Homeward Bound

We spent our last day in Monastir preparing Common Sense for a little rest, cleaning and securing everything and locking her up safely. Then, after completing the last few stages of the complex process of visa acquisition, we were off on a three hour train ride to Tunis, Tunisia's capital. We spent a couple of days there - and what a fantastic city it is, with the best of modern Europe and ancient Arab culture side by side. When we finally located it, the Bardo museum was a stunning highlight - a beautiful exhibition space filled with Roman mosaics and the few precious artefacts that survived the burning of nearby Carthage.

There's that Neptune bloke again

 

Then at last, after a year and ten months away, it was time to head for home. We boarded the Qatar Airways flight to Dohar (about five hours) then changed over for the ten hour flight to Perth. We were pretty impressed with the service on Qatar, especially their care and attentiveness when I managed to faint a couple of hours into the second leg. I recommend passing out as an effective, though slightly extreme, way to get a nice lie down if you're fed up with being cramped in your seat. The less said about the waiting lines in Customs in Perth Airport, the better, apart from the fact that it puts a serious dampener on your excitement at coming home, and must create a rotten first impression of Australia for new arrivals. This was sad, as the Brits on board had been just about orgasmic at the prospect of 24 degrees at 6pm in the evening.

 

Fortunately we discovered that our passports had microchips and we could go through the self-check-in, leaving all the other poor passengers seething in their endless slow-motion queues. The it was out into the clear air and the lovely balmy evening. In spite of the slightly jarring discovery that I'd let my driving licence lapse, our car-hire proceeded smoothly and off we went, back on the left hand side like we'd never had to change.



It was a very weird feeling to be driving through a familiar cityscape where we felt like strangers - tourists in our own home town. But I'll save the Australian travelogue for the next blog. It really is great to be back!