This week’s travel dream: Post-revolution Tunisia

A trip to Tunisia offers a chance to witness a “pivotal moment” in the region’s history—without the trouble of other tourists, said Seth Sherwood in The New York Times. Since last January’s so-called Jasmine Revolution, which ousted strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, this North African country has been largely calm. Its first post-revolution elections even produced a president known as a former human-rights campaigner. But on a recent visit I made to explore Tunisia’s historic sights and “take the pulse” of the new era, I found few other travelers taking advantage of the nation’s “well-developed tourism infrastructure,” including an abundance of hotels. For my first sunset in Tunis, I had the roof terrace of one restaurant all to myself.

The capital’s Avenue Habib Bourguiba seemed like a good place to begin learning more about the revolution. On this site of 2011’s biggest protests, “Tunisia’s citizenry streamed past: smartly dressed businessmen, bearded religious students, cool cats in sunglasses.” Though a few women wore headscarves, most were bareheaded. When I stopped at a cinema advertising a documentary on the demonstrations, I was told its run had ended but that I could catch a screening of The Smurfs in 3-D. Later, in the seaside suburb of La Marsa, “the artistic heart of the nation,” a gallery owner told me that she worried about the rise of Islamic extremism. Yet that night, there wasn’t a veil in sight at a bar where I watched young people dancing exuberantly to a Led Zeppelin cover.

I used trains and buses to hit my other chosen destinations—the ancient walled quarter of Sousse, the “magnificent” Roman amphitheater in El Jem, the Lézard Rouge in Métlaoui. The last of those is an opulent, century-old train that offers tourists rides through some of the country’s most stunning landscapes. The service was briefly shut down last year because of the tourism slowdown, but as the train emerged from a tunnel in a deep gorge with soaring rock walls, I was thrilled to be sharing my car with a Polish tour group and some French retirees. “‘Wow!’ all the Poles shouted at once.”

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Doubles at the Excel Hotel in Tunis, (011-216) 71-355-161, start at $52.