I had been to zanzibar a few years back, not that i had ever thought of being there, but living in kenya, we took one of our aunts who was visiting us from london. She was born there and so she wanted to see the place and also show it to her children and husband. We went there by bus from nairobi but also there are ships that have to be taken from mombasa. From dar-es-salaam we took ship to zanzibar that takes about 45mins ro reach there. Zanzibar is a small island but it has a lot to explore. As soon as we reached there, there were many taxi drivers who came up asking us to hire their service. It is always best to do all the bargaining with them at this point before you decide to hire one. As it is with the other east african countries,this island too falls in the equatorial region so definately it has the best climate that one could ever long to have. We landed there and then decided on which hotel we were to stay, there are many ranges to one has the freedom to choose according to the services offered, standards and most important of all, the budget that you are planning to spend on it. Ofcourse as we had taken the first available ship, we had done all our breakfast and freshening up back in dar-es -salaam so no sooner had we cheched in the hotel than we left to explore the island. First of all we were taken to the spice farms where for the first ever we got to see the plants. There is a wide variety, ginger, turmeric, nutmeg, cloves,cinnamon just to mention some. Immediately we came out from the farms, there are many packed gifts of those spices that we can choose to buy. They are all so freshly picked and smell really good. It gets to lunch time so we go back to the old town. Quite interstingly, houses have connected roof tops so people do go from one building to the next just using the tops, they dont need to climb down and up . Another intersting point is that you have to explore the place on foot as the streets are too narrow and not accessible to cars. There we decided to look for indian food and we found a very good joint. The place was called Maharaja and it was an old time palace that was converted to a restaurant. Definately the place has indian touch in all the buildings as the place has many muslim habitats and this adds on to the fact that the early settlers in zanzibar came from india. This settlement has been there since the time the part was under colonial rule. After lunch we went shopping, most of the shops are open during lunch hours but without any attendants,  you get so many antique things there and also went to see their museums. Dollar is easily exchanceable there. Later on we spent some time at the beach enjoying the cool breeze and the tropical fruits available in plenty there especially bananas, mangoes, oranges, pineapples and coconut. The day is over, sleep goes in after a day long of being on foot. Morning comes in with new energy, sun is sweet and air is salty ans sticky. Immediately after breakfast we took a speed boat that took us to another little island known as prison island. It is about 30 mins from zanzibar, this is one of the many other places where prisoners were taken during the colonial time and were left there under some king or ruler to work endlessly as slaves. Here we saw some of the oldest and very huge tortoises on land, old time amunitions and guns and currencies.Then we went to explore some other smaller islands that are surroundint there, one island is fully habitated with poisonous snakes so it is better not to step on the land and one island is named cave island as it has many caves on it. What to say about these places that till date are so full of their old ways of living preserved and that too in such a beautiful way.