A few years ago friends who were traveling the world with their children were drawing to the end of their trip and they said they had always wanted to go to Zanzibar. So I said, Let’s go! My son Yoby, who was seven at the time, and I flew to Tanzania and met them there. The first thing that struck me when we arrived were the white sand beaches. We live in California so we visited a lot of beaches in our time, but the Indian Ocean coast looked like a whole different beast. The beaches are so vast and powdery, and the water is crystal blue, warm and very shallow. You can walk very far. In addition, we stayed at this boutique hotel, the Zanzibar White Sand, which has a series of tree-top bungalows, each with its own plunge pool, which opens directly onto the beach. At one point, as the children sank into the sand, these two Maasai gentlemen walked past. Our kids started talking to them and they taught the kids to do this special Maasai warrior jump. The children thought it was magic.
When I am on vacation I like to sit on the beach, but just as important to me is to feel entangled in the culture. So we made sure to visit Stone Town, getting lost in the winding streets and beautiful architecture. We stumbled upon the Darajani market, which is huge, and picked up spices like cinnamon and cardamom. We ate this delicious chapati bread in a street cart and then had dinner on the roof top of the Emerson Spice hotel, where we were high above the city and could take in the hustle and bustle of it all. To be able to move from this exquisite beach to this city so alive and which has so much cultural heritage and historical resonance was incredible. As said to Meredith Carey.
Connie Britton stars in HBO The white lotus, premiered on July 11.
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This article appeared in the July / August 2021 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.