!
- the warm reception, how nice and welcoming some people were to us;
- and, of course, the smiles and joy of my friends when they finally tied the knot.

This was so far the most expensive weekend of my life, but it was completely worth it.
Maybe I will be able to go back one day and visit more ruins :D











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