Right next door to the hotel where we stayed in Stone Town – Emerson on Hurumzi – is a small museum dedicated to the Princess Salme. The Princess was one of 36 children of the Omani Sultan, which at the time also meant ruling over Zanzibar. In fact, her father liked Zanzibar so much that under his rule, the capital of Oman was moved from Muscat to the island. Her mother was a ‘slave’ wife or concubine. Luckily for Salme,…
Stone Town on the whole was a little bit of a disappointment. Lonely Planet describes it as ‘a magical jumble of cobbled alleyways … (which) make it easy to spend days wandering round and getting lost’.In reality, it felt more than a little tired, with the once fine buildings in desperate need of some TLC and the ‘jumble of cobbled alleyways’ filled with small shops selling the same tourist fare for over-inflated prices.Down along the seafront, pushy salesmen tried to…
‘Do you know what my problem is?’ I asked James as we walked through the streets of Stone Town, Zanzibar. ‘You have an unhealthy obsession with doors’, he retorted. Now, I can’t actually remember what I was referring to, when I asked the question, but James’ response was pretty spot on. While in Cartagena, Colombia, I kept taking photos of door knockers. Meanwhile, I spent a disproportionate amount of time in Stone Town, taking photos of doors. You have…