Sometimes we take holidays that aren’t really our thing, but which we think other people might enjoy. On this occasion, we picked up a late deal and took ourselves and two of Mrs Grumpy’s sons to Tunisia for a week at an all-inclusive hotel in Yasmine Hammamet.
Now, one of the reasons this sort of holiday doesn’t particularly appeal to Mr and Mrs Grumpy is the wine.
You’ll know by now that we enjoy a glass of wine. There’s not much we like more than watching a sunset with a chilled white, or sitting beside a roaring fire with a warming red. We’re certainly not wine snobs. We happily drink the €3 bottles we pick up in Spanish supermarkets and have found some of them surprisingly drinkable.
But there is something rather different about the wine offered at all-inclusive resorts, particularly in countries not exactly renowned for their vineyards. Faced with this dilemma, Mrs Grumpy came up with what seemed an obvious solution. Boxed wine. We’d take three litres of red and three litres of white with us. Mr Grumpy considered this an entirely worthy plan and even agreed to pay for a suitcase on the flight.
We felt really rather smug that first evening when we sampled the hotel’s all-inclusive grape offering and briefly wondered whether someone had mixed up the salad dressing with the wine at the bar.
The hotel and resort were actually rather nice – much better than expected. Yasmine Hammamet was friendly and vibrant and we felt entirely safe wandering around.
One evening we duly dragged the two boys, then aged 20 and 17, into town. Horse-drawn carriages whizzed up and down the streets laden with tourists and Mrs Grumpy decided this would be the perfect way to see the sights.
Mr Grumpy was put forward as chief negotiator. After all, a Sales Director should be good at that sort of thing.
Surely?
He conducted negotiations with a seriousness that wouldn’t have been out of place during trade talks between the governments of Britain and Tunisia, eventually turning to Mrs G with a triumphant smile.
A deal had been done.
Into the carriage we climbed.
Well, Mrs G climbed in happily. The younger Grumpies, frankly far more deserving of the title than either of us at this point, were less enthusiastic.
“Don’t take a photo of us in THIS thing. Promise?”
To be fair, the thing was quite spectacular. Fake red leather seating, cream lace curtains that any great-grandmother would have warmed to, and plastic flowers everywhere: yellow daffodils, pink blossom, forsythia and red roses.
A real class act.
“Smile!” said Mrs G, immediately breaking her promise.
A grimace was her reward.
As we trotted around the streets, our driver pointing out places of interest, Mrs G beamed happily at everyone we passed while the younger Grumpies tried to make themselves invisible.
When they finally alighted, there was muttering about humiliation and total embarrassment.
Things became considerably worse for Mr G on the walk back to the hotel when another carriage driver offered us exactly the same trip for half the price we had just paid.
Mr G turned towards Mrs G wearing the expression of a man whose confidence in his negotiating abilities had suffered a sudden and serious blow.
The following day we headed out on a boat trip, where Mr G had another opportunity to demonstrate his talents, this time scuba diving.
The younger Grumpies had never tried diving before and were genuinely excited.
Phew, thought Mrs G. I’ve finally got something right.
She went along for the boat ride, with absolutely no intention of entering the water. This may have had something to do with a newspaper article she had recently read about shark attacks off the Tunisian coast.
The boys loved the diving, despite the distinct shortage of interesting fish, while Mrs G spent a very pleasant few hours lounging on deck and chatting to the rather charming captain.
Everyone was happy.
He likes lounging around as much as the next man, probably considerably more, but after a few days his innate need to go somewhere, find something and preferably drive a considerable distance to do so inevitably surfaces.
“Let’s hire a car and drive to Carthage.”
Mrs G looked unconvinced.
“We could visit Sidi Bou Said on the way back,” he added quickly.
He knew his audience.
Mrs G has a weakness for whitewashed buildings, bright blue paint, ornate doors and bougainvillea.
She was in.
Mrs G had imagined that hiring a car would involve one of the usual international car-hire companies. She had obviously forgotten Mr G’s keen sense of economy.
Instead, he dragged her around town looking for small independent operators until eventually we found one whose proprietor was both able and, more importantly, willing to negotiate in English.
Money changed hands.
“What car have we hired?” Mrs G asked as we left.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Mr G admitted.
Nevertheless, there appeared to be a tacit agreement that a car of some description would arrive at our hotel at 10am the following morning.
And, remarkably, one did.
As Mr and Mrs G stood in the hotel car park moaning because the younger Grumpies had been out drinking the previous evening and were still in bed, a silver saloon whizzed into the car park and came to an abrupt halt.
“Ah. This is probably it,” announced Mr G confidently.
“You think?” said Mrs G.
It looked rather more like somebody’s family car than a hire vehicle.
As it turned out, this was because it almost certainly was somebody’s family car.
There was domestic detritus in the door pockets and assorted family belongings in the boot. It appeared that somewhere in Yasmine Hammamet a Tunisian family had either willingly, or perhaps under some degree of coercion, surrendered their car so that four British tourists could drive it around the country for the day.
“Get those boys out of bed. We’ve got a long journey,” demanded Mr G, finally living up to his name.
Eventually we hit the road, the boys asleep and hungover in the back, Mr G wearing the determined expression of an intrepid explorer and Mrs G in charge of both the satnav and the trusty cartographic relic still favoured by Mr G.
Rather disappointingly for the purposes of this story, the journey to Carthage was completely uneventful.
No navigational disasters. No breakdowns. No international incidents.
We simply arrived.
Carthage was fascinating and extremely hot. We visited the archaeological sites, the Roman amphitheatre, the Cathedral of Saint Louis and the Antonine Baths, which were probably our favourite. The sheer imagined scale of the original constructions was extraordinary and brought home just how sophisticated Roman life here must have been.
After half a day of extreme heat and considerably more culture than the younger Grumpies had bargained for, we moved on to Sidi Bou Said.
And Mrs G fell a little bit in love.
It was exactly as she had imagined from the guidebooks: whitewashed walls, vivid blue doors and shutters, tumbling flowers and narrow streets. A little oasis of bohemian loveliness.
We wandered through the market, where one particularly determined vendor homed in on the younger Grumpies and successfully sold them England football shirts for the following day’s match.
At last, they smiled.
The smiles became considerably broader when someone suggested food.
Quite by chance we found a lovely little restaurant: blissfully air-conditioned, with cold beer and an interesting Tunisian menu – and appropriately named BluBlu. It had a memorable entrance with blue and white umbrellas suspended up high.
Plates of spiced, slow-cooked chicken arrived alongside fragrant couscous jewelled with dried fruit. After hours in the heat, it was wonderful.
Fed, watered and revived, we wandered the streets again and discovered another Tunisian cultural highlight entirely overlooked by the guidebooks: Raspberry and pepper flavoured crisps.
Then it was time for the journey home.
Mr G had decided that, as we had plenty of time, we should take one of his scenic routes back to the hotel.
Those words always concern Mrs G.
Apparently, the route would take us past a vineyard deep in the Tunisian countryside.
We trundled through tiny villages consisting of half a dozen houses where elderly men sat beside the road watching the world go by. They barely seemed to move, except to perform a noticeable double-take as four foreigners drove past in what may or may not have been somebody else’s family car.
We never found the vineyard.
What we did find was a very long road back to the hotel and a seemingly endless supply of speed bumps which appeared from nowhere and caught Mr G completely by surprise.
The younger Grumpies suddenly became interested in the journey.
They began awarding each speed bump an “airtime” score, calculated by the number of seconds their backsides left the rear seat.
One particularly impressive bump resulted in airtime for all four passengers and Mr G hitting his head on the roof.
This was judged an outstanding success.
We can only hope no permanent damage was done to the silver saloon and that, if its actual owners had indeed been reluctant participants in the local car-hire industry, they never discovered quite what happened to it that day.
We returned the car, all four of us agreeing that it had been a brilliant day out.
The rest of the week settled into more traditional all-inclusive territory: beach, jet skis, parasailing and far too much eating and drinking.
And every evening, before dinner, Mr and Mrs G sat on their balcony with the boxes of wine they had so carefully transported from Britain.
Despite our best efforts, six litres turned out to be rather ambitious.
On the final day, the remains were ceremoniously donated to some extremely grateful holidaymakers who were staying another week.
And perhaps that holiday taught us something.
Even if you book the sort of holiday that isn’t normally your thing, you don’t necessarily have to have the holiday you booked.
Hire the suspicious family saloon.
Get on the gaudy horse and cart.
Drive to Carthage.
Take the scenic route that doesn’t actually lead to the vineyard.
Mr Grumpy got his adventure. Mrs Grumpy found her blue doors and bougainvillea. The younger Grumpies tried scuba diving, experienced some spectacular airtime and acquired England shirts of potentially questionable provenance.
And all four of us came home with stories.
Which, when we think about it, is usually what we were looking for in the first place.
Note: We travelled to Yasmin Hammamet with EasyJet Holidays. (This is not a sponsored post). We stayed at the Hotel Marco Polo. We rented the car from somebody’s brother probably.
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