We would pass by walled premises where we could just peek inside. With the house below, our guide told us we could walk around the grounds because this man was his friend. This man was also the manager of both the Four Seasons hotels in Cairo. And yes, that is an Infinity pool.
The actual reason we went to Tunis was for pottery. Back in 1970, a woman from Switzerland, Evelyn, came to the Fayoum area with her father, who I believe was a missionary. He left; she stayed. She started a pottery school in Tunis and for the last 40 years has taught locals how to make pottery. Some of her students have their own studios now and Tunis has become a pottery destination. We visited the school and one of her student's studios. These are where your cups came from, Wendy Z!! :)
And here are two of the bowls we bought. The one on the right features a donkey or HoMAR in Arabic.
Next, we went to a nearby site called Qasr Qarun where a Ptolomaic temple from the 3rd c. BC still stands. Our books told us that it was a temple dedicated to the Crocodile god Sobek (like Medinet Madi):
These headless reliefs are Sobek on the left and a King on the right:
AND the temple stands next to the ruins of the Greco-Roman town of Dionysius. I asked the guards if we could walk out there and found that we were walking on piles of pottery shards. We saw some bones too. I understand that when your whole country sits on centuries of rubble, you just can't protect it all but it still blows me away. Here you can see that there are still some walls and parts of building standing:
I tried to take some close-ups of the pottery shards:
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