Zamani Zanzibar Kempinski

Last weekend, The Engineer and I were sitting at this bar......




......drinking Capirinhias and Mojitos. Bliss!

The atrociously expensive but wonderfully luxurious Zamani Zanzibar Kempinski cut their prices almost in half every May and June. We decided to make the most of it and book ourselves in for one night.

It was totally worth it! The bathrooms are so beautiful that you could be locked in there all day and still feel that you had a wonderful holiday



They even had an outdoor shower but being the forgetful photographer that I am, I didn't take a picture of it!

What I did manage to capture was the sign for the ladies' room at the beach bar. Apparently, despite the eye-brow-raising prices at the hotel, the luxury of correct spelling is not included:


Funny!

We went to a weekend beach party organised by the hotel that night and there was only one word for it - lame! The DJ (who is supposedly some kind of award winner) was spinning some weird music we've never heard of and I believe the people who were bopping to the beat were either drunk or high or both. Everyone else stood around waiting for something exciting to happen but nothing did.

Frankly, I'd rather have spent the night in the bathroom of our hotel room - it would have been far more pleasant!

We're definitely going back there but at an average of USD250 per room per night, looks like we'll be waiting till next June.

Although the service was excellence itself, I had to be true to myself and hold them to Diva standards. Two things we didn't like (which I later noted in their comment card in true Diva fashion):

1. We ordered a plate of calamari at their beach bar. Seven sad looking rings of calamari arrived on the plate and it cost us TSH10,000. Call me calculative but I think having to pay more than TSH1000 per calamari ring is plain wrong!

2. The turn-down service people arrived at our door at 10 0'clock at night. I think that that's a ridiculously late hour to knock on a hotel room door unless you've been expressly invited. After all, the guests could be asleep or busy dancing the 'horizontal tango' (wink, wink) in which case the turn down service would double as a turn off service!

Still, I agree with Pinkie (who also stayed there a while back) when it comes to rating the overall experience. She pointed out the one real drawback when you stay at the Kempinski - it makes any other hotel in Zanzibar (or in Dar for that matter) feel like a dump!