Hi,

I'll leave Sousse and PEK for others to fill you in on as I'm not as familiar with those resorts, but here goes for Hammamet...

The amount of nightlife you'll find outside the hotels will depend very much on the time of year you go. There'll be more during the peak summer months and very little during the low season. There will always be places open but can be fairly empty. Generally whatever the time of year any nightlife there is tends to get busier later in the evening. Turn up somewhere at 10pm and you may find you're one of only a handful of people.

Below are some links to 3 of Hammamet's clubs. These aren't personal recommendations, as I'm not that into clubbing anymore, but it may give you an idea of what's on offer. Manhattan and El Pacha have both been around for some time so they must be doing something right. Calypso's website seems fairly new and a work in progress, but as a club the name's quite familiar to me, so again I think it's been around for a little while.

http://www.calypsotunisia.com
http://www.manhattan-disco.com/manhattan/index.php
http://www.elpacha-club.com

As for bars, Havana Club is my personal favourite. It's next door to El Pacha and owned by the same people, but is more of a dance bar than a true club. It used to have it's own website, but I can't find it now - there's a bit of info about it on the El Pacha site. Others you could try are the London Bar, British Bar and Eurobar - these are all touristy. There's also the Shakespeare - run by a Bristish / Tunisian couple. Again, with the exception of Havana, these are not personal recommendations, just an example of what's around. I can't find websites for them, but if you google you'll find reviews etc.

Imported drinks are available - I've certainly seen non Tunisian beer on drinks menus, though as I don't drink beer I can't remember which brands. I also remember imported spirits for eg Absolute Vodka. Wine is usually Tunisian but some of this is pretty drinkable. I usually stick to rosé although the Vieux Magon red is very good. However, note that imported drinks will be much more expensive and the same is true of the more touristy bars - generally speaking the more touristy the bar the higher the prices.

Hope this is of some help.

that's a good start mate thanks,we we worried about ending up in a hotel with zero entertainment and beng forced to drink celtia and god knows what else! we've looke at hammamet but it seems more expensive for a package than PEK and sousse,PEK kinda 'looks' nicer as an area aswell.

The thing with the drinks and nightlife seems weird to me,people say the usual 'its an islamic country!',but then so is egypt and to an extent,although secular so is turkey,and you can get anything you want whenever you want in both,and as for dubai and the emirates,well....!

Tunisia is back on the list of maybes

plenty of niteclubs in sousse we stay in pek and my son and his friends have been out many a time to them to 3-4 in the morning lol having a great time yes there is imported beer heineken in some places and the celtia bottles are not bad you can also get yourself some spirits at duty free most clubs dont kick off till late any how hope this helps

thanks mate. this is what we're trying to avoid really,we don't want 'clubs',we want bars,ones where you can sit and talk but there's music and something going on,atmosphere like,and we don't want to buy spirits in duty free,we want to go out and have a drink,if that makes sense. also we don't want to have to walk/taxi miles between decent bars! we're not looking for clubbing and all that,i'm 37,my gf will be 29 by then and we both work in a clubbing resort.

As an example we went to Tsilivi in september and loved it,(apart from the Zante maris being a rubbish hotel),what we liked was the fact you could go out for a walk at night,there was plenty of tourists about and a good few bars,each with something different going on in them.

every review or post i read makes me think 'YES!' and then 'NO!' when i read the next one. maybe it's just not developed enough for us yet,perhaps best waiting til we're considerably older and happy to stay in the hotel and go to bed by midnight

frustrating as Tunisia looks really good in every other way

The thing with the drinks and nightlife seems weird to me,people say the usual 'its an islamic country!',but then so is egypt and to an extent,although secular so is turkey,and you can get anything you want whenever you want in both,and as for dubai and the emirates,well....!

maybe it's just not developed enough for us yet,perhaps best waiting til we're considerably older and happy to stay in the hotel and go to bed by midnight

I think the key here is that, yes, most of the population in Tunisia is Muslim and on the whole quite conservative in nature but it is also quite a secular society and the existence of the local alcohol industry that pre-dates large scale tourism suggests that there is also a strong local market for alcohol - it's just that it's customary to drink it in private in the home and not in bars in public. I think that the real issue is that different countries tend to target different type of tourists and I don't think that this is a development issue. Speaking personally, I don't find anything weird in a country wanting to achieve a particular balance between local culture and the needs of visitors and each country is going to do this in their own way and the results will, therefore, vary.

The Tunisian tourist industry and the resorts themselves are now much more developed than they were when I first visited but they've still not got heavily into a bar culture aimed at tourists and if you look at the Tunisian tourist office's advertising they tend to push it as a historical/cultural destination with beautiful beaches for relaxing on in between doing the sights. To be honest, at a national level I think that they are trying to encourage the family market and those who aren't particularly looking for a busy bar culture. And to a large extent, the comments on this forum suggest that they have been successful in this and, if posters here are typical of those who visit Tunisia, they have built up a quite a decent customer base of regular return visitors who are looking for exactly the predominantly low key hotel-based product that is on offer.

For me, one of the reasons why I don't now visit as regularly as I once did is because it is already increasingly more developed than I tend to prefer. Hence why I now tend to go to one of the quietest of the Canary Islands for my annual fix of sunshine before winter sets in instead of Tunisia. So this is a difficult balancing act for a country - attracting more visitors looking for one thing, can result in turning off visitors looking for something else. On the whole I think that Tunisia has managed this better than many places and why so many regulars on here love it because it still feels relatively 'real', unspoilt and different whilst having made a real effort to develop their tourist industry but in their way. It provides nightlife but not too over the top, it has a clubbing scene if you know where to look but it's not in your face if you don't want that, it has bars aimed at tourists but not too many that the local character disappears. They've aimed at attracting a broad mid-market type of tourist with a sprinkling of both more budget and more up-market options and it seems to me to have been pretty successful at cultivating their target market.

I think that they have also taken a conscious decision to attract a wide range of nationalities - in the hotels that I have stayed in French and German visitors tended to outnumber British visitors. The whole Thalassotherapy tie-up with many hotels is clearly aimed at attracting French tourists looking for a spa experience. They definitely welcome British visitors but aren't wanting to put all their eggs in one basket and haven't gone all out to provide what the mid-market UK visitor finds in Spain and the like.

From the sound of things, PEK is likely to be your best bet for finding what you are looking for but I suspect that you are much more likely to find it somewhere else entirely. Forgive me if I'm making too many assumptions but it strikes me that what you are asking for is confirmation that you'll find somewhere with the sort of 'bar street' or 'strip' that exists in Albufeira or on the Canaries and some of the Greek islands and I'm not so sure that it does exist in Tunisia, even in PEK. I don't know Tsilivi so can't compare it but providing a bit more information on some of the other resorts that met your needs might help people here more easily tell you if what you'll find in Tunisia is comparable.

SM

From the sound of things, PEK is likely to be your best bet for finding what you are looking for but I suspect that you are much more likely to find it somewhere else entirely.

Mmmmmm, I was waiting to see what way the discussion would go here however I think that what you are looking for with lively bars as compared to nightclubs would be harder to find, even in PEK there is only one what you could call a real tourist bar with some entertainment, the Puca Irish Pub not very pukka as it doesn't sell Guinness but there is live music and football is screened if you want that.

You don't have much other choice to try a few pubs unless you wish to go in to the smaller and quieter local ones.

Have you considered somewhere like Sharm in Egypt?

Graham

SMa,thanks for the reply,if you read my original post you'll see that me and my GF are both looking for something other than a bar street,i work in a falraki bar street bar so it wouldn't be a holiday! however we do want some nightlife outside of the hotel and not be forced to drink what is described in many posts as god awful beer in half dead 'cafes'!

Sharm is somewhere we've looked at but it's just too expensive to do it the way we want to,we'd want to go literally on every trip etc so we're saving it for another year.

Looks like Tunisia is off purely as we'd be bored stiff after dark

Apologies, sambacasual, I prefer to go to places that aren't primairly aimed at the tourist with lots of tourist bars and in my ignorance I assumed that in asking for such things as

a few bars that have a bit of a lively atmosphere,tourists more than locals,and music,

'real' drinks,not 2% lager that tastes of god knows what and 'local' spirits/wine that could be just about anything

we do want bars of the type you find in resorts that cater specifically for tourists

we don't want to have to walk/taxi miles between decent bars

that you were looking for, if not Falaraki, the number and type of bars in close proximity that I assumed was what constituted a 'bar street'. Have you thought about some of the larger Canary Islands? I would think that you would be more likely to find what you're looking for on Tenerife in resorts like Los Christianos or Play de Las Americas - they seem to be much more geared up to British tourists looking for the sort of bars that you describe. They do though tend to be more expensive than Tunisia for the equivalent grade of hotel but then there's also a lot more self catering accommodation to be had there too. You might be better advised to post a more general query in the general forum at the bottom of the board, giving people an idea of your budget and listing some of the resorts that you've enjoyed in the past and have offered what you're looking for so that people can make suggestions of new places that are similar to what you like.

SMa

PS I always quite liked Celtia but then I'm not a lager afficionado. And always thought the wines not bad either - nearly all the vineyards date from French colonial days and are planted with French grape varieties. Not exactly Gran Cru but very drinkable for the price.

we've both been to tenerife and no offence to any on here that might like it but playa was the worst place either of us have ever been.it was pure grot!
We've been to:
tenerife,lanzarote,gran canaria,costas del sol,blanca,brava and de luz....algarve...cyprus....20-25 greek islands between us plus mainland and living/working on Rhodes,2 or 3 turkish resorts,barbados,various ski resorts and city breaks...the list goes on,we're running out of short haul destinations!

thanks for your help,it's off the list now,all the best

Hi, Sambacasual. Now that Tunisia is off the list and you've been to lots of other places, have you ever considered Croatia? We had a superb holiday there. The food was superb and the pubs were open very late but were not loud and noisy. Everyone we met was so friendly and after a fall when I hurt my knee, they were offering to run me to restaurants in their cars etc. We went into Dubrovnik most days by little water taxis and what a lovely city that is for exploring! It is definately a short haul flight. If I remember right I think it was a 3 hr flight. If you like beautiful scenery it's hard to beat.

digby we've considered croatia but decent hotels were coming up really expensive or fairly remote from livelier places,plus it's just not somewhere that really grabs us if you know what i mean?

I think we're might just sack the idea of going somewhere 'different' for now and just go somewhere on the list of usual suspects