Zanzibar - Stone Town Walking Tour and Prison Island

Normally we do a walking tour first thing when we get into a city, but we got things a little mixed up and did our Stone Town walking tour on our second full day in the city.  Stone Town is full of twisty windy streets.  It felt a little like being in an arabic Italy.

One of our first stops on the tour was the Slave Market which has now been turned into a church and museum.  The slave trade here was amongst the last to end in 1873.  These slaves were all sold to Arabic/Middle Eastern countries.  We went down into the quarters where they were crammed in before sale.  The area where Shannon and our guide is standing is where the slaves would have used the restroom when they were laying (all the time) on the higher floor we're leaning against.  Then when the tide came up, the floor would flood and "clean" itself.

We also went by the Stone Town market.  If you don't want to know where your food comes from, you probably don't want to come here....

We visited a handful of other Stone Town sites including the Old Fort and the Palace before going to Prison Island after lunch.  Prison Island has a turtle sanctuary (for the Aldabra species) which was pretty neat and we also got a quick snorkel in.

We had discovered a great sunset restaurant on our tour and so we had our best meal in Zanzibar before heading to the beach the next day!