Staying at Hotel Verde
While in Stone Town, we stayed at Africa’s Greenest Hotel, Hotel Verde. We arrived around 4 pm, and got checked in. They first served us Hibiscus juice, and it was very tasty. We had a bit of room mix up, and both me and kb and the boys had to change rooms. But it was still ok.
The food at Hotel Verde was not good. We thought it would be better, but mom got sick from eating the dinner the first night. We stayed 4 nights at the Hotel Verde. The best part about this hotel, was on Saturday, they had a water park that was free to hotel guests! I unfortunately didn’t get to go because I had extra homework that I had to get done. But Kb got to go, and she said that is was great!
The water park at Hotel Verde 
Learning The History of Stone Town
While in Zanzibar we went on a tour in Stone Town. Our guide Imran told us all about the architecture and the history of the slave trade that happed there.
First Imran told us about the people: They were native people who lived on Zanzibar before the Portuguese came. Zanzibar was an unknown island to the main landers’ of Tanzania till the ___ wanted spices from India.
I found it very interesting that the Abric who came here had very enclosed or privet spaces, but the Indians had very open houses. I liked the Abric balconies! “I can see you; but you can’t see me” was their style. 🙂
Abric balcony 
A real British cannon! 
Seeing a Real Loom Shop
Before we left on the tour, we stoped at a really cool shop. It was a loom shop, where you could actually see how they were making their fabrics. Zeb was especially interested in how the loom worked. There were also many other shops around too. And lots of painting shops. I got a dress from one of the clothing shops!
The Spice Market
As we on the tour. Imran showed us the Spice market. It was very cool. Kind of like the market in Nairobi! All the smells were incredible! A little spice here, a little spice there, and a lot of smell everywhere! There were 2 parts of the market that were very bad. The raw meet section, and the fish section. I’m not saying that it was bad, just that I almost threw up in both of them. Anyway, the meet section wasn’t as bad as the fish. I just held my breath. The fish section on the other had, was very bad. Imran had given me a little sage to smell while I went through. There we dead fish everywhere! Men were cleaning fish, chopping, skinning, and so much more. There was even a fish that was about 3 feet long!
Spice market 
Slaves and Ivory for Guns and Sugar
Imran took us as the last stop to the Slavery Museum. It had lots of interesting facts about Zanzibar. I learned that Zanzibar was a very big slave trade center. The main landers would bring slaves here to sell, and the slaves would be sold to go to India. Zanzibar was kind of like the middle stop. One thing that I thought was very interesting was that owning a slave was like a status. It was either own or be owned. There was one slave who was freed, and she got a certain amount of money, and people asked her, “What are you going to do with the money?” and she said “I’m going to bye me a slave.” I found this very astonishing.
Lunch With New Friends!
After the tour, we got lunch at a very good restaurant. There were 2 other people with us on our tour named Maya and Max. They were super awesome! Me and my siblings became very quick friends. Lunch was amazing. We went to Cape Town Fish Market. They had virgin strawberry daiquiri, and I got their amazing fish tacos. After lunch we parted our ways with Maya and Max, and headed back to the hotel. The rest of the day was good.
