Sidi Bou Said repeat, Goodbye Tunisia, Paris in a sleepy haze...
The night on the train meant that we were tired and greasy the next morning. We ate at a little cafe on the maid drag through Tunis - Ave Habib Bourgiba. The coffee and pastries perked us up and the sunshine made the day in the old medina very pleasant.
Tunis's old medina is on the list of World Heritage Sites - it is ancient, narrow, and twisting. And what fun!! Shops selling anything and everything, ancient mosques, cute stray kitties, and food vendors everywhere! We meandered through the alleys, trying not to get lost, looking at scarves, intricate pillowcoverings, and leather goods!
At the center of the medina is the oldest mosque in Tunis - we were only allowed to enter part of the courtyard reserved for non-Muslims. I donned a headscarf out of respect for their religion and we headed inside - it was beautiful with intricate tile work, a minaret towering above us and carved wooden doors heading into the prayer area. After we finished filming in the medina, we decided to head to Sidi Bou Said one more time since it was sunny and we might just get better pictures. We were also craving that chicken pizza one last time before we left Tunisia...
As we traveled the now-familiar route out to Carthage and Sidi Bou Said, the sun glistened on the Mediterranean and we could see clouds in the distance. The chicken pizza place was open and the pizza just as good. We raced to the lookout in Sidi Bou - just in time to see the clouds rolling in.... While we didn't get the perfect "Sidi Bou" postcard picture we wanted, it was still better than a week ago!!
We were cutting it close to our flight time, so we ended up taking a taxi straight to the airport - probably a good thing since we were actually closer to the airport in Carthage than in Tunis. We shopped for chocolate in the airport and waited in the lounge for our flight to Paris. One last orange for the road... so sad!
As the lights of Tunis faded away, it sunk in to us that we were going to have one night in Paris!! Being so tired from our trainride the night before, we knew that we wouldn't see much before we crashed, but gosh darn-it, we were going to see the Eifel Tower if it killed us. How can you visit Paris and not see the Eifel Tower?
It took us a while in Charles De Gaulle to figure out how to get train tickets using the credit card machine - and we mistakenly got on a bus heading to a workers' parking lot - but we made our way into the city. Our hotel reservation was made, but the chore of finding the place was just about all we could take. The hotel was near to the Place de la Revolution, but there are a million streets heading away from the Place, so how do you know which one was ours? 
We wandered and wandered until we finally asked and found it. The bed in our room was calling our name, but Tim was determined to see the Eifel Tower, so out again we went.
We did several quintessentially Parisian things that night - we stopped at a cafe for coffee, ate a warm nutella crepe from a street vendor, rode the Metro, and saw the Eifel Tower in all its lit-up glory. It truly was breathtaking and it gave you a sense of how romantic Paris must be when you've had more than a few hours of sleep on a Tunisian train. We spent all of five minutes photographing the tower, and decided our Paris romp was over. Back to the hotel we went and off to bed.
The next day was our last travel day back to Minneapolis. We flew Air Canada to Toronto and then on to Minneapolis. We stood in the Air Canada line at CDG forever with a student group from Toronto - they were fun to listen to only for the fact that I wasn't chaperoning them and I didn't have to reprimand them for their behavior! The gate for the Paris-Toronto flight was a door to a bus, then off we went to our plane. I've never boarded a major international flight from a bus, but oh well!! The flight was uneventful - and blissfully sleepy. Toronto was fun in that we had Canadian and U.S. customs to pass, knowing that we wouldn't have to go through them in Minneapolis.
By the time we touched down in snowy, cold Minneapolis, the sands and colors of Tunisia seemed so far away.