Hotel Cedriana

It's early Monday afternoon and we've spent the morning driving around the island of Djerba in the south of Tunisia. There's little to see here: Djerba is mostly developed for tourism, and spots some nice beaches (that suffer, however, from the general Tunisian problem of trash lying everywhere). Apart from that, there is a village where the walls have been covered in arty graffiti where we'll go in the afternoon. And people walking around in our hotel are keen to sell activities such as racing around on beach scooters and camel riding - activities, in other words, that aren't really fitting when travelling with a three year old.

We return to our hotel for lunch. Our stay in Hotel Cedriana is all inclusive, so it seems like less hassle to go here to eat, rather than trying to find some restaurant. Hotel Cedriana has, like most places around here, an atmosphere of faded glory: tourism peaked here several years ago, but those days seem long ago. Clubs and restaurants are often closed and our hotel is crumbling at the edges.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner are taken in a large dining room and on the terraces. You just pick up a plate and walk around several displays where you can get a mixture of Mediterranean, Arab and Slavic dishes. The latter seems fitting, since the large majority of the patrons here are Russians. In the Netherlands, Russian tourists have a bad reputation - travel agencies sell packages that are marked 'guaranteed without Russians and if a desination is known to be popular among Russians, it immediately becomes less popular among the Dutch. Here in Djerba, they're probably very happy with them, however, as they seem to be among the few still making it here after the 2015 terrorist attacks.

I myself don't really understand what all the fuzz is about. They seem lovely people to me - from the look of it, my fellow patrons are probably upper lower class people enjoying a well-deserved rest and they keep to themselves, enjoying their holidays by drinking impressive quantities of alcohol, partaking in the gymnastic activities offered by the animation team in and around the swimming pool and dancing on the terrace on outdated EDM and R 'n B when night has fallen. One night, there was a Russian singer singing ballads while middle aged women danced with the handsome young men of the animation team (probably part of their working duties). When food is served, they stack enormous amounts of it on their plates and many of them have the weight to match those amounts. The worst thing that happened to us during our holiday is that when we sat on the corridor, reading, while Rihanna Gaga was sleeping in the room, our neighbour (one of those elderly, overweight women), was a little bit too pushy about coming into her room to share wodka with her.

The offer was friendly, however, and attractive in a way, because she had Finlandia wodka, a fine brand, certainly compared to the liquid glue they served at the bar. All inclusive is really all inclusive here: you can take as much as you want of anything on offer, but whatever is on offer is of a decidedly low quality. The whiskey, for instance, is virtually undrinkable and juices are mostly water with sugar and artificial taste added. Beer and water are around the only acceptable drinks. The food comes with similar problems. Simple dishes, cooked without much love and of the cheapest possible ingredients - the range on offer was impressive, but here as well you ended up sticking to very few dishes. I mostly ate the melons and grapes served for dessert - those were very, very nice. And the staff was incredibly friendly too, which makes things like this much more tolerable.

For Rihanna Gaga, the place is heaven. Unlimited pizza, pasta, sausages and chicken (some of her favourite foodstuffs), and: icecream! Given free reign, she'd probably only eaten the latter throughout the day, but we managed to curb her enthusiasm a bit. Other great things about the place included the swimming pool (which she loves), lots of children running around - which she liked to watch, but other than that was too shy to engage with - and some cats that she observed endlessly and with much amusement. And she clearly relished the fact that we were spending so much time with the three of us.

The quality of the place didn't really bother me anyway. It was great getting some rest - the whole holiday was a birthday gift from my girlfriend and I enjoyed spending some time with the family as well. The week before, I had finally decided that enough was enough at my job, and quit. With less than a month to go before we return to the Netherlands, it simply felt like the constant tensions, humiliations and struggle to just do what I was hired to do - teaching and designing a good curriculum - wasn't really worth it anymore. But obviously, to part on bad terms is tiring and it had taken me about a week to recover from that - so this was a welcome break. I'd left my laptop and phone at home and I rarely have felt this relaxed - although I spent my first two days mostly sleeping, tired as I was from taking care of Rihanna Gaga on my own. My girlfriend had been gone for five days to work in the south, before we joined her. Rihanna Gaga had missed her mother and generally woke up very early in the morning, so with that and the work-related stress, I could use some rest by the time we arrived.

But there is still two more days to enjoy here. Tomorrow, we're going to a crocodile farm and then there is the sea just across the road as well. Never mind the quality of the food: I'm still having a blast!