Sometimes you travel somewhere and despite every fiber of your being, you realize you simply have to be a tourist. And I don’t mean going to Paris and seeing the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower was built, and people came. No, I’m talking about places that exist for the sole purpose of attracting tourists. In Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, one of these places is the Boma.

Had the dinner at Boma not been included in our hotel stay at the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge, odds are we wouldn’t have made it, which would have been too bad. Honestly. Despite it being an obvious tourist draw, eating there was a delight. After all, how many opportunities do you get to eat a freshly grilled lamb or BBQ ostrich? And let’s not forget the Mopani Worms and Warthog!

Plus, the meal includes some pretty awesome dancing and drumming. Not just entertainment though, every diner is given their own drum to bang for the duration of the evening and a “traditional” Zimbabwean gown. I’m still not sure how much of any of it is actually traditional, but it is certainly great fun.

The food, by the way, is nothing amazing, but it gets the job done. After all, the Boma is not simply about food, it’s about an experience and it’s an enjoyable one at that.

Although they border each other and both speak English, South Africa and Zimbabwe couldn’t be more different. Granted, my only basis for comparison are Cape Town and the town of Victoria Falls, but you know, they seemed pretty different. Essentially, Victoria Falls and Zimbabwe are poor. Like dirt poor. As in, so poor that their own currency has no value and they use American dollars instead. So with all this poverty, we were surprised to find a tapas restaurant called Lola’s in the middle of Victoria Falls.

After a few days of eating local African food, which was awesome, it was kind of nice to get a bit of European fare. We started out with albondigas, which is just a fancy Spanish word for meatballs. These were a combination of beef and pork, cooked with a tomato sauce and were quite delicious.

I followed that up with a chicken sandwich. I suppose this wasn’t exactly how tapas were meant to be eaten, but the sandwich just seemed like a good idea. It was served on a roll and topped with all sorts of terrible vegetables, along with cheese. It also came with sweet potato chips. It took me a while to dig out the good parts from all the vegetables, but as always in a foreign country, I don’t count such a thing against Lola’s. The sandwich was actually pretty good and made a nice complement to the meatballs.

Lola’s is a great spot to hit up if you’re ever in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Seriously, I know you’re going to find yourself there. You can thank me later.