Things to do in Dar

Being in the city means that there’s plenty to do here. Where I live is good for shopping as there are lots of (mostly tiny) shops / wooden stalls.  Sometimes the sellers lay their goods out on a cloth on the ground, or, in the case of clothes, hang them from the trees.

There are also some supermarkets, the larger ones being not unlike those in the UK, and with a fairly wide selection, including some goods imported from Europe (although these tend to be pretty expensive). If you go into a shop already carrying a plastic bag of shopping, you usually have to leave it at the front of the shop and collect it again when you’re finished. There are some small shopping centres too, particularly in the parts of the city where most of the expats live, and a larger one towards the outskirts of the city with a few huge stores.

There are even a couple of gyms nearby which have things like yoga and aerobics classes. I wasn’t expecting to have any use for a gym kit here, and so I’ve ended up wearing a pair of walking shoes, my oldest t-shirt and a pair of borrowed shorts at the gym (and looking like a twit). Exercising in these temperatures can be hard going (although apparently doing yoga in intense heat is the latest craze).

There are quite a few cafes, restaurants, bars (including an ‘Irish’ pub and ‘English’ pub) and nightclubs, and some places have live music.  One time, when a band was playing (with the audience sitting on the floor in front of them), two women suddenly leapt up from the crowd and started dancing in front of the band. More people joined them and they all seemed really good at it. The dancing involved high-speed hip movements and it looked like there was some kind of dance-off going on. By the end of the night the stage area was full of people dancing.