Roman Bath(room)

History Lesson Time! Okay, not really. What a drag that would be. But you've probably, maybe, from way back when, heard of Carthage and Hannibal and the Phoenicians, right? If you don't want to read the Wikipedia article (I barely did) - Carthage was a great city founded by the Phoenicians, then the Romans got their hands on it. And now the good people here have built a city over the ruins. You drive around the neighborhood and you'll see ancient Punic and Roman ruins in between beauty shops and grocery stores. It's charming.

It's also right down the street.

I visited the site of the Roman baths this afternoon.

What's cool about these ruins: you can scamper all over them. I guess that I'm just so used to old things in America being behind ropes and glass with guards and docents telling you not to touch. (Side note: I LOVE to touch things. Especially art work. It has gotten me into a few scrapes at several museums.) So I walked up to the viewing point and thought, well, that's lovely. Then I noticed there were stairs going down and inside. Then I noticed people climbing on top of the ruins to have their pictures taken. There were no ropes, no glass, no bars, no alarms, no video cameras. Just a couple of these signs:

Which everyone ignored, because there were no guards or docents to stop us.

It's a horrible way to preserve ancient history. But it was a fun way to spend the afternoon.

There are several acres of other stuff to look at - mostly old tombs you can climb down into that are litered with giant dead beetles - but my camera battery was dead by the time I got up to that part. Which is an enormous shame because the Presidential Palace is right next door so there were a few palace guards roaming the grounds and I turned a corner on a path and caught one of them peeing near some ancient relics. Is there no greater demonstration of manliness than to pee out in the open with a machine gun slung across your shoulder?