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SPRING RED SEA
General information about the hotel.
The hotel is located on the first coastline in Sharks Bay, 2 km from the airport and 10 km from Naama Bay. And is within walking distance of the famous SOHO Square.
The hotel was opened in September 2002, the last renovation was carried out in 2011. The total area of the territory is 5.2ha
Nearby hotels: "Four Seasons" 5 * and "Dessole Royal Rojana Resort" 5 *.
April 25.2017. Tuesday
Check-in hotel. Hall
The lobby of the Grand Oasis by Look Hotels 4 * struck me with its luxury. Such an expensive and sophisticated hall is not often seen even in hotels of a higher, five-star category. If outwardly, from the side of entry, in comparison with such hotels as Grand Rotana Resort & Spa 5 *, Sharm al-Sheikh, it cannot be compared in any way, then in terms of interior design, the Grand Oasis 4 * hotel will give it a head start at least three points!
Imagine mansions at the level of the royal ones made of marble, shining like a mirror.
The floor, walls, tall ceiling, a huge chic chandelier in the center - everything is in the same style, in the same harmony. And even the music of this harmony is heard when you enter this hall. And you, after the psychological, moral and physical stress of the dangers of the flight, the heat of the day and closeness, there is a completely different mood - the mood for a luxurious vacation in this hotel on the Red Sea!
And your hopes, with small and insignificant exceptions, are justified.
Settlement. Number
For any hotel in Egypt - a settlement - a special phenomenon. As for hoteliers, this is a profitable business with black cash. I don’t know to whom and how it is distributed, but it’s a fairly stable phenomenon, and this is practiced in all Egyptian 3 * - 5 * hotels that I have been to, and this is a lot - more than ten. Yes, sometimes he himself got caught when they explicitly or implicitly hinted at the need for one or another surcharge for improving the room.
And this, despite the fact that from the very beginning I presented myself as a creative person and I am writing a book about the Red Sea and hotels in Egypt, and sometimes even gave my first book at the reception (Sasha Sim: "Resort. Love. Wedding. Divorce") . But it did not really matter: for a low-level clerk, and advertising his hotel from a positive or negative side: his shirt, his personal interests were above corporate ones. I often have to listen to hard-hitting stories about the performance at the settlement from my new acquaintances, and they are unable to move away from these impressions for several days.
So, we can consider two sides of this action: the Hotel and the Tourist. For a hotel (hoteliers) this is a profitable business of seizing cash from tourists and money not accounted for anywhere (black cash). For a Tourist, this is, most often, psychological stress, after which a day or two of the few (7-9 days) of a resort vacation must be crossed out.
I write “most often”, because sometimes, due to the increased pretentiousness of the Tourist to the living conditions, when a tour with a standard room is bought, but you want to get a room of an increased category “for free”, for example, “with a sea view”, which costs at a price -leaf one and a half times more expensive. And at the advantageous offer of the reception worker to pay extra for comfort several times less than initially in Kyiv, Kharkov or Zaporozhye, for example, $ 10 per day, the Tourist perceives it as a desire to rip off the excess from him and therefore is indignant. But this is the psychology of our compatriot. And the fault of the Hotel in such "discomfort" of the Tourist is not.
However, often, especially in low-category hotels that do not really respect their reputation, and in hotels of higher categories, when the greed of the reception worker goes off scale, they use a proven “performance” that almost always guarantees high profits.
And the receptionist, thanks to repeated daily trainings, develops a certain “iron” strategy and tactics for psychological treatment of the client and the withdrawal of dollars from him.
A sleepless night during a night flight, stress on the verge of life and death during takeoff and landing, especially in a zone of increased turbulence, when it seems that the wing of an aircraft can fall off - such that the will of a person is so weakened and psychological forces are exhausted that in within a few hours after - "do with it what you want"! There are clerks at the reception of the hotel and they do what they want with it. And they want very little - money. And therefore they settle in a deliberately bad and even uncleaned room after previous tourists, in order to hint directly or indirectly at the need for “gratitude” in case of refusal. This "hint" is equivalent to $10 - $20 for the entire service or per night in a more comfortable room.
And the Tourist, psychologically relaxed after the stress of the flight, is led to this: where should he go, because health and the need to recuperate are more expensive ...
But this is a robbery! The hotel is obliged to provide an already paid service (room, meals, leisure, etc. ), according to the "price list". And therefore, the Tourist, by law, has the right to compensation from the Hotel, both moral and material, for violation of contractual obligations. (I explain this as a lawyer with a higher education, and such an argument "iron" puts the presumptuous hotelier in his place).
Early settlement
The Grand Oasis by Look Hotels 4 *, unlike other 4 * hotels in Egypt, where I have been, does not practice early check-in and breakfast, who arrived at the hotel early in the morning. And there are at least half of such tourists, given that there are even more flights, for example, from Kyiv at 3-5 o'clock in the morning than in the evening.
How realistic is this from my personal observations?
We, about 10 people, who arrived at the hotel at about 9 am (departure from Kyiv was at 5-00) at the reception, were offered to fill out questionnaires, hand over passports and vouchers for registration. (Things, as elsewhere, immediately after unloading from the bus, they offered to throw them into one heap in the lobby - under the supervision of the security at the entrance and the reception worker. You don’t have to worry about things, but it’s better to take expensive ones with you. After registration, they returned their passports and offered to come for the key to the room and a bracelet after 11:00 a. m. Everything seems to be according to international rules, even better. After all, a single check-in hour is 2:00 p. m. in any hotel in any resort in the world, and check-out is 12:00 p. m. favor: it provides the opportunity to check in three hours earlier. Why not immediately upon arrival? Yes, all because of the same: to give the opportunity to the especially rich and impatient "Pinocchio" to take advantage of the possibility of early settlement for an additional bribe. Again, black cash. Yes, and the question of breakfast.
Why does the Hotel need an extra mouth and extra expenses for breakfast (which is in this hotel from 7-00 to 9-30)? And everyone who normally checks in after 11-00 already, of course, does not have the opportunity to have breakfast. Only beer, drinks from 10-00 and snacks from 12-00 (and then only the pool bar "Pool bar") - according to the all-inclusive system in the other two bars ("Lobby bar" and "Beach bar") - and then well! Therefore, if you have not paid for early check-in with breakfast, then I recommend using snacks with beer and other drinks at the Pool bar - if you have a bracelet.
But there is another fact. AnexTour, as a monopoly on the Grand Oasis by Look Hotels 4 *, has introduced additional payments of $15 for early departures and, as a result, early check-in at the hotel since the spring of this year. And logically, breakfast (scrambled eggs with scrambled eggs) should be paid for.
But, alas, apparently "AnexTour" did not want to share this money with the hotel, but "grabbed" everything for itself, although by right and logic - the entire burden falls on the hotel and therefore all this money (and this is almost $ 5 thousand from each flight) should belong to the hotel. By the way, there is an extra $15 for a late flight from Egypt.
Check-in process.
At the agreed time, you are given a room key, a card on a beach towel and hang a bracelet (do not lose it! - the penalty for losing them is 200 Egyptian pounds ($12), 180 Egyptian pounds ($10) and 25 Egyptian pounds ($1.5), respectively , according to the information that you are given with the keys and that almost no one reads (although it has a lot of other useful information besides the opening hours of restaurants and bars, for example, a $ 500 fine for feeding fish (! ), picking up corals and walking on him... )
The porter vigilantly monitors the entire process of settling.
As soon as you get the key and go to your things, he immediately jumps up and smartly grabs (mostly) one suitcase or bag and leads you to your room. The rest of the things you carry yourself. The porter service, of course, is not free - $ 1 or a chocolate bar. Although it could be $4 (as I have at the Le Mirage New Tower 4 * hotel, Sharm El Sheikh, (July 2015) - at a time when rich in oil and therefore generous Russians still traveled to Egyptian resorts, "I didn't have small dollars without change, and the greed of the porters went through the roof. The porter, who in this case is also a guide, shows you the number. Check with him that everything is in order, working and everything is in the kit! - So that when you check out for everything Do not pay you any shortcomings!
I liked the first room (1133) with a fresh renovation, cleanliness, comfort, size (under forty (! ) square meters, but the view from the first floor window was gloomy, in no way inspiring to creativity.
And I, realizing that I was wrong, since everything corresponds to the “purchased tickets” with the “Standard Room” category, I nevertheless plucked up the courage to refuse and asked for the second floor. Immediately, the porter-guide showed another room (1260) on the second floor, which, in view of the window on a blank four-meter-high wall separating our hotel of mere mortals from the hotel for tourists of royal blood "Four Seasons Resort Sharm El Sheikh" 5 * (something reminiscent of a prison, pah, pah, pah) and completely upset me ...And all this despite the fact that I was carrying a backpack and a package with me, in violation of my own rules, not to take things to inspect the room, but to walk light. And the porter took only one bag. And all because the smiling employee at the reception claimed to give me the best room that the hotel has! In the end, I turned out to be an old sucker. And the porter, who was in vain carrying my 20-kilogram bag, who did not receive the coveted chocolate bar or dollar, put things back in their original place in the hotel lobby.
Thus passed more than an hour of morning time, the most favorable for sunbathing and swimming in the Red Sea. And I spat on everything and said: “I don’t play your games! ”, I decided to change clothes and go to the sea. I still had one more trump card - a letter of request to the chief manager of the hotel for a room, with more or less favorable conditions for creativity, which I sent the day before from Kyiv. (As it turned out later, I was in vain writing this letter to an email address, addressed to the main manager of the hotel, because without paying (!? ) a return answer, as one close to the hotel authorities told me (albeit in another hotel), such people letters do not reach, and if they do, they are not answered. But the hotel management should appear after 11-00. And that's why I decided not to waste time in vain. Slowly, I went to the beach ...
I can share useful information that you can’t find anywhere else - about the rooms of the Grand Oasis by Look Hotels 4 * and what kind of view from the windows. All the first floors of the hotel rooms are marked with "1" (one) - the second digit in the room, the second floors - "2", the third floors - "3". The first digit is the case number. There are seven buildings in total. Buildings one and two are mostly standard with a view of the garden, pool, and only in the first building (A) are the extreme ones - 1241.1341 - with a panoramic view of the sea. Similarly, in case two (B). But during my arrival, only building A was occupied.
The worst rooms overlooking the blank wall of the Four Seasons Hotel: 1142-1153.1242-1261.1342-1361. The most prestigious sea view rooms are in buildings 3-7 on the second floor. Their numbers begin with a digit, which indicates the building number, the second digit is the floor. Second floor (2) - panoramic sea view: 3201-3215.4201-4212.5201-5215 etc.
Near the sea - three villas. But we can't live like this...
But in general, information about the rooms of the Grand Oasis Hotel is publicly available, available on the Internet and I do not give it here. I added only interesting and not useless information about the difference in prices for rooms of different categories, which will be useful to potential guests of this hotel when choosing a tour:
Standard Garden View Room - area: 36 sq. m. - $401.
Standard Pool View Room - area: 36 sq. m. - $418.
Standard Sea View Room - area: 32-40 sq. m. - $435.
Family Large Bed Room- area: 46 sq. m.
Junior Suite - area: 84 sq. m.
April 26.2017. Wednesday
Dawn. Sunrise
Surprisingly, five hours of sleep on the Red Sea in a room next to the sea was enough to fully recuperate after yesterday's flight and problems with the settlement. And at four in the morning I woke up and in a light slumber lay in bed on a wide double bed and enjoyed the real being among the comfort, inhaling the fresh aromas of the subtropical climate.
Consciousness was turned off for the time being and hovered somewhere in other "near-asleep" worlds...Such a rather pleasant state lasted for about an hour. But by five o'clock I was already on my feet. I was surprised that it took so long to get light. And thanks to this delay of the Sun, I was in time for its sunrise. And everything was explained simply: the entire sky in the east in a fair segment above the horizon was covered with a whitish impenetrable haze and the Sun for a long time, at least half an hour, overcame this barrier, so that, finally, by five o'clock, jump out into the sky free from this viscous mass. But the effect of sunrise was quite different. By the time the Sun was rising behind the screen of this veil, it had already gained strength, and therefore it was hot and shone so brightly that it was difficult to look at it and I had to photograph it mostly because of some obstacle: behind palm leaves, through a vine of umbrellas or even tree trunks. But the effect of this was no less.
And before that, the Sun was so faded and barely noticeable that it seemed not the Sun, but the disk of the Moon in a haze rising from the horizon. I remembered that this phenomenon of dense foggy accumulation above the horizon here in Egypt is quite common, and I have seen it more than once in other hotels.
Beach
The beach at the Grand Oasis Hotel is its own, 150 meters long. There is a small sandy entry into the sea, and special shoes are required. But, basically, entry into the sea from a floating plastic pontoon. That umbrellas, sunbeds, beach towels - for free, I do not focus, as it is in almost all hotels in Egypt.
The beach in our usual view, as it is on the Dnieper, Desenka or the Black (Azov) seas, and at any rate, is a place near the water with free access to the same water. Even when you are lying on the pebbles or on the sand of the beach, and the waves are tickling your heels ...This is a natural beach!
Such beaches are almost everywhere on the Red Sea in Hurghada. True, sometimes with a slight gentle descent. But in Sharm El Sheikh, in fact, there is no beach as such. And there is a recreation area by the sea on a rocky shore with a height of three to five meters or more. And you won’t jump from a cliff head (or booty) down onto corals, slightly hidden (ankle-deep) by water. Even if you will be too drunk after “All inclusive” ...True, I remember the only (the first - ten years ago) of more than ten beaches where I visited, the beach in Sharm El Sheikh with a wide, almost the entire length of the sandy beach, free entry into the sea. Too bad I forgot the name of the hotel. But he repeated himself a little later - at the Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5 * hotel.
The beach at the Grand Oasis Hotel is designed rationally, taking into account the use of the features of the steep coast in the coastal zone - terraces up to 10 m wide, with an arrangement of umbrellas with sun loungers in two rows.
The Beachbar is located on the uppermost terrace, below it, on the next terrace, there is a playground for animators with amplifiers and speakers, as well as playgrounds.
I thought so, but what was worth walking with a bulldozer along the line of the sea and cutting off the edge of the cliff, or undermining it with dynamite on a mini-scale, just a little and arranging general access to the sea? After all, this is a trifle, compared with those thousands of cubes that were removed and aligned under the hotel terraces on hectares of area when these hotels were built. But, alas! Everything is correct. It would be so, as I said, for a long time there would be no coral reef, no corals, no colorful fish in Sharm El Sheikh - some hedgehogs would stick out tens and hundreds of crevices, as is everywhere in Hurghada.
We resort guests, who grumble that there is no beach sea familiar to us in Sharm El Sheikh, should know that a huge favor has already been done for us - this is free access to the Red Sea, living tens of meters from it, with swimming and diving from pontoons - in the unique nature reserve, perhaps the only one of its kind on Earth! However, more than half of the guests at the Grand Oasis hotel sunbathe on the beach, swim in the sea, sit in coastal bars drinking drinks or beer ...And the other half, mostly with children and Egyptians, splash in the pools on the hotel territory and also diluting your fun with drinks according to the “All inclusive” system.
Sea
I devoted the most part of my resort time to the sea with the beach. I woke up early, despite the fact that I always went to bed well after midnight, sometimes even before breakfast, and even at dawn. In this case, he went to meet the Sun and enjoy the new day with him.
And the fact that I, like other guests of the hotel, live through the wall from them (even if it is high - at least five meters high) this significantly raises the prestige of our hotel - Grand Oasis.
Coral reef. Corals. fish
The coral reef near the Grand Oasis Hotel is great! And while there is Egyptian legislation on the protection of the flora and fauna of the Red Sea, which prohibits feeding fish, collecting, breaking and walking on corals and provides for a fine of $ 500, while the Red Sea will be so unique in the world.
The coral reef is a sheer wall of living corals, about six meters high, behind which the bottom drops sharply to a depth of up to 20 meters. Above the corals to the very shore, and this is thirty meters, a shallow depth, no more than half a meter, and depends on the tides. But still, I could, swimming on my stomach and with the help of one hand, swim a small area of corals to the right and left of the pontoon (where the children's beaches are) - to the reef.
As you approach the shore from the edge of the reef, there are fewer and fewer living corals. And there are practically no living corals near the shore, and this is already a negative symptom of the health of the flora and fauna of the Red Sea, which are detrimental to the presence of humans.
The most beautiful reef is where there are least people, and this is near the neutral zone with the Four Seasons 5 * hotel: “And on the neutral zone, the flowers are of extraordinary beauty! "(V. Vysotsky). There are a lot of varieties of corals here, I counted more than ten, with different shapes and colors. But, since I am not a botanist, I cannot name every coral by its name. But somehow, in the future, I will give them my own definitions and names, which will be my closer and deeper knowledge of them.
Fish are creatures more familiar to us, since we dealt with similar ones, as in the Red Sea, in home aquariums. And here you seem to find yourself in a large natural aquarium.
Yes, and the fish take you for their own: they are not afraid of you at all, even if you or they swim nearby. And this is the most surprising, since we are used to the fact that any living creature on Earth is frightened by the mere approach of a person. Maybe here, in the Red Sea, everything is so because a person is afraid of a fine of $ 500, otherwise he would have cleared up like at home ...
Unfortunately, a person has not yet reached a level in his development when not the fear of punishment, but internal moral and psychological unacceptability determines his actions and actions. Will it ever reach?
Evening on the Red Sea
Evening. About six o'clock. I'm on the beach. The sun slowly disappears behind the rock of the neighboring hotel. The Grand Oasis Hotel, like all the hotels of Sharm El Sheikh on the first beach line, is located on the slope of a rocky coast and therefore the sunset over the horizon can only be observed from the highest point of the upper tier hotel.
From the beach, one can only guess that after a while it will hide behind the mountainous edge of the Sinai Peninsula in order to rest after a hard day's work and give rest to all living things, and, perhaps, even inanimate ones on earth. I clarify to all living and inanimate righteous - to rest, and the unrighteous, evil and predatory is just beginning to wake up and sharpen its teeth on those who did not have time to hide. Here is such a real picture of the "wild" Nature on the Red Sea, which has preserved itself in the most natural form since ancient times. Yes, and relic corals, which are often found on the shore on rock cuts, confirm this. And therefore, if you linger on the beach after sunset to admire the Red Sea at night, Security will culturally ask you to go to the hotel.
Swimming and being on the beach after sunset is not allowed by the security service of Sharm El Sheikh, which is even warned in the information about the hotel and the basic conditions of living in it, which is issued to everyone upon registration.
It's evening. Daylight dims, revealing the softness of the shapes and shapes of everything around. And even, it seems to me, it reveals the inner essence of things, previously hidden behind the ostentatious brilliance of the external form. But this phenomenon of naturalization of the essence of things does not take long - only a few minutes, before dusk, when completely different laws of being come into their own. Twilight turns everything into monotonous dullness, and then, moving into the darkness of the night, they completely hide everything that is daytime, as alien and harmful to themselves. Therefore, it is at this moment of manifestation of the inner essence of things that the only opportunity to communicate with a seemingly silent stone or relic coral appears.
But this is already an act of mystery, very far from the realities of reality. And the whistles of beach workers, announcing the end of beach procedures, return to reality: first, a lifeguard on a pontoon, who thus tries to extract the last bathers and bathers from the water, and then “land” beach guardians so that everyone leaves the beach.
Despite all the warnings, I retire to the far corner of the beach and try to listen to the evening sea, which also changes with the fading of the day. It already sounds quite different. Noisy with its mysterious surf. And, listening to this sound of the surf, with some audacity in an effort to know the mysterious, the thought appears: “Will I ever be able to solve it? And I realize that I am already asking this question for the hundredth time and not to myself, but, most likely, to an unknown space, when I hear the sound of the sea or its other bright visual manifestation. But haven't received a reply yet...
Having originated in the east, twilight slowly but inevitably moves to the west, where there is still a considerable segment of bright pink color after the Sun has set behind the mountains. Yes, the sea, contrary to the twilight, suddenly begins to glow, as if a backlight comes from its depths ...But this is not a miracle, but just the laws of physics: the surface of the sea reflects white clouds, which at the last moment are illuminated by the Sun that has already gone beyond the horizon.
The late evening, which changed the beach day, lured all the beachgoers to the hotel territory and scattered them to bars, restaurants and other places convenient for a comfortable evening rest, not without a cup of coffee, a glass of wine, a glass of juice or beer. And the OYOUN restaurant, of course, gathers everyone without exception for half an hour or an hour for an evening meal.
Restaurants and bars of the Grand Oasis Hotel
Restaurants
The main restaurant "OYOUN", All inclusive, buffet: breakfast, lunch (07:00-09:00.13:00-14:00) Dinner at the Fish Restaurant (19:00 - 21:00).
Local wine: white, rosé and red are only served at this restaurant during lunch and dinner. And it is bottled not from bottles, but from an apparatus filled with "skinskins", five liters each. Therefore, no one here will argue about the naturalness of wine.
Breakfast at the Grand Oasis Hotel is the usual, as for all hotels in Egypt, regardless of category: scrambled eggs, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, butter, fruits, various salads and all kinds of bakery products. Boiled sausage and hard cheeses are an amateur and it is difficult to argue about the 100% naturalness of the product. Tea (several varieties), coffee, milk are a must. And yes, milk porridge. As for me and others like me, it is enough to last a couple of hours until 12:00, when snacks and drinks are prepared at the Poolbar. But I was too lazy to go up to the pool to this bar and therefore made do at the Beachbar with a few glasses of beer with a salted boiled egg from breakfast.
Lunch at the Grand Oasis Hotel, as for a not very pretentious gourmet, is so chic. And even pulls up to hotels of a higher, five-star category. Meat - natural and, most importantly, in large pieces - several types, chicken - always, as well as gil - cooked every day on the terrace. And the fish fillet melts in your mouth, you will lick your fingers. When I write these lines, two months later, I imagine all this as if in reality and so much, just for the sake of this cuisine and the Red Sea, to break loose and visit the Grand Oasis Hotel again ...
The peculiarity of this hotel is that no bar serves wine, except for the OYOUN restaurant. Therefore, I always ordered a couple of glasses of red wine here (I liked it the most) and it, like the other, is always cold. And then he did it again a couple of times...
At lunch, there are countless cakes, pastries and other confectionery products, for which oriental masters are unsurpassed and are famous all over the world. They keep their brand here, in the OYOUN restaurant of the Grand Oasis hotel.
Dinner at the Grand Oasis Hotel is possible both in the main OYOUN restaurant and in one of the three a la carte restaurants by appointment: Primi Piatti Italian Restaurant, Sultan Oriental Restaurant or Fishermans Fish Restaurant (see . below), however, only once.
Dinner at the main restaurant "OYOUN", in my opinion, is even better and more varied and refined than lunch. You just have to wonder how they manage to surpass many of the "four" hotels in terms of food during a crisis, pulling themselves up to the level of five-star hotels at a fairly reasonable price for tours?
A-la-carte restaurants
In Ala Carte restaurants (Italian, Oriental and Fish): dinner by prior reservation (one visit is free for the entire stay in each restaurant, and shrimp and lobsters, even on the first visit, are paid separately).
It seems to me that the Grand Oasis Hotel, like many other hotels of this level in Egypt, provides the opportunity to "taste" dishes and experience the service of a-la-carte restaurants (even in the "five" this is one restaurant according to All inclusive, and here there are as many as three! ) - according to tradition, in order to somehow keep the brand, and show what the hotel is capable of! And therefore, to show that the Grand Oasis hotel is even better than many "fives" here, all vacationers on the All inclusive system are allowed to visit all three a-la-carte restaurants during the entire vacation period
: Italian, Oriental and Fish. True, due to the crisis, the approbation of the cuisines of all these restaurants is carried out on the basis of the same restaurant - Italian.
Only teams of cooks - waiters, and, naturally, the range of dishes is different.
I have visited all three restaurants and therefore I can, as an eyewitness and a direct participant in this "process", describe them.
Italian restaurant
The kitchen of the Italian restaurant "Primi Piatti" is located on the first floor under the main restaurant "Oyoun" - in a deep niche, and about a dozen tables are placed on a certain elevation in a semicircle on the open veranda. A very original design solution. Moreover, in the open air and a few meters from the pool, which creates a special charm, thanks to the presence of water with bright green and blue illumination. True, there is still a small minus of the open area: a playful breeze sometimes burst into the tables and wrapped the tablecloths directly onto the dishes - even fastening the tablecloth to the table in the form of a clamp is clearly not enough.
Three chefs in the kitchen of the Italian restaurant made a miracle in the form of original Italian dishes. Moreover, as it should be in restaurants, dishes are prepared individually for each visitor. And the waiters with unusual dexterity deliver these dishes to the tables, straight from the oven.
Drinks, as in all bars and restaurants of the hotel - a standard assortment and local production. Only red wine, which, by the way, is served in this hotel only in restaurants for lunch and dinner, was clearly not enough.
Although this restaurant is open until 20-30, but by eight in the evening, after tasting Italian dishes, the visitors all leave. Most go up to the main restaurant, if not to fill their stomachs with delicious delicacies of the general buffet, then with dessert - for sure (dessert is not provided in the Italian restaurant).
The Fishermans fish restaurant surprised me with a huge crab, and the oriental restaurant was remembered for a lamb dish - kebab, which reminded me of a cafe in Yalta, where I often tasted it with Coca-Cola or beer.
In general, in a la carte restaurants one can feel an increased level of service and attention to each visitor. And you feel it especially vividly against the backdrop of the main restaurant.
bars
All-concept (all inclusive) is valid from 10:00 to 00:00. Lobby bar -24 hours: from 10:00 to 00:00 on the All inclusive system, from 00:00 to 10:00 in the morning - for an additional fee. Pool bar from 10:00 to 23:00, snacks from 12:00 to 15:00. Beach bar from 10:00 until sunset.
Bar in the lobby ("Lobby-bar")
At eight in the evening, when most vacationers have satisfied their hunger in the main Oyoun restaurant, visited Fishermans Fish, Sultan Oriental or Primi Piatti Italian restaurants, people begin to gather in the hotel lobby, where the main object of attention is undoubtedly lobby bar.
Throughout the vast area of the hall with a mirrored marble floor, comfortable soft chairs with tables are placed. Here you can spend the remaining four hours in a friendly conversation with new acquaintances - until the closing of the All-inclusive bar system, with a cup of coffee, tea, a glass (traditional glass, if you brought it with you) of beer (and beer here is unlimited! ), a glass a cocktail or a locally produced strong liquor.
Abundance of light, perfect purity and a mirror of the marble floor, in which you can see not only your surroundings, but also yourself - is this not a celebration of Soul and body? If you wish, you can go out to the outdoor terrace overlooking the pool and the sea and enjoy these views while sipping a drink. There are also plenty of tables with chairs.
This goes on for two or three hours.
Some people leave for an hour (from 21-30) to watch and participate in the performances of the animators right next to it, by the pool, in order to return to the lobby again, a little later, to the “Lobby-bar”. But by eleven in the evening, people begin to disperse to their numbers. And after midnight, when, having finished your last glass of beer, you notice that you were left alone in the lobby, and the lighting is turned off like a fan, you are going to go to your room or, even better, take a couple of hours to walk around the territory of the night hotel, which, believe me, no worse, and, all the more, more mysterious than daytime ...
"Beachbar" on the beach
After breakfast and swimming in the sea, you lie down and sunbathe on the beach. And only when you hear the musical greeting of the animators and an invitation to morning exercises, know that the Beachbar is already open and waiting for you.
You take the half-liter glass you brought with you (in the beach bar, all drinks, apparently for safety reasons, so as not to get hurt on broken glass glasses, are served only in plastic cups) and head to the bar. Your acquaintances are already sitting here and enjoying drinks, including delicious real beer. You join and maintain a “high society” conversation on topics other than politics…
The bar is attached above the beach on one of the terraces, no more than 5-6 meters wide. But there is enough space for everyone along the terrace with tables in two rows, including under umbrellas. True, the bar closes half an hour or an hour before sunset, around five in the evening, probably still according to the winter schedule, and not “before sunset”, as according to the price list. And sometimes you don’t have time to fill your traditional glass goblet with beer during the flood ...I even spoke about this to the hotel guide at a meeting of newly arrived tourists.
A milky gray morning adorns the beginning of the third day of my vacation on the Red Sea. A quiet and calm morning, until the hotel animators woke up and turned on powerful amplifiers with crowing early roosters, grunting sounds, apparently always hungry pigs and other domestic creatures. And this is just the beginning. And then - incessant for a moment no less loud music. And so the whole day. We have fun ...By the way, I heard this morning crowing at the Grand Oasis Hotel every morning a couple of months later in a hotel that is at least five kilometers away from it.
In the meantime, there is no one, I sit at the very edge of the sea and listen to his excited argument with the land. I just don’t understand one thing: where do the waves come from at the very junction of the sea with the land, when the sea is absolutely calm with a mirror surface in which white boats are reflected. Only sometimes ripples appear on the surface here and there.
In the sea, about a hundred meters from the shore, seething water is sometimes visible - these are flocks of small fish massively jumping out of the water. In all likelihood, some kind of predator is hunting for them, I do not exclude a shark. After all, it is not for nothing that the bay where I am now sitting bears her (sharks) name. And this was confirmed by one of the "experienced" holiday-makers, that at this time a whale shark swims up here to have breakfast ...
The sun persistently breaks through the milky-gray veil and soon my naked body begins to feel the flow of its heat. But now the Sun has risen quite high: apparently, it is already seven o'clock. It's time for breakfast. Since the dawn, the soul has already received abundant food, it's time to feed the body. And so you don’t want, even for a while, to leave the sea, which under the rays of the sun has become even more fun and manifests itself not only by the sound of the surf. But also glare on the surface of the water and even on the sandy bottom.
Soon, in an hour or two, holiday-makers will wake up, fill the beach with their half-naked bodies, and with irrepressible hubbub they will argue over the sea and extinguish the sound of the surf. And I will not be able to listen and hear my friend - the sea ...
And there are bores at the resort
Different people can be met at the resort. And even those for whom neither the Red Sea, nor tropical exotic plants, nor the landscape and park design of the hotel territory mean anything and do not change, at least for the duration of the vacation, their boring and dull essence.
For example, I met a lady from Zolotonosha at the Grand Oasis Hotel, who was vacationing with her adult daughter. Even on the second day of arrival, she could not leave - she was indignant at the bad number (1260), which she was given upon settlement. As she claimed, the room is in poor condition, and even with a view of the blank wall of the neighboring hotel "Four seasons" 5 *.
They did not sleep all night and only the next day they managed to change the room to the first one in the same building, but with a view of the patio and garden. And this negative of a sleepless night in inconvenience remained in the form of a heavy sediment in the following days. Her indignation knew no bounds, which were accompanied by the words: “Why did I give $400? » And even a day later, when I met her at a restaurant for lunch, she still had an obsession with taking pictures and showing everyone the shortcomings of the hotel: there coffee was spilled on the sidewalk and still did not bother to wash it off, and in another place the paint peeled off the wooden counter and it was not touched up ...There are dozens of such photos. And this is in response to my opinion, which annoyed her, that the hotel is excellent! Listening to her arguments about the "negativity" of the hotel, I involuntarily had an association with those negative reviews that vacationers place on the sites. Yes, just one to one, like identical twins!
In a person, after the stress caused by the problems of the settlement, blinders appear in one direction - negative and significant, as in binoculars, an increase in shortcomings. That's what personal resentment is. Unfortunately, this is perceived by readers as an objective opinion, and according to this opinion, the hotel is evaluated and a decision is made: go to this hotel or choose another one, where most of the reviews are positive, without even assuming that these positive reviews can be written by Russian-speaking animators themselves, or at their request. acquaintances and friends.
And therefore, such “petty” nit-picking about the hotel of this personally offended woman outraged me and I could not help but try to open her blinkered eyes on the positives of the Grand Oasis hotel - the “four”, which even some “fives” do not have: this and a chic, all of mirror marble, lobby with a masterpiece chandelier under the arch of the ceiling, and comfortable sofa-chairs in the lobby: if you get bored in the room in the evenings, come here and chat with friends and acquaintances until 24:00, enjoying various drinks from the Lobby -bar, or right here on the terrace, but already in wicker chairs, with a beautiful panoramic view of the sea and the island of Tiran. Even if you are not predisposed to creativity, then from the contemplation of this grace, feelings will certainly appear that contribute to this ...
Okay, the lobby is common for everyone, I convinced this snob woman, and the rooms are ordinary "Standard", but not 28 square meters. m area, like many other hotels, but 36 (!
), including only residential 24 squares. And the renovated bathroom, like in a museum, is clean and everything shines. There is even a bidet, which is not found in many 5 * hotels. And so it is in most rooms, I admit that with very few exceptions, but if any guest does not like the room, they immediately offer others. And the problem is solved! In addition, it should be taken into account that in ten years about a thousand people lived in any of the rooms of this hotel (7 days out of 30 = 4 X 2 people X 12 months X 10 years). Imagine how much has been invested in repairs to make the room look in excellent residential condition after such a horde of vacationers, sometimes even at the level of almost barbarism ...
My next argument was the general well-groomed territory of the hotel, and the lawns are so carefully trimmed that you just want to walk barefoot on their soft carpet of fresh greenery ...
And a coral reef and colorful fish - and only twenty meters from the shore? - Where else, in what 5 * hotel can you find this?
After all, next to the most prestigious hotel in Sharm El-Sheikh "Four seasons" 5 *, where the princes of royal blood rest, and in the most prestigious place was chosen for development!
And many more arguments I gave this woman in defense of the Grand Oasis Hotel, which she so persistently tried to desecrate. Her fervor of the defiler subsided a little, but the following question arose: “Why do I only speak positively in my reviews of hotels, including the Grand Oasis Hotel? What, no flaws? "I answered her that these minor flaws pale in front of the mass of positive things that are in the hotel and this "little thing", if you are not a bore, then you should not pay attention and not mislead those who read reviews and want to choose a good hotel to stay. The worst thing is to look for a small negative and thereby reduce the number of those potential tourists who can take advantage of the benefits of a good, if not excellent, hotel.
And now she decided to save a hundred dollars, and now, as for an impressionable woman - such a result ...As a result, returning to her indignation given at the beginning: “What did I pay $ 400 for? “What you paid for, you got! Nothing happens for nothing, especially in the hotel business during a crisis!
What is a bad hotel in Egypt?
Sometimes, among the many positive reviews about a particular hotel, one has to hear or read a sharply negative review. And it is perceived as a fly in the ointment in a barrel of honey.
No one will argue that there are significant objective characteristics of the hotel, such as the date of construction and last renovation, distance from the airport, distance to the sea (1st, 2nd, 3rd coastline), area of the hotel, number of rooms, the number of pools, as well as the category of the hotel, which are stable and cannot be changed.
I saw such an example at the Grand Oasis Hotel, when three tourists paid an additional $75 and moved from the (according to them) terrible hotel to the beautiful Grand Oasis Hotel. Today they are resting for the second day and there is no limit to their happiness!
Therefore, everything is evaluated in comparison. And therefore, if I hear a too negative opinion about a hotel that is not bad, from an objective point of view, and in order to bring down the excitement of a negative judgment, I ask the following questions: “If the hotel is very bad, in your opinion, say:
- Did you feel food poisoning and were you on a drip to save your life?
- Were you robbed in your room, pulled out the eighth iPhone, stole $100 and other valuables?
- You say mosquitoes gnaw at you. And you were bitten from head to toe by Egyptian bugs and you brought them to your home as a memory of the resort and have not been able to get rid of them for a year? ..
And all this was experienced by tourists, having visited some hotels in Egypt (I don’t specifically name them for their advertising), but believe me, I definitely read about it in the reviews! And if this did not happen, then rejoice that this did not happen to you.
After these questions, the ardor of criticism subsides, they find out what a really bad hotel is and already look at their place of residence with completely different, “positive” eyes.
April 28.2017. Friday
Storm on the Red Sea
I am lucky in my current visit to the Red Sea for unique natural phenomena. A couple of days ago it was raining, today - a storm under five balls. I would also like for a complete set of unique phenomena that happen on the Red Sea - a windmill that tears off the roofs and which I “admired” at the Poinciana Sharm Resort 4 * in January 2016.
A storm on the Red Sea is an amazing and rather rare occurrence. But it happens more often than rain.
When the waves rise just above three balls, the pontoons close the entrance and hang out a red flag. Splashing in the “children's paddling pool” - in the shallow water here next to the pontoon, no one forbids, and therefore most of the beachgoers, from among the adult public (children, of course, are not allowed to such entertainment), playing with meter-long waves, so squeals and shows their emotions, as if she was in childhood, at her three-year-old age. But in the morning, from five o'clock, when I woke up until eight after breakfast, when I went to the beach, everything was calm on the sea and nothing foreshadowed such a storm.
At the same time, on land, on the territory of the hotel, there are no signs of non-standard behavior of the sea. Silence and grace. Only a weak, weak breeze with some attenuation, then acceleration blows from the east, from under the Sun. And for me it remained a mystery: what is the reason for such a riot of the sea? After all, the breeze is clearly not to blame and could not be the cause.
Maybe somewhere in the distance the windmill was roaming, and it sends its greetings to us in the form of waves running along the surface of the sea. Or maybe some kind of cataclysm happened in the depths of the sea and made itself felt on the surface of the sea, especially on the border with land, as some kind of warning to us, earthlings.
But in general, the impression is that the sea is alive. And she decided to confirm her status as a living being like this - with the help of a five-point storm. And I, Sasha Sim, will not be a pagan if this is not so! For an hour, if not more (time loses its meaning for me), I sit on the very edge of the cliff, two meters above the water, I listen, or rather, I listen to the sea. I don’t know how deeply I understand him (it all happens subconsciously), but I hear him!
Here, right on the shore, in its stormy surf, it is truly alive and with such an active vitality that it even surprises where everything comes from?
And this coastal riot is in contrast to the relatively calm sea in the distance, where only occasionally white crests of small waves appear. And here, over the entire thirty-meter width of the coastal sea, there is solid sea foam: only one foam strip begins to dissolve in the coastal shallow water, as a second later a new foam rolls from the side of the reef, like a whipped foam.
I began to watch the waves more closely. And what an interesting picture opened up in front of me. A powerful, more than a meter high wave is moving towards the shore, as if it wants to punish him for something. But from a niche in the rock, knocked out by waves for hundreds of years, it receives such a powerful blow that its aggressive ardor instantly drops to almost zero: the coast turned out to be stronger than it.
And she, disgraced and with fading agility, returns back to her element, losing strength all the time, as part of her sea water seeps to the winner - the Earth through the coastal sea sand ...And the indefatigable sea pulls up another suicide wave, a jihadist ...Like in a real war !
I look at the wave and I am surprised by the similarity with our real earthly reality, with wars on Earth… Military battles in the coastal zone do not stop. Approximately three meters from the shore, these two waves: a new one, sent by the sea and reflected from the shore, meet in opposite directions, there is a powerful blow and a fountain of water of such force that it reaches me, sitting on a rock and higher - up to five meters in height! I regard this as a kind of threat to me and even as a stray bullet ...
Looking more closely at this phenomenon, I made a heuristic discovery: a performance is being played out in front of me, where Nature is a brilliant director, and Waves, the Shore, Rocks, the Coral Reef and the Sea in general are talented actors with impeccable performance of their roles, not even allowing a share fake in your game! As well as musical accompaniment - any symphony orchestra would envy! And I am the only spectator in this theater and, as a writer, a critic. And why should I criticize the Ideal? - Only laudatory odes!
And I am surprised by the endless variety of pictures and combinations of sounds in the music of the storm and, in particular, the surf. And I am sure that there has not been and is unlikely to be a repetition in the thousand-year history...I am trying to open my eyes as wide as possible and open my Soul to perceive that majestic picture that Nature has suddenly opened for me with such courtesy.
I look at the world with special eyes, and perceive it as a reflection of what is happening inside me as a result, in my Soul. But an hour ago, in despair, I came to the quick conclusion that everything is vanity of vanities ...
April 29.2017. Saturday
Dead beach and hotel
Today in the morning I made a swim to the right from the pontoon of the Grand Oasis Hotel, to the territory of the Dessole Royal Rojana Resort 5 * hotel.
As always, nature is amazing in the neutral zone: the coral reef is not just in the form of a sheer cliff, but with ledges, far away, 5-10 meters out into the sea, a kind of lagoon appears, protected from three sides by corals. And it seems that you find yourself in real coral forests. I am writing about these beauties of the Red Sea not in order to once again show its amazing charm, but so that you can feel the contrast of what I saw and felt half an hour later, when I went to the beach of a neighboring hotel ...
And how it is destroyed - I saw on the example of the neighboring hotel "Royat Royana" and its beach. And if for another half an hour, swimming among the corals next to colorful fish, I did not find superlative epithets to admire what Nature had created, then when I went ashore and saw the deathly devastation, I could not find words to express my sadness and anxiety in connection with the destruction man of what he had created.
Imagine three hundred meters of a once chic beach with beautiful sun umbrellas made of natural wood, and no less comfortable sun loungers that delighted lucky tourists sunbathing here who came to this hotel a couple of years ago. Now it is desolate here, like an open-air crypt. Even the sand on this merven beach with traces of raindrops, which was here six months ago.
I understand that in the surf there is a tiny fraction of the essence of the sea, which is given to us in sensations. And everything else is hidden behind seven locks, and it is unlikely that it will ever fully open.
April 30.2017. Sunday
glass of beer
Ten o'clock in the morning.
The rooster crowed, woke me up like a human...It is here, at the Grand Oasis Hotel, that the beach animation program begins. And, therefore, you can go to the bar with your glass goblet to drink beer. After all, everywhere in the hotel all the bars begin to work and pour only from 10 am.
I've been on the beach for at least two hours. After breakfast at 7:00, taking with me "beach equipment": mask, snorkel, towel, etc. , I took my favorite quiet, secluded place at the very right wing of the beach: close to the bar and to the sea. Here the entry is sandy, and outside the pontoon you can swim about ten meters to the coral reef - a zone of indescribable beautiful views and the happiness of a diver. So I did. And he stayed, consider that continuously under water for almost two hours.
Luckily, the temperature of the water allowed for this. Here, to the right of the pontoon, at a depth of no more than six meters, I first saw a meter-long Napoleon, which for some reason stood vertically upside down and pecked out something from the bottom ...But this is not about that, but about the performance with a glass of beer. And it was only a two-hour prelude.
And so, as soon as the crowing of a rooster, the bleating of rams, the grunting of pigs and other domestic animals sounded from powerful speakers of several hundred kilowatts, the sun loungers creaked under the overweight bodies of vacationers, and thirsty people rushed to the bar from all over the 150-meter long beach. Who is after what: who is after a cocktail, juice or drink (after all, in Egypt at 10:00 the heat is already unbearable), who is behind a beer, and who has a hangover with one of the seven strong drinks of local production (in such a heat - suicide! ).
Food category and room category are two factors that determine the cost of a tour to a particular hotel. Therefore, instead of the word “free of charge”, it is necessary to write: “included in the concept of food” or “included in the cost of the room category”.
Nevertheless, the word “free” or “freebie” pleases our, post-Soviet citizens, hearing. And we are especially pleased that here, in the resorts of Egypt, there is a lot of things for free, that is, for free.
The principle of free or freebies, as a writer and publisher of books, I felt on myself. So, according to tradition and an old habit, just as in the 90s I brought my books about the resort to Crimea and sold them there, so now I take several books to Egypt and, having overcome my shyness and false modesty, here, on beach, put them up for sale. And, surprisingly, everyone, with the rarest exception, tries to get a book from the author as a gift!
And this is in the resorts of Egypt, where not quite poor people go to rest, who do not have an extra twenty hryvnias or one dollar in their pockets! You could also support the author. And so they strive to destroy every opportunity for creativity - for nothing to take the fruits of his labor, making him a beggar: after all, more than one thousand dollars have been spent on publishing books, including those borrowed.
I understand that spirituality is not in the price now. And it is better to sell cigarettes or, in the worst case, drugs ....But while dealing drugs, how can I experience the incredible joy and enjoyment of the creative process?
© Sasha Sim (Alexander Golovko), 2017
General information about the hotel.
The hotel is located on the first coastline in Sharks Bay, 2 km from the airport and 10 km from Naama Bay. And is within walking distance of the famous SOHO Square.
The hotel was opened in September 2002, the last renovation was carried out in 2011. The total area of the territory is 5.2ha
Nearby hotels: "Four Seasons" 5 * and "Dessole Royal Rojana Resort" 5 *.
April 25.2017. Tuesday
Check-in hotel. Hall
The lobby of the Grand Oasis by Look Hotels 4 * struck me with its luxury. Such an expensive and sophisticated hall is not often seen even in hotels of a higher, five-star category. If outwardly, from the side of entry, in comparison with such hotels as Grand Rotana Resort & Spa 5 *, Sharm al-Sheikh, it cannot be compared in any way, then in terms of interior design, the Grand Oasis 4 * hotel will give it a head start at least three points!
Imagine mansions at the level of the royal ones made of marble, shining like a mirror.
The floor, walls, tall ceiling, a huge chic chandelier in the center - everything is in the same style, in the same harmony. And even the music of this harmony is heard when you enter this hall. And you, after the psychological, moral and physical stress of the dangers of the flight, the heat of the day and closeness, there is a completely different mood - the mood for a luxurious vacation in this hotel on the Red Sea!
And your hopes, with small and insignificant exceptions, are justified.
Settlement. Number
For any hotel in Egypt - a settlement - a special phenomenon. As for hoteliers, this is a profitable business with black cash. I don’t know to whom and how it is distributed, but it’s a fairly stable phenomenon, and this is practiced in all Egyptian 3 * - 5 * hotels that I have been to, and this is a lot - more than ten. Yes, sometimes he himself got caught when they explicitly or implicitly hinted at the need for one or another surcharge for improving the room.
And this, despite the fact that from the very beginning I presented myself as a creative person and I am writing a book about the Red Sea and hotels in Egypt, and sometimes even gave my first book at the reception (Sasha Sim: "Resort. Love. Wedding. Divorce") . But it did not really matter: for a low-level clerk, and advertising his hotel from a positive or negative side: his shirt, his personal interests were above corporate ones. I often have to listen to hard-hitting stories about the performance at the settlement from my new acquaintances, and they are unable to move away from these impressions for several days.
So, we can consider two sides of this action: the Hotel and the Tourist. For a hotel (hoteliers) this is a profitable business of seizing cash from tourists and money not accounted for anywhere (black cash). For a Tourist, this is, most often, psychological stress, after which a day or two of the few (7-9 days) of a resort vacation must be crossed out.
I write “most often”, because sometimes, due to the increased pretentiousness of the Tourist to the living conditions, when a tour with a standard room is bought, but you want to get a room of an increased category “for free”, for example, “with a sea view”, which costs at a price -leaf one and a half times more expensive. And at the advantageous offer of the reception worker to pay extra for comfort several times less than initially in Kyiv, Kharkov or Zaporozhye, for example, $ 10 per day, the Tourist perceives it as a desire to rip off the excess from him and therefore is indignant. But this is the psychology of our compatriot. And the fault of the Hotel in such "discomfort" of the Tourist is not.
However, often, especially in low-category hotels that do not really respect their reputation, and in hotels of higher categories, when the greed of the reception worker goes off scale, they use a proven “performance” that almost always guarantees high profits.
And the receptionist, thanks to repeated daily trainings, develops a certain “iron” strategy and tactics for psychological treatment of the client and the withdrawal of dollars from him.
A sleepless night during a night flight, stress on the verge of life and death during takeoff and landing, especially in a zone of increased turbulence, when it seems that the wing of an aircraft can fall off - such that the will of a person is so weakened and psychological forces are exhausted that in within a few hours after - "do with it what you want"! There are clerks at the reception of the hotel and they do what they want with it. And they want very little - money. And therefore they settle in a deliberately bad and even uncleaned room after previous tourists, in order to hint directly or indirectly at the need for “gratitude” in case of refusal. This "hint" is equivalent to $10 - $20 for the entire service or per night in a more comfortable room.
And the Tourist, psychologically relaxed after the stress of the flight, is led to this: where should he go, because health and the need to recuperate are more expensive ...
But this is a robbery! The hotel is obliged to provide an already paid service (room, meals, leisure, etc. ), according to the "price list". And therefore, the Tourist, by law, has the right to compensation from the Hotel, both moral and material, for violation of contractual obligations. (I explain this as a lawyer with a higher education, and such an argument "iron" puts the presumptuous hotelier in his place).
Early settlement
The Grand Oasis by Look Hotels 4 *, unlike other 4 * hotels in Egypt, where I have been, does not practice early check-in and breakfast, who arrived at the hotel early in the morning. And there are at least half of such tourists, given that there are even more flights, for example, from Kyiv at 3-5 o'clock in the morning than in the evening.
How realistic is this from my personal observations?
We, about 10 people, who arrived at the hotel at about 9 am (departure from Kyiv was at 5-00) at the reception, were offered to fill out questionnaires, hand over passports and vouchers for registration. (Things, as elsewhere, immediately after unloading from the bus, they offered to throw them into one heap in the lobby - under the supervision of the security at the entrance and the reception worker. You don’t have to worry about things, but it’s better to take expensive ones with you. After registration, they returned their passports and offered to come for the key to the room and a bracelet after 11:00 a. m. Everything seems to be according to international rules, even better. After all, a single check-in hour is 2:00 p. m. in any hotel in any resort in the world, and check-out is 12:00 p. m. favor: it provides the opportunity to check in three hours earlier. Why not immediately upon arrival? Yes, all because of the same: to give the opportunity to the especially rich and impatient "Pinocchio" to take advantage of the possibility of early settlement for an additional bribe. Again, black cash. Yes, and the question of breakfast.
Why does the Hotel need an extra mouth and extra expenses for breakfast (which is in this hotel from 7-00 to 9-30)? And everyone who normally checks in after 11-00 already, of course, does not have the opportunity to have breakfast. Only beer, drinks from 10-00 and snacks from 12-00 (and then only the pool bar "Pool bar") - according to the all-inclusive system in the other two bars ("Lobby bar" and "Beach bar") - and then well! Therefore, if you have not paid for early check-in with breakfast, then I recommend using snacks with beer and other drinks at the Pool bar - if you have a bracelet.
But there is another fact. AnexTour, as a monopoly on the Grand Oasis by Look Hotels 4 *, has introduced additional payments of $15 for early departures and, as a result, early check-in at the hotel since the spring of this year. And logically, breakfast (scrambled eggs with scrambled eggs) should be paid for.
But, alas, apparently "AnexTour" did not want to share this money with the hotel, but "grabbed" everything for itself, although by right and logic - the entire burden falls on the hotel and therefore all this money (and this is almost $ 5 thousand from each flight) should belong to the hotel. By the way, there is an extra $15 for a late flight from Egypt.
Check-in process.
At the agreed time, you are given a room key, a card on a beach towel and hang a bracelet (do not lose it! - the penalty for losing them is 200 Egyptian pounds ($12), 180 Egyptian pounds ($10) and 25 Egyptian pounds ($1.5), respectively , according to the information that you are given with the keys and that almost no one reads (although it has a lot of other useful information besides the opening hours of restaurants and bars, for example, a $ 500 fine for feeding fish (! ), picking up corals and walking on him... )
The porter vigilantly monitors the entire process of settling.
As soon as you get the key and go to your things, he immediately jumps up and smartly grabs (mostly) one suitcase or bag and leads you to your room. The rest of the things you carry yourself. The porter service, of course, is not free - $ 1 or a chocolate bar. Although it could be $4 (as I have at the Le Mirage New Tower 4 * hotel, Sharm El Sheikh, (July 2015) - at a time when rich in oil and therefore generous Russians still traveled to Egyptian resorts, "I didn't have small dollars without change, and the greed of the porters went through the roof. The porter, who in this case is also a guide, shows you the number. Check with him that everything is in order, working and everything is in the kit! - So that when you check out for everything Do not pay you any shortcomings!
I liked the first room (1133) with a fresh renovation, cleanliness, comfort, size (under forty (! ) square meters, but the view from the first floor window was gloomy, in no way inspiring to creativity.
And I, realizing that I was wrong, since everything corresponds to the “purchased tickets” with the “Standard Room” category, I nevertheless plucked up the courage to refuse and asked for the second floor. Immediately, the porter-guide showed another room (1260) on the second floor, which, in view of the window on a blank four-meter-high wall separating our hotel of mere mortals from the hotel for tourists of royal blood "Four Seasons Resort Sharm El Sheikh" 5 * (something reminiscent of a prison, pah, pah, pah) and completely upset me ...And all this despite the fact that I was carrying a backpack and a package with me, in violation of my own rules, not to take things to inspect the room, but to walk light. And the porter took only one bag. And all because the smiling employee at the reception claimed to give me the best room that the hotel has! In the end, I turned out to be an old sucker. And the porter, who was in vain carrying my 20-kilogram bag, who did not receive the coveted chocolate bar or dollar, put things back in their original place in the hotel lobby.
Thus passed more than an hour of morning time, the most favorable for sunbathing and swimming in the Red Sea. And I spat on everything and said: “I don’t play your games! ”, I decided to change clothes and go to the sea. I still had one more trump card - a letter of request to the chief manager of the hotel for a room, with more or less favorable conditions for creativity, which I sent the day before from Kyiv. (As it turned out later, I was in vain writing this letter to an email address, addressed to the main manager of the hotel, because without paying (!? ) a return answer, as one close to the hotel authorities told me (albeit in another hotel), such people letters do not reach, and if they do, they are not answered. But the hotel management should appear after 11-00. And that's why I decided not to waste time in vain. Slowly, I went to the beach ...
I can share useful information that you can’t find anywhere else - about the rooms of the Grand Oasis by Look Hotels 4 * and what kind of view from the windows. All the first floors of the hotel rooms are marked with "1" (one) - the second digit in the room, the second floors - "2", the third floors - "3". The first digit is the case number. There are seven buildings in total. Buildings one and two are mostly standard with a view of the garden, pool, and only in the first building (A) are the extreme ones - 1241.1341 - with a panoramic view of the sea. Similarly, in case two (B). But during my arrival, only building A was occupied.
The worst rooms overlooking the blank wall of the Four Seasons Hotel: 1142-1153.1242-1261.1342-1361. The most prestigious sea view rooms are in buildings 3-7 on the second floor. Their numbers begin with a digit, which indicates the building number, the second digit is the floor. Second floor (2) - panoramic sea view: 3201-3215.4201-4212.5201-5215 etc.
Near the sea - three villas. But we can't live like this...
But in general, information about the rooms of the Grand Oasis Hotel is publicly available, available on the Internet and I do not give it here. I added only interesting and not useless information about the difference in prices for rooms of different categories, which will be useful to potential guests of this hotel when choosing a tour:
Standard Garden View Room - area: 36 sq. m. - $401.
Standard Pool View Room - area: 36 sq. m. - $418.
Standard Sea View Room - area: 32-40 sq. m. - $435.
Family Large Bed Room- area: 46 sq. m.
Junior Suite - area: 84 sq. m.
April 26.2017. Wednesday
Dawn. Sunrise
Surprisingly, five hours of sleep on the Red Sea in a room next to the sea was enough to fully recuperate after yesterday's flight and problems with the settlement. And at four in the morning I woke up and in a light slumber lay in bed on a wide double bed and enjoyed the real being among the comfort, inhaling the fresh aromas of the subtropical climate.
Consciousness was turned off for the time being and hovered somewhere in other "near-asleep" worlds...Such a rather pleasant state lasted for about an hour. But by five o'clock I was already on my feet. I was surprised that it took so long to get light. And thanks to this delay of the Sun, I was in time for its sunrise. And everything was explained simply: the entire sky in the east in a fair segment above the horizon was covered with a whitish impenetrable haze and the Sun for a long time, at least half an hour, overcame this barrier, so that, finally, by five o'clock, jump out into the sky free from this viscous mass. But the effect of sunrise was quite different. By the time the Sun was rising behind the screen of this veil, it had already gained strength, and therefore it was hot and shone so brightly that it was difficult to look at it and I had to photograph it mostly because of some obstacle: behind palm leaves, through a vine of umbrellas or even tree trunks. But the effect of this was no less.
And before that, the Sun was so faded and barely noticeable that it seemed not the Sun, but the disk of the Moon in a haze rising from the horizon. I remembered that this phenomenon of dense foggy accumulation above the horizon here in Egypt is quite common, and I have seen it more than once in other hotels.
Beach
The beach at the Grand Oasis Hotel is its own, 150 meters long. There is a small sandy entry into the sea, and special shoes are required. But, basically, entry into the sea from a floating plastic pontoon. That umbrellas, sunbeds, beach towels - for free, I do not focus, as it is in almost all hotels in Egypt.
The beach in our usual view, as it is on the Dnieper, Desenka or the Black (Azov) seas, and at any rate, is a place near the water with free access to the same water. Even when you are lying on the pebbles or on the sand of the beach, and the waves are tickling your heels ...This is a natural beach!
Such beaches are almost everywhere on the Red Sea in Hurghada. True, sometimes with a slight gentle descent. But in Sharm El Sheikh, in fact, there is no beach as such. And there is a recreation area by the sea on a rocky shore with a height of three to five meters or more. And you won’t jump from a cliff head (or booty) down onto corals, slightly hidden (ankle-deep) by water. Even if you will be too drunk after “All inclusive” ...True, I remember the only (the first - ten years ago) of more than ten beaches where I visited, the beach in Sharm El Sheikh with a wide, almost the entire length of the sandy beach, free entry into the sea. Too bad I forgot the name of the hotel. But he repeated himself a little later - at the Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5 * hotel.
The beach at the Grand Oasis Hotel is designed rationally, taking into account the use of the features of the steep coast in the coastal zone - terraces up to 10 m wide, with an arrangement of umbrellas with sun loungers in two rows.
The Beachbar is located on the uppermost terrace, below it, on the next terrace, there is a playground for animators with amplifiers and speakers, as well as playgrounds.
I thought so, but what was worth walking with a bulldozer along the line of the sea and cutting off the edge of the cliff, or undermining it with dynamite on a mini-scale, just a little and arranging general access to the sea? After all, this is a trifle, compared with those thousands of cubes that were removed and aligned under the hotel terraces on hectares of area when these hotels were built. But, alas! Everything is correct. It would be so, as I said, for a long time there would be no coral reef, no corals, no colorful fish in Sharm El Sheikh - some hedgehogs would stick out tens and hundreds of crevices, as is everywhere in Hurghada.
We resort guests, who grumble that there is no beach sea familiar to us in Sharm El Sheikh, should know that a huge favor has already been done for us - this is free access to the Red Sea, living tens of meters from it, with swimming and diving from pontoons - in the unique nature reserve, perhaps the only one of its kind on Earth! However, more than half of the guests at the Grand Oasis hotel sunbathe on the beach, swim in the sea, sit in coastal bars drinking drinks or beer ...And the other half, mostly with children and Egyptians, splash in the pools on the hotel territory and also diluting your fun with drinks according to the “All inclusive” system.
Sea
I devoted the most part of my resort time to the sea with the beach. I woke up early, despite the fact that I always went to bed well after midnight, sometimes even before breakfast, and even at dawn. In this case, he went to meet the Sun and enjoy the new day with him.
And the fact that I, like other guests of the hotel, live through the wall from them (even if it is high - at least five meters high) this significantly raises the prestige of our hotel - Grand Oasis.
Coral reef. Corals. fish
The coral reef near the Grand Oasis Hotel is great! And while there is Egyptian legislation on the protection of the flora and fauna of the Red Sea, which prohibits feeding fish, collecting, breaking and walking on corals and provides for a fine of $ 500, while the Red Sea will be so unique in the world.
The coral reef is a sheer wall of living corals, about six meters high, behind which the bottom drops sharply to a depth of up to 20 meters. Above the corals to the very shore, and this is thirty meters, a shallow depth, no more than half a meter, and depends on the tides. But still, I could, swimming on my stomach and with the help of one hand, swim a small area of corals to the right and left of the pontoon (where the children's beaches are) - to the reef.
As you approach the shore from the edge of the reef, there are fewer and fewer living corals. And there are practically no living corals near the shore, and this is already a negative symptom of the health of the flora and fauna of the Red Sea, which are detrimental to the presence of humans.
The most beautiful reef is where there are least people, and this is near the neutral zone with the Four Seasons 5 * hotel: “And on the neutral zone, the flowers are of extraordinary beauty! "(V. Vysotsky). There are a lot of varieties of corals here, I counted more than ten, with different shapes and colors. But, since I am not a botanist, I cannot name every coral by its name. But somehow, in the future, I will give them my own definitions and names, which will be my closer and deeper knowledge of them.
Fish are creatures more familiar to us, since we dealt with similar ones, as in the Red Sea, in home aquariums. And here you seem to find yourself in a large natural aquarium.
Yes, and the fish take you for their own: they are not afraid of you at all, even if you or they swim nearby. And this is the most surprising, since we are used to the fact that any living creature on Earth is frightened by the mere approach of a person. Maybe here, in the Red Sea, everything is so because a person is afraid of a fine of $ 500, otherwise he would have cleared up like at home ...
Unfortunately, a person has not yet reached a level in his development when not the fear of punishment, but internal moral and psychological unacceptability determines his actions and actions. Will it ever reach?
Evening on the Red Sea
Evening. About six o'clock. I'm on the beach. The sun slowly disappears behind the rock of the neighboring hotel. The Grand Oasis Hotel, like all the hotels of Sharm El Sheikh on the first beach line, is located on the slope of a rocky coast and therefore the sunset over the horizon can only be observed from the highest point of the upper tier hotel.
From the beach, one can only guess that after a while it will hide behind the mountainous edge of the Sinai Peninsula in order to rest after a hard day's work and give rest to all living things, and, perhaps, even inanimate ones on earth. I clarify to all living and inanimate righteous - to rest, and the unrighteous, evil and predatory is just beginning to wake up and sharpen its teeth on those who did not have time to hide. Here is such a real picture of the "wild" Nature on the Red Sea, which has preserved itself in the most natural form since ancient times. Yes, and relic corals, which are often found on the shore on rock cuts, confirm this. And therefore, if you linger on the beach after sunset to admire the Red Sea at night, Security will culturally ask you to go to the hotel.
Swimming and being on the beach after sunset is not allowed by the security service of Sharm El Sheikh, which is even warned in the information about the hotel and the basic conditions of living in it, which is issued to everyone upon registration.
It's evening. Daylight dims, revealing the softness of the shapes and shapes of everything around. And even, it seems to me, it reveals the inner essence of things, previously hidden behind the ostentatious brilliance of the external form. But this phenomenon of naturalization of the essence of things does not take long - only a few minutes, before dusk, when completely different laws of being come into their own. Twilight turns everything into monotonous dullness, and then, moving into the darkness of the night, they completely hide everything that is daytime, as alien and harmful to themselves. Therefore, it is at this moment of manifestation of the inner essence of things that the only opportunity to communicate with a seemingly silent stone or relic coral appears.
But this is already an act of mystery, very far from the realities of reality. And the whistles of beach workers, announcing the end of beach procedures, return to reality: first, a lifeguard on a pontoon, who thus tries to extract the last bathers and bathers from the water, and then “land” beach guardians so that everyone leaves the beach.
Despite all the warnings, I retire to the far corner of the beach and try to listen to the evening sea, which also changes with the fading of the day. It already sounds quite different. Noisy with its mysterious surf. And, listening to this sound of the surf, with some audacity in an effort to know the mysterious, the thought appears: “Will I ever be able to solve it? And I realize that I am already asking this question for the hundredth time and not to myself, but, most likely, to an unknown space, when I hear the sound of the sea or its other bright visual manifestation. But haven't received a reply yet...
Having originated in the east, twilight slowly but inevitably moves to the west, where there is still a considerable segment of bright pink color after the Sun has set behind the mountains. Yes, the sea, contrary to the twilight, suddenly begins to glow, as if a backlight comes from its depths ...But this is not a miracle, but just the laws of physics: the surface of the sea reflects white clouds, which at the last moment are illuminated by the Sun that has already gone beyond the horizon.
The late evening, which changed the beach day, lured all the beachgoers to the hotel territory and scattered them to bars, restaurants and other places convenient for a comfortable evening rest, not without a cup of coffee, a glass of wine, a glass of juice or beer. And the OYOUN restaurant, of course, gathers everyone without exception for half an hour or an hour for an evening meal.
Restaurants and bars of the Grand Oasis Hotel
Restaurants
The main restaurant "OYOUN", All inclusive, buffet: breakfast, lunch (07:00-09:00.13:00-14:00) Dinner at the Fish Restaurant (19:00 - 21:00).
Local wine: white, rosé and red are only served at this restaurant during lunch and dinner. And it is bottled not from bottles, but from an apparatus filled with "skinskins", five liters each. Therefore, no one here will argue about the naturalness of wine.
Breakfast at the Grand Oasis Hotel is the usual, as for all hotels in Egypt, regardless of category: scrambled eggs, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, butter, fruits, various salads and all kinds of bakery products. Boiled sausage and hard cheeses are an amateur and it is difficult to argue about the 100% naturalness of the product. Tea (several varieties), coffee, milk are a must. And yes, milk porridge. As for me and others like me, it is enough to last a couple of hours until 12:00, when snacks and drinks are prepared at the Poolbar. But I was too lazy to go up to the pool to this bar and therefore made do at the Beachbar with a few glasses of beer with a salted boiled egg from breakfast.
Lunch at the Grand Oasis Hotel, as for a not very pretentious gourmet, is so chic. And even pulls up to hotels of a higher, five-star category. Meat - natural and, most importantly, in large pieces - several types, chicken - always, as well as gil - cooked every day on the terrace. And the fish fillet melts in your mouth, you will lick your fingers. When I write these lines, two months later, I imagine all this as if in reality and so much, just for the sake of this cuisine and the Red Sea, to break loose and visit the Grand Oasis Hotel again ...
The peculiarity of this hotel is that no bar serves wine, except for the OYOUN restaurant. Therefore, I always ordered a couple of glasses of red wine here (I liked it the most) and it, like the other, is always cold. And then he did it again a couple of times...
At lunch, there are countless cakes, pastries and other confectionery products, for which oriental masters are unsurpassed and are famous all over the world. They keep their brand here, in the OYOUN restaurant of the Grand Oasis hotel.
Dinner at the Grand Oasis Hotel is possible both in the main OYOUN restaurant and in one of the three a la carte restaurants by appointment: Primi Piatti Italian Restaurant, Sultan Oriental Restaurant or Fishermans Fish Restaurant (see . below), however, only once.
Dinner at the main restaurant "OYOUN", in my opinion, is even better and more varied and refined than lunch. You just have to wonder how they manage to surpass many of the "four" hotels in terms of food during a crisis, pulling themselves up to the level of five-star hotels at a fairly reasonable price for tours?
A-la-carte restaurants
In Ala Carte restaurants (Italian, Oriental and Fish): dinner by prior reservation (one visit is free for the entire stay in each restaurant, and shrimp and lobsters, even on the first visit, are paid separately).
It seems to me that the Grand Oasis Hotel, like many other hotels of this level in Egypt, provides the opportunity to "taste" dishes and experience the service of a-la-carte restaurants (even in the "five" this is one restaurant according to All inclusive, and here there are as many as three! ) - according to tradition, in order to somehow keep the brand, and show what the hotel is capable of! And therefore, to show that the Grand Oasis hotel is even better than many "fives" here, all vacationers on the All inclusive system are allowed to visit all three a-la-carte restaurants during the entire vacation period
: Italian, Oriental and Fish. True, due to the crisis, the approbation of the cuisines of all these restaurants is carried out on the basis of the same restaurant - Italian.
Only teams of cooks - waiters, and, naturally, the range of dishes is different.
I have visited all three restaurants and therefore I can, as an eyewitness and a direct participant in this "process", describe them.
Italian restaurant
The kitchen of the Italian restaurant "Primi Piatti" is located on the first floor under the main restaurant "Oyoun" - in a deep niche, and about a dozen tables are placed on a certain elevation in a semicircle on the open veranda. A very original design solution. Moreover, in the open air and a few meters from the pool, which creates a special charm, thanks to the presence of water with bright green and blue illumination. True, there is still a small minus of the open area: a playful breeze sometimes burst into the tables and wrapped the tablecloths directly onto the dishes - even fastening the tablecloth to the table in the form of a clamp is clearly not enough.
Three chefs in the kitchen of the Italian restaurant made a miracle in the form of original Italian dishes. Moreover, as it should be in restaurants, dishes are prepared individually for each visitor. And the waiters with unusual dexterity deliver these dishes to the tables, straight from the oven.
Drinks, as in all bars and restaurants of the hotel - a standard assortment and local production. Only red wine, which, by the way, is served in this hotel only in restaurants for lunch and dinner, was clearly not enough.
Although this restaurant is open until 20-30, but by eight in the evening, after tasting Italian dishes, the visitors all leave. Most go up to the main restaurant, if not to fill their stomachs with delicious delicacies of the general buffet, then with dessert - for sure (dessert is not provided in the Italian restaurant).
The Fishermans fish restaurant surprised me with a huge crab, and the oriental restaurant was remembered for a lamb dish - kebab, which reminded me of a cafe in Yalta, where I often tasted it with Coca-Cola or beer.
In general, in a la carte restaurants one can feel an increased level of service and attention to each visitor. And you feel it especially vividly against the backdrop of the main restaurant.
bars
All-concept (all inclusive) is valid from 10:00 to 00:00. Lobby bar -24 hours: from 10:00 to 00:00 on the All inclusive system, from 00:00 to 10:00 in the morning - for an additional fee. Pool bar from 10:00 to 23:00, snacks from 12:00 to 15:00. Beach bar from 10:00 until sunset.
Bar in the lobby ("Lobby-bar")
At eight in the evening, when most vacationers have satisfied their hunger in the main Oyoun restaurant, visited Fishermans Fish, Sultan Oriental or Primi Piatti Italian restaurants, people begin to gather in the hotel lobby, where the main object of attention is undoubtedly lobby bar.
Throughout the vast area of the hall with a mirrored marble floor, comfortable soft chairs with tables are placed. Here you can spend the remaining four hours in a friendly conversation with new acquaintances - until the closing of the All-inclusive bar system, with a cup of coffee, tea, a glass (traditional glass, if you brought it with you) of beer (and beer here is unlimited! ), a glass a cocktail or a locally produced strong liquor.
Abundance of light, perfect purity and a mirror of the marble floor, in which you can see not only your surroundings, but also yourself - is this not a celebration of Soul and body? If you wish, you can go out to the outdoor terrace overlooking the pool and the sea and enjoy these views while sipping a drink. There are also plenty of tables with chairs.
This goes on for two or three hours.
Some people leave for an hour (from 21-30) to watch and participate in the performances of the animators right next to it, by the pool, in order to return to the lobby again, a little later, to the “Lobby-bar”. But by eleven in the evening, people begin to disperse to their numbers. And after midnight, when, having finished your last glass of beer, you notice that you were left alone in the lobby, and the lighting is turned off like a fan, you are going to go to your room or, even better, take a couple of hours to walk around the territory of the night hotel, which, believe me, no worse, and, all the more, more mysterious than daytime ...
"Beachbar" on the beach
After breakfast and swimming in the sea, you lie down and sunbathe on the beach. And only when you hear the musical greeting of the animators and an invitation to morning exercises, know that the Beachbar is already open and waiting for you.
You take the half-liter glass you brought with you (in the beach bar, all drinks, apparently for safety reasons, so as not to get hurt on broken glass glasses, are served only in plastic cups) and head to the bar. Your acquaintances are already sitting here and enjoying drinks, including delicious real beer. You join and maintain a “high society” conversation on topics other than politics…
The bar is attached above the beach on one of the terraces, no more than 5-6 meters wide. But there is enough space for everyone along the terrace with tables in two rows, including under umbrellas. True, the bar closes half an hour or an hour before sunset, around five in the evening, probably still according to the winter schedule, and not “before sunset”, as according to the price list. And sometimes you don’t have time to fill your traditional glass goblet with beer during the flood ...I even spoke about this to the hotel guide at a meeting of newly arrived tourists.
A milky gray morning adorns the beginning of the third day of my vacation on the Red Sea. A quiet and calm morning, until the hotel animators woke up and turned on powerful amplifiers with crowing early roosters, grunting sounds, apparently always hungry pigs and other domestic creatures. And this is just the beginning. And then - incessant for a moment no less loud music. And so the whole day. We have fun ...By the way, I heard this morning crowing at the Grand Oasis Hotel every morning a couple of months later in a hotel that is at least five kilometers away from it.
In the meantime, there is no one, I sit at the very edge of the sea and listen to his excited argument with the land. I just don’t understand one thing: where do the waves come from at the very junction of the sea with the land, when the sea is absolutely calm with a mirror surface in which white boats are reflected. Only sometimes ripples appear on the surface here and there.
In the sea, about a hundred meters from the shore, seething water is sometimes visible - these are flocks of small fish massively jumping out of the water. In all likelihood, some kind of predator is hunting for them, I do not exclude a shark. After all, it is not for nothing that the bay where I am now sitting bears her (sharks) name. And this was confirmed by one of the "experienced" holiday-makers, that at this time a whale shark swims up here to have breakfast ...
The sun persistently breaks through the milky-gray veil and soon my naked body begins to feel the flow of its heat. But now the Sun has risen quite high: apparently, it is already seven o'clock. It's time for breakfast. Since the dawn, the soul has already received abundant food, it's time to feed the body. And so you don’t want, even for a while, to leave the sea, which under the rays of the sun has become even more fun and manifests itself not only by the sound of the surf. But also glare on the surface of the water and even on the sandy bottom.
Soon, in an hour or two, holiday-makers will wake up, fill the beach with their half-naked bodies, and with irrepressible hubbub they will argue over the sea and extinguish the sound of the surf. And I will not be able to listen and hear my friend - the sea ...
And there are bores at the resort
Different people can be met at the resort. And even those for whom neither the Red Sea, nor tropical exotic plants, nor the landscape and park design of the hotel territory mean anything and do not change, at least for the duration of the vacation, their boring and dull essence.
For example, I met a lady from Zolotonosha at the Grand Oasis Hotel, who was vacationing with her adult daughter. Even on the second day of arrival, she could not leave - she was indignant at the bad number (1260), which she was given upon settlement. As she claimed, the room is in poor condition, and even with a view of the blank wall of the neighboring hotel "Four seasons" 5 *.
They did not sleep all night and only the next day they managed to change the room to the first one in the same building, but with a view of the patio and garden. And this negative of a sleepless night in inconvenience remained in the form of a heavy sediment in the following days. Her indignation knew no bounds, which were accompanied by the words: “Why did I give $400? » And even a day later, when I met her at a restaurant for lunch, she still had an obsession with taking pictures and showing everyone the shortcomings of the hotel: there coffee was spilled on the sidewalk and still did not bother to wash it off, and in another place the paint peeled off the wooden counter and it was not touched up ...There are dozens of such photos. And this is in response to my opinion, which annoyed her, that the hotel is excellent! Listening to her arguments about the "negativity" of the hotel, I involuntarily had an association with those negative reviews that vacationers place on the sites. Yes, just one to one, like identical twins!
In a person, after the stress caused by the problems of the settlement, blinders appear in one direction - negative and significant, as in binoculars, an increase in shortcomings. That's what personal resentment is. Unfortunately, this is perceived by readers as an objective opinion, and according to this opinion, the hotel is evaluated and a decision is made: go to this hotel or choose another one, where most of the reviews are positive, without even assuming that these positive reviews can be written by Russian-speaking animators themselves, or at their request. acquaintances and friends.
And therefore, such “petty” nit-picking about the hotel of this personally offended woman outraged me and I could not help but try to open her blinkered eyes on the positives of the Grand Oasis hotel - the “four”, which even some “fives” do not have: this and a chic, all of mirror marble, lobby with a masterpiece chandelier under the arch of the ceiling, and comfortable sofa-chairs in the lobby: if you get bored in the room in the evenings, come here and chat with friends and acquaintances until 24:00, enjoying various drinks from the Lobby -bar, or right here on the terrace, but already in wicker chairs, with a beautiful panoramic view of the sea and the island of Tiran. Even if you are not predisposed to creativity, then from the contemplation of this grace, feelings will certainly appear that contribute to this ...
Okay, the lobby is common for everyone, I convinced this snob woman, and the rooms are ordinary "Standard", but not 28 square meters. m area, like many other hotels, but 36 (!
), including only residential 24 squares. And the renovated bathroom, like in a museum, is clean and everything shines. There is even a bidet, which is not found in many 5 * hotels. And so it is in most rooms, I admit that with very few exceptions, but if any guest does not like the room, they immediately offer others. And the problem is solved! In addition, it should be taken into account that in ten years about a thousand people lived in any of the rooms of this hotel (7 days out of 30 = 4 X 2 people X 12 months X 10 years). Imagine how much has been invested in repairs to make the room look in excellent residential condition after such a horde of vacationers, sometimes even at the level of almost barbarism ...
My next argument was the general well-groomed territory of the hotel, and the lawns are so carefully trimmed that you just want to walk barefoot on their soft carpet of fresh greenery ...
And a coral reef and colorful fish - and only twenty meters from the shore? - Where else, in what 5 * hotel can you find this?
After all, next to the most prestigious hotel in Sharm El-Sheikh "Four seasons" 5 *, where the princes of royal blood rest, and in the most prestigious place was chosen for development!
And many more arguments I gave this woman in defense of the Grand Oasis Hotel, which she so persistently tried to desecrate. Her fervor of the defiler subsided a little, but the following question arose: “Why do I only speak positively in my reviews of hotels, including the Grand Oasis Hotel? What, no flaws? "I answered her that these minor flaws pale in front of the mass of positive things that are in the hotel and this "little thing", if you are not a bore, then you should not pay attention and not mislead those who read reviews and want to choose a good hotel to stay. The worst thing is to look for a small negative and thereby reduce the number of those potential tourists who can take advantage of the benefits of a good, if not excellent, hotel.
And now she decided to save a hundred dollars, and now, as for an impressionable woman - such a result ...As a result, returning to her indignation given at the beginning: “What did I pay $ 400 for? “What you paid for, you got! Nothing happens for nothing, especially in the hotel business during a crisis!
What is a bad hotel in Egypt?
Sometimes, among the many positive reviews about a particular hotel, one has to hear or read a sharply negative review. And it is perceived as a fly in the ointment in a barrel of honey.
No one will argue that there are significant objective characteristics of the hotel, such as the date of construction and last renovation, distance from the airport, distance to the sea (1st, 2nd, 3rd coastline), area of the hotel, number of rooms, the number of pools, as well as the category of the hotel, which are stable and cannot be changed.
I saw such an example at the Grand Oasis Hotel, when three tourists paid an additional $75 and moved from the (according to them) terrible hotel to the beautiful Grand Oasis Hotel. Today they are resting for the second day and there is no limit to their happiness!
Therefore, everything is evaluated in comparison. And therefore, if I hear a too negative opinion about a hotel that is not bad, from an objective point of view, and in order to bring down the excitement of a negative judgment, I ask the following questions: “If the hotel is very bad, in your opinion, say:
- Did you feel food poisoning and were you on a drip to save your life?
- Were you robbed in your room, pulled out the eighth iPhone, stole $100 and other valuables?
- You say mosquitoes gnaw at you. And you were bitten from head to toe by Egyptian bugs and you brought them to your home as a memory of the resort and have not been able to get rid of them for a year? ..
And all this was experienced by tourists, having visited some hotels in Egypt (I don’t specifically name them for their advertising), but believe me, I definitely read about it in the reviews! And if this did not happen, then rejoice that this did not happen to you.
After these questions, the ardor of criticism subsides, they find out what a really bad hotel is and already look at their place of residence with completely different, “positive” eyes.
April 28.2017. Friday
Storm on the Red Sea
I am lucky in my current visit to the Red Sea for unique natural phenomena. A couple of days ago it was raining, today - a storm under five balls. I would also like for a complete set of unique phenomena that happen on the Red Sea - a windmill that tears off the roofs and which I “admired” at the Poinciana Sharm Resort 4 * in January 2016.
A storm on the Red Sea is an amazing and rather rare occurrence. But it happens more often than rain.
When the waves rise just above three balls, the pontoons close the entrance and hang out a red flag. Splashing in the “children's paddling pool” - in the shallow water here next to the pontoon, no one forbids, and therefore most of the beachgoers, from among the adult public (children, of course, are not allowed to such entertainment), playing with meter-long waves, so squeals and shows their emotions, as if she was in childhood, at her three-year-old age. But in the morning, from five o'clock, when I woke up until eight after breakfast, when I went to the beach, everything was calm on the sea and nothing foreshadowed such a storm.
At the same time, on land, on the territory of the hotel, there are no signs of non-standard behavior of the sea. Silence and grace. Only a weak, weak breeze with some attenuation, then acceleration blows from the east, from under the Sun. And for me it remained a mystery: what is the reason for such a riot of the sea? After all, the breeze is clearly not to blame and could not be the cause.
Maybe somewhere in the distance the windmill was roaming, and it sends its greetings to us in the form of waves running along the surface of the sea. Or maybe some kind of cataclysm happened in the depths of the sea and made itself felt on the surface of the sea, especially on the border with land, as some kind of warning to us, earthlings.
But in general, the impression is that the sea is alive. And she decided to confirm her status as a living being like this - with the help of a five-point storm. And I, Sasha Sim, will not be a pagan if this is not so! For an hour, if not more (time loses its meaning for me), I sit on the very edge of the cliff, two meters above the water, I listen, or rather, I listen to the sea. I don’t know how deeply I understand him (it all happens subconsciously), but I hear him!
Here, right on the shore, in its stormy surf, it is truly alive and with such an active vitality that it even surprises where everything comes from?
And this coastal riot is in contrast to the relatively calm sea in the distance, where only occasionally white crests of small waves appear. And here, over the entire thirty-meter width of the coastal sea, there is solid sea foam: only one foam strip begins to dissolve in the coastal shallow water, as a second later a new foam rolls from the side of the reef, like a whipped foam.
I began to watch the waves more closely. And what an interesting picture opened up in front of me. A powerful, more than a meter high wave is moving towards the shore, as if it wants to punish him for something. But from a niche in the rock, knocked out by waves for hundreds of years, it receives such a powerful blow that its aggressive ardor instantly drops to almost zero: the coast turned out to be stronger than it.
And she, disgraced and with fading agility, returns back to her element, losing strength all the time, as part of her sea water seeps to the winner - the Earth through the coastal sea sand ...And the indefatigable sea pulls up another suicide wave, a jihadist ...Like in a real war !
I look at the wave and I am surprised by the similarity with our real earthly reality, with wars on Earth… Military battles in the coastal zone do not stop. Approximately three meters from the shore, these two waves: a new one, sent by the sea and reflected from the shore, meet in opposite directions, there is a powerful blow and a fountain of water of such force that it reaches me, sitting on a rock and higher - up to five meters in height! I regard this as a kind of threat to me and even as a stray bullet ...
Looking more closely at this phenomenon, I made a heuristic discovery: a performance is being played out in front of me, where Nature is a brilliant director, and Waves, the Shore, Rocks, the Coral Reef and the Sea in general are talented actors with impeccable performance of their roles, not even allowing a share fake in your game! As well as musical accompaniment - any symphony orchestra would envy! And I am the only spectator in this theater and, as a writer, a critic. And why should I criticize the Ideal? - Only laudatory odes!
And I am surprised by the endless variety of pictures and combinations of sounds in the music of the storm and, in particular, the surf. And I am sure that there has not been and is unlikely to be a repetition in the thousand-year history...I am trying to open my eyes as wide as possible and open my Soul to perceive that majestic picture that Nature has suddenly opened for me with such courtesy.
I look at the world with special eyes, and perceive it as a reflection of what is happening inside me as a result, in my Soul. But an hour ago, in despair, I came to the quick conclusion that everything is vanity of vanities ...
April 29.2017. Saturday
Dead beach and hotel
Today in the morning I made a swim to the right from the pontoon of the Grand Oasis Hotel, to the territory of the Dessole Royal Rojana Resort 5 * hotel.
As always, nature is amazing in the neutral zone: the coral reef is not just in the form of a sheer cliff, but with ledges, far away, 5-10 meters out into the sea, a kind of lagoon appears, protected from three sides by corals. And it seems that you find yourself in real coral forests. I am writing about these beauties of the Red Sea not in order to once again show its amazing charm, but so that you can feel the contrast of what I saw and felt half an hour later, when I went to the beach of a neighboring hotel ...
And how it is destroyed - I saw on the example of the neighboring hotel "Royat Royana" and its beach. And if for another half an hour, swimming among the corals next to colorful fish, I did not find superlative epithets to admire what Nature had created, then when I went ashore and saw the deathly devastation, I could not find words to express my sadness and anxiety in connection with the destruction man of what he had created.
Imagine three hundred meters of a once chic beach with beautiful sun umbrellas made of natural wood, and no less comfortable sun loungers that delighted lucky tourists sunbathing here who came to this hotel a couple of years ago. Now it is desolate here, like an open-air crypt. Even the sand on this merven beach with traces of raindrops, which was here six months ago.
I understand that in the surf there is a tiny fraction of the essence of the sea, which is given to us in sensations. And everything else is hidden behind seven locks, and it is unlikely that it will ever fully open.
April 30.2017. Sunday
glass of beer
Ten o'clock in the morning.
The rooster crowed, woke me up like a human...It is here, at the Grand Oasis Hotel, that the beach animation program begins. And, therefore, you can go to the bar with your glass goblet to drink beer. After all, everywhere in the hotel all the bars begin to work and pour only from 10 am.
I've been on the beach for at least two hours. After breakfast at 7:00, taking with me "beach equipment": mask, snorkel, towel, etc. , I took my favorite quiet, secluded place at the very right wing of the beach: close to the bar and to the sea. Here the entry is sandy, and outside the pontoon you can swim about ten meters to the coral reef - a zone of indescribable beautiful views and the happiness of a diver. So I did. And he stayed, consider that continuously under water for almost two hours.
Luckily, the temperature of the water allowed for this. Here, to the right of the pontoon, at a depth of no more than six meters, I first saw a meter-long Napoleon, which for some reason stood vertically upside down and pecked out something from the bottom ...But this is not about that, but about the performance with a glass of beer. And it was only a two-hour prelude.
And so, as soon as the crowing of a rooster, the bleating of rams, the grunting of pigs and other domestic animals sounded from powerful speakers of several hundred kilowatts, the sun loungers creaked under the overweight bodies of vacationers, and thirsty people rushed to the bar from all over the 150-meter long beach. Who is after what: who is after a cocktail, juice or drink (after all, in Egypt at 10:00 the heat is already unbearable), who is behind a beer, and who has a hangover with one of the seven strong drinks of local production (in such a heat - suicide! ).
Food category and room category are two factors that determine the cost of a tour to a particular hotel. Therefore, instead of the word “free of charge”, it is necessary to write: “included in the concept of food” or “included in the cost of the room category”.
Nevertheless, the word “free” or “freebie” pleases our, post-Soviet citizens, hearing. And we are especially pleased that here, in the resorts of Egypt, there is a lot of things for free, that is, for free.
The principle of free or freebies, as a writer and publisher of books, I felt on myself. So, according to tradition and an old habit, just as in the 90s I brought my books about the resort to Crimea and sold them there, so now I take several books to Egypt and, having overcome my shyness and false modesty, here, on beach, put them up for sale. And, surprisingly, everyone, with the rarest exception, tries to get a book from the author as a gift!
And this is in the resorts of Egypt, where not quite poor people go to rest, who do not have an extra twenty hryvnias or one dollar in their pockets! You could also support the author. And so they strive to destroy every opportunity for creativity - for nothing to take the fruits of his labor, making him a beggar: after all, more than one thousand dollars have been spent on publishing books, including those borrowed.
I understand that spirituality is not in the price now. And it is better to sell cigarettes or, in the worst case, drugs ....But while dealing drugs, how can I experience the incredible joy and enjoyment of the creative process?
© Sasha Sim (Alexander Golovko), 2017
Translated automatically from Russian. View original
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