Tunisia: Shopping Holiday

Shopping in Tunisia offers an unusual variety of local craft and art work, silver, food and exotic spice. Tunisia is world famous for its beautiful ceramics and carpets, which may range from uninspiring tourist-trade varieties to the genuinely outstanding.

Shops tend to close for lunch, on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and some on Friday afternoons. Cash will generally be required with only major stores in large cities accepting cards.
A shopping holiday in Tunisia is nothing if it does not include the many souks in and around the country's ancient medinas in larger towns, where the surprise and sheer variety of goods should be a constant pleasure to even the most jaded bargain hunter, but you will need to develop the art of haggling. It is expected and enjoyed by the Tunisians. Remain polite, don't mention a price before the trader does and don't continue a long and protracted haggle over an item if you have little genuine interest in actually buying.

Shoppers seeking familiar high-street brands and designer labels will largely be disappointed in even the major city shopping areas where prices for these imported goods, where even available, will be high and there isn't as ready a market as in Turkey, for example, for filling a suitcase with low-cost counterfeits of well-known brands.