Every stall in Souq el-Attarine sells the same jar of harissa and the same twist of dried Baklouti peppers to whoever walks past. A cooking workshop costs about the same as a nice dinner out and sends you home with the dish itself, not a jar you will forget you own by the time you unpack. The traditional Tunisian cooking masterclass, run in historic medina riads under names like Dar El Medina or through La Marsa kitchens, is the one worth planning a morning around.

Traveling alone in Tunis means nobody is waiting on you to finish your tea, and the city rewards that more than most. Start mornings at Café des Nattes in Sidi Bou Said, a historic high-ceilinged cafe where you sit cross-legged on traditional woven reed mats, called nattes, under horseshoe arches. Order the thé aux pignons, sweet green mint tea poured from a high copper teapot and garnished with toasted pine nuts, and there is no reason to rush it.

Almost every visitor to Tunis who wants the outdoors defaults straight to the beach at La Marsa or Gammarth, and that is not wrong exactly, it is just the least interesting option on the list. The genuinely underrated pick is the Lake of Tunis (Lac de Tunis) itself, the shallow brackish lagoon between the city and La Goulette. It is a real wetland habitat, and large flocks of wild Greater Flamingos feed in its shallows alongside herons and cormorants.

A 2,000-year-old ruin means nothing to a four-year-old, and dragging a tired toddler through Carthage’s full site under the midday sun is a fight nobody wins. There is a better order to do this trip in. Start at Belvédère Park and Zoo (Parc du Belvédère), a 110-hectare hilltop park shaded by Aleppo pines and olive trees, with an Andalusian pavilion known as the Koubba and a small zoological garden of native North African gazelles and water birds.