Let alone blog about all the Algeria places, as we have less than three months left here! So to bookend our safari in Tanzania, we were in Zanzibar, which is an island in the country of Tanzania.
We flew from Algeria to Qatar to Zanzibar, landing in the early morning. We arrived to the Jafferji House Hotel and the front desk staff were not at all sympathetic to how desperately tired I was. It was unclear if they had a room ready or if they were just sticking to the arbitrary check-in time because rules. Anyways, after sleeping at a breakfast table on the very pretty rooftop, we finally we got into our room, I slept a bit more and then we explored.
I really liked the look of Stone Town. Most of the structures are from the s, and it reminded me of India, with colorful doors carved with lotus flowers and lattice wooden balconies, but also unmistakable Arab elements like Quran verses carved into doors, half-moon-topped minarets, the call to prayer wafting over domed rooftops.
And then rather lamely went back to our hotel before midnight to watch an episode of Emily in Paris on Netflix. Stone Town had both a flourishing spice trade mostly cloves , a brutal ivory trade the bigger the tusk the better and an even more brutal slave trade. In fact, it was from Zanzibar where countless East Africans were held before being sold and shipped to the Middle East and other African countries.
.jpg/900px-View_of_the_Casbah_(Old_City_of_Algiers).jpg "Teen girls in Algiers")
We visited the site of the old slave market and toured the sobering and really informative and powerful museum. The hotel staff, whom we already found not super hospitable, denied anything had gone missing but not before calling in the cleaning staff in front of us for some very uncomfortable accusations. Flash forward to about a week later. Fine by me when I noticed a message had come in on this blog. From what John has heard in his recent FSI training, you guys are the ones we should be talking to!!!
