Our INTENSE First 24 Hours In TUNISIA (first impressions)

We're Oscar and Dan, two Swedes who have been exploring the world together since we met in high school. We love seeing new cultures, discovering fantastic spots in nature and eating lots of delicious vegan food along the way. We started small, saving up during school to go on short trips around Europe before taking a gap year and managing to visit every inhabited continent. For the past three years our goal has been to visit 100 countries and we are now so close to the finish line. Country number 98 was the North African nation of Tunisia and our journey there began at Frankfurt airport. So we bought our new phones in the U.S. which means that we can't get physical sims anymore. A big big drawback as a traveler so just trying to prepare the e-sim for Tunisia before we take off. And we have landed in Tunis and we're officially in country 98. So we're doing a bit of an experiment with the e-sim because since e-sims are kind of in their infancy right now, the one big inconvenience with it right now is that it's so expensive to get it in like all these apps. So now we wanted to test if Dan got one of the e-sims that you buy in the app or online. We wanted to compare that to what it's like to get an e-sim once you arrive because we read that Arrido should have e-sims at the airport so we're going to try to make a comparison. So easy, oh my god. That was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. And it was so cheap, about nine dollars ish for 25 gigs. I feel like right now most people look at e-sims and they're like that's a bit of an inconvenience but I feel like in the future that's definitely one thing that our kids are going to be like. Have you traveled around the world when you still had to get physical sim cards? Okay. This is ridiculous, like usually when we go and pick up our rental car it's like oh this Toyota Corolla. No that's way too fancy for us. That's like the upper end. This is usually what we get. We immediately set out on our drive for just over three hours down to a city called Kairouan. We mainly stopped here to break up the trip down to our actual destination but this city actually turned out to be a hidden gem. What the hell is our hotel? Okay so everything got very hectic when we had to leave the airport parking but we made it to our first stop in Tunisia on our road trip, the fourth holiest city in Islam, Kairouan. Bonjour mon amour, bienvenue à notre hôtel dans Kairouan à Tunisie. I don't know. Okay comment. This. What is very nice tiling in the room and this beautiful tiled bathroom. It's already past sunset so I don't know if we're going to try to go out and explore now or tomorrow morning. As of the time I'm recording this I don't know what these are called. I'm probably gonna know in a few days or tomorrow maybe. They are so good. Okay so this is an amazing loaf of flatbread. We didn't get the name quite yet but it's filled with all these different herbs so it's super flavorful and I'm putting a little bit of harissa on it because I didn't realize how spicy this is. This is a great combo. So here's a cool thing we've never experienced in any other country we've been to. So yesterday when I paid for the highway tolls I was so confused because I got some coins back where it said 100 like that and I was like what is this like a hundred dinar which is quite a lot but I just googled and it turns out that the Tunisian dinar is not divided into a hundred cents but one thousand cents but they're not called cents because cent means a hundred of course so it's I don't know how to pronounce it. Anyway one thousand parts to make up one dinar. Good morning on this amazing day. We are in Cairo. Okay we're really struggling busting it with the pronunciation here. Yeah Cairo but since they speak French some people say very differently but it's the fourth holiest city in Islam so just this year alone we've been in number two three and four. Yeah this year like what is what is 2022? It's our new obsession. Yeah we're gonna see this UNESCO world heritage site the old Medina so let's go. It's also kind of crazy to think that this is the fourth holiest city in Islam but there's so many women here without hijabs people are dressing quite liberally which is most certainly not the case in a place like Medina. I don't see many other tourists. I feel like we always say this but it really is so nice to be at a truly local market where people aren't like shouting they're not trying to like drag you in just because you're a tourist you can just kind of melt in or not melt in obviously we definitely stick out like a sore thumb but no one cares about us yeah it's really nice exactly. I understand now why this is a UNESCO world heritage site because it is so beautiful and tranquil. It's giving like Greece but Arab influence. The difference between this Medina and other similar medinas we've been to before I think is that this is so colorful like usually it's all very like monochrome which is also nice but this is like a totally different thing now I'm getting really bad FOMO like oh no this is so much nicer than expected I just want to explore all day you know what the crazy thing is that like when I googled Kairouan like I saw nothing of this yeah like this is not what was advertised so I was like hello yeah and of course the obligatory thing happens a kind man comes up to us and really wants to show us around so we're getting a little tour there's one hand on the door there which means that one family was there there were two hands so here there's two families and look at all these doors how ornate and beautiful so Kairouan is not a big city at all but the man just told us that there are 300 mosques here which is just unfathomable so that man was really nice of course in the end he wanted to sell something but you know that's always how it goes but it was so funny because we were trying to communicate right and he spoke a little bit of German he spoke French of course then Arabic and a tiny bit of English so it was literally like the four languages mashed together the whole time and we're like okay just stick to one language this is just making it even more confusing but he was so friendly and he genuinely seemed to just want to show us around he wasn't mad at all we didn't want to buy anything we gave him a little help thank you and now he guided us toward the grand mosque so since this is the fourth holiest city in Islam we learned a fun fact which is that if you can't make it to Mecca as a Muslim on a pilgrimage you can make that up by going here to Kairouan seven times seven pilgrimages here equals one to Mecca all right after a quick stop in Kairouan it's time to head on to our real destination I guess the main reason that we stopped in Kairouan was actually just to break up the trip because we didn't want to drive for seven hours but we ended up finding it really really nice so it was definitely worth it but now it's time to continue into the desert we just left the other road and we're now heading straight into the desert still have an hour and a half left it has been a long day of driving for Oscar I've been working the whole time so we both agreed that this is how the setup is going to be on this drive and we cannot wait to get where we're staying tonight we are really truly in the middle of nowhere really truly really true for our stay in the small town of Tussauds we'd been highly recommended to stay at the Anantara desert resort so we booked two nights there to see the surrounding sights cold towel for you yeah this is a date juice they said so I think it's vegan and we have dates and water and I don't know but everyone when I came they were like welcome Mr. Dan like they all knew my name okay I don't know why I've never had date juice before but this could become a new obsession it's so good welcome to the most expensive hotel we have stayed at in a very long time we splurged on our two nights here in Tussauds welcome to the bathroom first of all which is a very big upgrade from a bathtub look at this this is we have a rainfall shower we have a little toilet and then in here is our bedroom oh we just have to show you this it doesn't open very easily but when it opens it's very nice all right it's supposed to go further or is it oh my god I'm so excited to sleep really really well in this bed and we have this beautiful chisel oh wow this is so nice you know we're gonna be reading here tonight hello all right our own little terrace if you book the cheapest room like we did you get a garden view which is what this is the outer rooms have a sahara view and we feel like it's nicer to have this kind of greenery and flowers outside your room than just the completely barren desert this is not like something like Wadi Rum where there's sand dunes and beautiful red sand this for me is a perfect view literally everyone we asked before coming to Tunisia about recommendations for where to visit literally every single person was like you have to come to this resort so we decided just to do it although it is pretty insane what the price point is but hopefully our stay is gonna be worth it there's a lot to see around in this area so starting tomorrow when we've recovered from this day of five hours in the car we're gonna get a chance to explore all of that as well we just walked out and I was like you're gorgeous it's so calming it's so quiet all we hear is the birds so look at this finally food oh my god we barely had anything to eat today or yesterday quarter past five so we have three more local dishes that I haven't really heard about before one was this is so good best meal in Tunisia so far by far but this is insane the harissa this morning was spicy this is almost equally spicy and look how much we have and it's such a shocker because you're not used to such spicy food in any Arab country but this is like apparently Tunisia is known for having the spiciest food in the middle east north africa region so we're definitely seeing why that is now next time on Oscar and Dan oh my god okay here we go eight-year-old Dan is freaking out right now this is fake this is all bye