We docked at La Goulette, Tunis's cruise gateway, with three UNESCO World Heritage Sites waiting just beyond the harbor. First stop: Carthage, the legendary city the Phoenicians founded in 814 BCE. Standing among the ruins, knowing Queen Dido walked these shores, that Hannibal set out from here with elephants to challenge Rome – it stirs something deep. Rome razed it all in 146 BCE, but enough survived to earn UNESCO status in 1979. The Antonine Baths sprawl like an ancient colossus – you can still see the hypocaust underfloor heating channels where Romans luxuriated. Beyond, the twin circular Punic ports remain, those harbors where 220 warships once berthed. Even the Tophet ruins – that sacred precinct with its weathered stelae – whisper of Phoenician devotion and long-vanished rituals.

Then we climbed to Sidi Bou Said. Every wall white, every door and shutter cerulean blue – a village named for the 13th-century Sufi saint Abu Said al-Baji, who settled here and made it a place of pilgrimage. By the early 20th century, artists – Matisse, Klee, Macke – discovered this hilltop perfection, and it became an artists' colony. Bougainvillea explodes over every archway, the scent of jasmine and pine drifts on the breeze, and the Gulf of Tunis glitters below. We sat at Café des Délices with mint tea and pine nuts, watching the light shift from gold to rose.

By afternoon we were deep in the Tunis Medina, another UNESCO treasure. Covered souks twist and turn – the scent of leather, saffron, orange blossom water. We found a tiny café and ordered brik à l'oeuf – that crispy pastry shatters, and the egg yolk runs like molten gold. Three completely different UNESCO sites in one day: Phoenician ambition, Moorish beauty, Arab-Islamic soul. The heat is real, the sellers enthusiastic, but the richness – historical, spiritual, aesthetic – it overwhelms everything else.