Отдых в арабском колорите Holidays in Arabic flavor

We went on vacation in the month of July as a family: two adults and a 9-year-old son. in Egypt were for the first time, tour operator - Mostrevl. The voucher was far from burning, for three they gave 46.000 rubles. and that's for half board. The most important impression is the unforgettable Arabic flavor. A sea of ​ ​ positive, but we are unpretentious tourists, we are happy everywhere.
check-in took place at night, at first we were offered a room in building 3, the one that immediately frightens Russian tourists (after our refusal, it was offered to other compatriots). it's on the ground floor, tiny, gloomy, with worn furniture, a roaring air conditioner, a small window overlooking the bush, and beyond - a piece of the pool and the corresponding constant din. for $ 30 this problem was solved - a room in building 4, sea view.
True, there were two single beds for three of us, but we decided not to bother with this (we were tired from the road) and after dinner, the remnants of the buffet brought especially for us in the cafe by the pool, went to bed. It wasn’t there: somewhere at half past one in the night there was a wild noise from the next room, stomping and screams (or songs) in Arabic - a noisy Arab family was celebrating something ...and several more families came to visit them with screaming babies who also contributed...

after several unsuccessful attempts to calm the brothers down, the reception staff agreed to give us another room, and at one in the morning we trudged to the fifth building, where we were left for another hour under the door to wait for the key to the room and an extra bed, and we had to run several times to the reception to ask to speed up process, and at that time the child was sleeping on the bags on the open terrace, since the nights in Egypt are warm.
there were no more problems with the room - sea view, quiet, fourth floor, we turned on the air conditioning for min (17 degrees), but it didn’t cool much - it was comfortable - 25 degrees. furniture - a large double bed (very comfortable), wooden folding for a child, a wardrobe, a dressing table with a mirror, a mini-fridge in which the door was supported by a plank so that it would not fall, and a TV with two Russian channels. pretty well and much better than somewhere in the private sector near Sochi.
I was most struck by the national flavor - at that time only Arabs (90%) rested, they have large families with many children (I think they are very wealthy Arabs), often several wives with only their eyes visible (national clothes - how hot they are, the poor , in black hoodies, they bathe in them too!
), very original traditions for us - they smell strongly of aromatic oils, most of them are very full, they sleep during the day and sit by the pool under umbrellas all night, although you can’t swim, and their children jump on the playground at night! in general - very friendly people, some of them (men) even expressed a desire to communicate in English. women, apparently, do not have the right to talk to strangers. but among themselves they talk a lot, temperamentally and loudly! In the end, many Russians arrived, but they hardly behaved better than the Arabs - they drank and stole from the buffet. There were 2-3 more families of Europeans, it seems, from Hungary and Finland. In general, there were a lot of Europeans in Hurghada at that time, but not in our hotel.
There were practically no language barriers. In general, almost all merchants, taxi drivers, etc. speak Russian in Hurghada.

, their business depends on it, and certainly everyone who deals with tourists speaks English, but in the hotel the maid boys did not always understand even English, and sometimes they had to communicate with them through an employee at the reception (for example, a child they stubbornly took the sheet and had to beg for it back, because it’s hot to sleep under a fur blanket. ) Instead of a sheet, they somehow brought us another bed with a full set of bed linen, we took the sheet from there and hid it in the closet, and there were no more problems, but The bed was folded and put on the balcony. By the way, the Arabic word for a sheet is melee.

we had half board, so we almost daily took a taxi to the city for a walk and a bite to eat (it’s better to choose local cafes where Arabs dine - both cheaper, and again national flavor). Although it is written that the hotel is located in the Old City, it really takes about 10 minutes by taxi to the Old City, the cost is $ 2-3, as you bargain.
We do not recommend driving on minibuses and buses, they can deliver them to the wrong place or throw them with change. There are only construction sites around the hotel, there are no shops or cafes, and on the territory of the hotel (and neighboring hotels too) shops and cafes are expensive. We only bought drinking water at the hotel ($ 2 for 6 l) and oils in Emil's store (on the beach, not near the pool! ) a beautiful embankment - Marina Boulevard - but around - only construction sites ...Dahar district - local Arabs live there, many shops for tourists and almost no tourists themselves. Therefore, the Arabs are there in all their colors, they ask you to come to them, but they don’t grab your hand.
The New Town is far away, 15 kilometers, you can take a taxi for $ 4-5, but it's worth it: a beautiful promenade with illumination, shops and cafes, in the Grand Hotel in the evenings there are free performances in English, then a free disco all night.
from excursions we took a ride on a boat with a transparent bottom and to Luxor. bought from locals, the price is 2 times lower, and in one group there were those who bought from a tour operator with a cheat. By the way, many Europeans (Dutch, Norwegians, French) also prefer to take excursions from the locals.

more leisure time enjoyed the sea.
It’s about 500 meters to go to the beach, which is not so little in the heat ...From Natasha’s horse, which once brought tourists, there was only one wagon left ...But for $ 1-2 you could ride a camel named Oscar.

a lot has been written about the beaches and the sea, I won’t repeat it, everything is fine - you don’t feel the heat, as the breeze blows, the sea-fish-corals are excellent, we didn’t leave the water for hours, it was 30 degrees! ...
you need to sunbathe under fungi from palm leaves, through them a great tan! and you'll only burn yourself in the sun. and I do not advise you to paint your lips with anything - they are burned to blisters and swollen from shine. face and lips must also be smeared with a protective cream!
wrote about the garbage dumps around, smelly water for irrigation and flycatchers. as for garbage dumps - in the Arab quarters it is no dirtier than in our country in provincial Russia, the hotel is very clean and very well maintained, greenery and flowers are everywhere, workers are like ants - they cut something night and day.
they water the plants at night, because the water is really sewage and does not smell very pleasant, but this is a feature of the whole of Hurghada - desalinated sea water for technical purposes, and they use it again, after tourists, but I emphasize again - they only water at night, during the day there is no There is no smell, in general, the staff treats tourists with respect. there was no smell from the flycatchers.
about food - no one eats at home like that. We liked everything. tasty, varied, very nicely decorated. On the eve of departure, the son returned from the children's camp, so after the camp table he ate everything in a row for a sweet soul, and we did not lag behind. but did not recover at all - apparently, they swam a lot.
in more detail - breakfast - in front of you the chef makes an omelette with and without fillings (very tasty), in addition, he also makes pancakes, which are supposed to be liquid chocolate in a large vessel (I don’t even know what to call it), jams, or hot milk with cereal .

it seems that this would be enough, but no - there are sausages, potatoes, stewed vegetables, feta cheese and sheep cheese on large trays, sausage, various chopped vegetables. seems to be more than enough, but every breakfast was a wonderful national dish - the Arabs eat it like this - pour a couple of spoons of olive oil into a soup plate, then pour stewed beans from a huge elongated vessel with a ladle, pour oil again and sprinkle with finely chopped onions and tomatoes and sprinkle with seasonings, which are located here. I still remember this deliciousness ...I don’t write about buns - there are an infinite number of them. tea is bad, ground boiled coffee is not bad. juices - orange yupi and a good hibiscus with sugar, to which limes cut into halves rely. How can you be dissatisfied with this, I do not understand.
dinner - a couple of soups, more often mashed potatoes, all sorts of side dishes - rice and potatoes are a must, sometimes spaghetti with sauce, meat and chicken in different forms, sometimes fish, a lot of vegetables, everything is delicious and there is a lot of everything. for dinner, a dozen types of desserts - and cakes, and pies, and jelly, one type of fruit - watermelon and melon in turn, but we bought fruit (mango, bananas, guava) cheaply at the local market in Dahar. since drinks were paid for us at dinner, we didn’t drink them, and in the room we always had juices and water from the city, and a kind waiter sometimes gave juice to a child for free. Egyptians generally love children.
The restaurant was often visited by the chief manager of the hotel - a middle-aged, good-natured fat man, clearly not an Arab type. What nationality he was, we did not understand.
There was practically no animation on the beach, except for a hot Arab guy who walked along the beach and shouted "Gemnastek", "Aquaaeroback"!
A couple of times he even managed to recruit 5-6 applicants (Russians and a couple of emancipated Christian Arabs). In the evenings, entertainment was arranged in the booth across the road: a couple of times there were belly dances and national Egyptian dances, the rest of the time there were competitions in the spirit of soviet rest houses. The Arabs liked it.
Let's summarize:
The advantages of the hotel include: a beautiful green area, a living coral reef on the beach (which is rare for Hurghada), excellent food, good rooms (only in new buildings - 4.5, 6).
Disadvantages: location on the outskirts of the city, non-picturesque surrounding landscape (construction sites), lack of shops and cafes outside the hotels, the beach is located across the road and quite far from the hotel.