Shopping

Zanzibar, and especially Stone Town, is a shopper's paradise. The narrow winding streets are lined with stores selling local crafts, antiques, jewellery, clothes and spices. The Zanzibar Gallery on Kenyatta Road, Shangani, sells a huge range of printed fabrics and clothes plus silver jewellery and locally made massage oils and perfumes, as well as a range of handmade bubble baths in glass bottles. The Gallery is also a publishing company and sells a range of books on local history, plus coffee table and photographic books, guidebooks, novels, address books, calendars and post-cards. The Zanzibar Gallery also sells batiks, paintings and antiques from all over Africa alongside printed T-shirts and other clothes.

The Orphanage Shop, near the Old Fort, sells crafts and paintings by local artists and the orphans themselves, plus bolts of brightly coloured fabric, which the in-house tailor can make up to your own design. Also found are Zanzibar Chests - Arab style wooden chests inlaid with brightly polished brass - hand-carved in many workshops in Zanzibar and come in all sizes, from tiny jewellery boxes to enormous trunks.