Colette's Grand Detour

Day 15 (11th August 2025)

I am now in Stone Town in Zanzibar for the next 3 nights. Zanzibar is an island just off the coast of mainland Tanzania, a little north of Dar Es Salaam. The island has a long and interesting history but I will go into that in a future blog.

I have booked to stay at Emerson on Hurumzi, a boutique hotel in the centre of Stone Town that I found on booking.com. I liked the idea of staying in an old building within the UNESCO World Heritage city, and the pictures looked good online. But it is even better in real life. The hotel was originally a grand 19th-century merchant’s mansion believed to have belonged to Sir Tharia Topan, a prominent figure in the Swahili Empire. Each room is uniquely decorated with antique furnishings and you feel like you have been transported in time.

My room has a double-height wooden ceiling, beautiful antique furniture including a four-poster bed, a living room with long sweeping curtains and a secret balcony with intricate wooden shutters. The whole space is honestly nearly as big as my apartment in London. The hotel is in a great location near iconic landmarks within Stone Town and has a fantastic rooftop restaurant with 360-degree views of the city.

When I got up to the restaurant I took some time to scan the horizon and get a feel for the city. Its a hodge podge of different styles, with a variety of influences. What stood out to me was the whitewashed stone masonry in amongst a sea of striped corrugated iron roofs with some parts rusty and others not and dotted amongst those were other roof top restaurants, minarets of mosques and church spires. The old part of town is in a very compact area with a maze of narrow alleys and no wide streets. I’m looking forward to exploring tomorrow!

The restaurant is extremely popular but luckily when I originally booked my room the concierge suggested I book a spot in the restaurant for the first night. They serve cocktails as the sun sets and then a set menu of fusion cuisine with Arabic, Persian, African and Swahili influences. During the meal local musicians and a singer perform traditional music. It was quite magical. I would 100% recommend both staying at the hotel and eating at the restaurant – both are fairly priced for what they are offering.

During dinner I got to experience the soundscapes of Stone Town. This was quite unique and I don’t think I have heard anything like it before. Each day at 7.30am and 7pm, an old WW2 air-raid siren goes off across the whole of Stone Town. It is a hold-over from the days when the country was a British protectorate and used during WW2. But the locals decided to keep it after the British left and use it as a way to announce the start and end of the working day. A very strange custom. So strange that the staff could see many confused faces of the diners and went around the room to explain it was something that happened daily and not to be alarmed. After the sirens end, the calls to prayer began as different mosques across the city fight it out to be the loudest. And after that the church bells began. For at least 45 minutes after the sun had set, the city was full of sound.

The evening was a good introduction to Zanzibar and Stone Town and I can’t wait to explore.