Zanzibar!

Finally! I have visited paradise, and it turns out, it is reachable by a two hour boat ride! The girls and I went with our friend Ben to Zanzibar where we spent an absolutely wonderful weekend wandering the streets and soaking up the unique charactr that is Stone Town. We arrived Friday evening by boat and had dinner at Mercury's , owned by none other than Freddy Mercury himself (the guy from Queen). Our original purpose of the trip had been to see "some French DJs", which in all honesty was the only information we had to go on. So of course we had a luxurious dinner by the water before meandering down to the Livingstone where we assumed the show would begin at around 11pm, as it usually would in Dar. Our misguided (or rather oblivious) assumptions were clarified when we sat down and the band on stage announced that this would be their last song and thank you for coming out. The last song didn't even have the synthesizer, so we got neither French nor DJ elements of the show. Ah well. After a few lazy attempts at mingling around with the other Mzungus in the bar, I took the lead and dragged evryone to Dharma Lounge, a small club/lounge that played an eclectic mix of hip hop and Top 40s. Actually, the DJ made many bad choices throughout the evening, but it gave more character to our night.

Stone Town was beautiful. The mish mash of rooms and buildings stacked like Legos on top of each other gave the whole city a sense of peaceful chaos. I liken it to your very messy den, strewn with papers and books, but somehow you know exactly where everything is located. Of course, Stone Town is not MY den, and thus I simply followed Ben and his compass around for the weekend, quickly giving up on attempting to guess where "north" was. We had an amazing view atop our hotel (Hotel International), which had a character all of its own as a building. The rooftop area had a wonderful 360 view of the city, and at night, it was so quiet you could hear the sounds of shoe soles shuffling on the pavement. No wonder people fall in love with the place and never want to leave.