La Goulette,Tunisia

Av. Roosevelt Le Port Carraca La Petite Sicile La Goulette Neuve La Plage Testimonies NEW

Thank you for stopping by.
I hope you'll enjoy this site about my hometown and birthplace, La Goulette,Tunisia. Keep an open mind and let your imagination be your guide as you explore this page. This site is not meant to be exhaustive; you will only see photographs I have taken with love and nostalgia during one of my winter visits to la Goulette.

Some claim that Beauty is in the eye of the beholder... I add that absolute Beauty is yet to be found…question it if you do believe you found it and remember that Beauty can also be found in the vulgar, the decrepit and the mundane.

Let us in the meantime moderately indulge in life's simple pleasures, the ones we take for granted…like Seeing… really seeing, as if for the first time, the uniqueness of the streets we walk in. I do hope you see what I see while you're wandering in the streets of La Goulette.

Winter is a particularly good time to visit La Goulette; it is the time when the Goulettois reclaim their town from the hordes of tourists and out-of-towners who come seeking refuge from the summer heat in the solace of our famous soothing breeze.

La Goulette is the first town you visit as you travel North from Tunis towards more touristy places like Carthage,
Sidi Bou Said , and Gammarth. It is the main passenger and cargo port in Tunisia. Like most Goulettois I took my first trip at the age of 18 aboard the famous ferry Al Habib en route to Marseilles and onwards to Paris.

The harbor's surroundings were fertile grounds for daydreaming and amusement for my friends and I when we were young. We often went there for fishing, daredevil swimming, or simply watching the ships sail away towards other Mediterranean cities. Our adolescent rites of passage were also conducted there...away from the adult world's watching and watchful eyes.

La Goulette has long harbored a rich mix of Southern European cultures; French, Maltese,and Italians have been living there since colonial times. Although most had left Tunisia in the late seventies along with a strong community of Tunisian/French Jews, they nevertheless have been coming back for regular visits; especially since the current Tunisian president Ben Ali made a warm appeal for them to return and visit more often. An invitation they have embraced wholeheartedly, to the great joy of the Goulettois who have been re-living with them the good old times of the seventies.

For those interested to see and feel La Goulette in its heyday, in the Seventies, I recommend Ferid Boughdir's film, Summer in La Goulette, which succeeds in capturing the La Goulette air as all Goulettois like to remember it. One particular scene in the movie successfully depicts the joie de vivre of the Goulettois. When the town's fool played by Michel Boujenah, one of the many famous French Jews culturally tied to Tunisia, storms in a café full of people and announces the imminent 1967 war between Israel and the Arabs, the disinterested café idlers shrugged at the news. But when a while later someone else announces the return of the beautiful Tunisian born actress Claudia Cardinale , the whole town was at the rendez-vous ready to celebrate her return.

I hope you have enjoyed your walk in the historically rich and memory laden streets of La Goulette.

Please take a minute to sign my guest book or read the testimonies of other Goulettois (book #1 - book #2) and let me know of your suggestions or criticism.
You can also e-mail me at k@lagoulette.net . Thank you.

Good luck , be well, and remember that Tolerance is THE Virtue...And may you never forget to indulge in... les petits plaisirs de la vie.

Av. Roosevelt Le Port Carraca La Petite Sicile La Goulette Neuve La Plage