Your rating of this hotel:
7.0
from 10
Hotel ratings by criteria:
Rooms:
7.0
Service:
8.0
Cleanliness:
8.0
Food:
6.0
Amenities:
8.0
Time: May 2010.
Tour operator: Pegas Tour.
Departure from Yekaterinburg, Koltsovo.
Summary of the hotel for those who do not want to read everything below
The hotel is definitely not 5 star. These are such honest iron 4 stars. For a 5 star hotel the price is very reasonable. Nothing in the hotel bothered me personally, except for the tour operator, the lack of fish on the table and free tea in the evening. I would go there again, taking with me more decent booze, and more money in particular for diving courses and excursions. The hotel is good, worth the money.
Duty Free in Koltsovo
This store in Koltsovo has improved a lot. The range is wide. If you think that you will buy everything you need on the way back, in Egypt, you risk miscalculating. The duty free shop at Sharm El Sheikh Airport has a significantly smaller assortment. Perfumes and booze are about 30 to 50 percent cheaper than in regular stores.
Some drinks are three times cheaper, but this is already a question of the conscience of our traders. For example, cognac Hine Antique X. O. , which costs about a hundred dollars in duty free, can be bought in a regular store "only" for eight to nine thousand rubles. The savings are especially noticeable on expensive products. All prices are written in Euro. A good selection of imported spirits - cognacs, whiskeys and liqueurs. Very few wines. If you are traveling with a company and plan to drink spirits together, then it is better to buy them here, because of all Egyptian alcoholic drinks, only beer can be consumed without disgust.
However, those who fly often already know all this. I write for those who fly rarely or even for the first time.
Arrival and transfer
Time in the air was about 5 hours.
The tour operator decided to combine people flying to Turkey and Egypt on one plane, so we first sat down at Antalya International Airport, and then flew to Sharm El Sheikh. About the tour operator later. The first thing that strikes you after getting off the plane is the heat. It was like stepping into a very hot and dry bath. Immediately at the airport you will need to fill out a questionnaire. A typical picture is a bunch of people, turmoil, you don’t know where to rush and what to do. You have two options: fill out the questionnaire yourself and stand in line at the cashier, and then stand in line for a visa, or a local man will fill out the form right where the passport is stamped. The difference is 5 dollars. In the first case, give 15 dollars per person, in the second case, 20 dollars. Naturally, with the option of filling out the questionnaire on your own, it takes longer. In any case, representatives of the tour operator will wait for you.
Buses are air conditioned.
The distance from the airport to the hotel is short. If there are no arrivals at other hotels, then you will get there in 10 - 15 minutes. Since there are actually several hotels in Domina Coral Bay Oasis - Garden, Aquamarine, Sultan, Harem, etc ...then the bus will probably drive up to everyone. That is, he will actually travel around the territory of one hotel, approaching different administrations.
Settlement
Do not be surprised when you are asked to leave your luggage at the bus parking lot, and proceed to the reception yourself. You don't have to carry all your luggage with you. A special person makes sure that nothing happens to him. There you fill out all the documents, get the keys, then all the luggage is loaded onto the taf-taf bus and the hotel employee takes you to your room. He brings the luggage into the room, pretending how hard it is for him, and how much luggage you have. The unfortunate man, with a groan and lamentations, bends under an unbearable burden that you carried in Russia with one left.
For his services, the unfortunate man usually wants ten dollars, but will give him two to five dollars.
The administration gives out a magazine of a very bright appearance, which looks like an ordinary advertising booklet. You should suppress the natural desire to send it to the wastebasket. This magazine contains useful information. In particular, this is a description of the services provided by the hotel and, most importantly, a map of the hotel with a route map of all buses.
Rooms
We lived in building number 32. It's on the mountain. You have a view of the hotel and the sea. The view is excellent. The rooms themselves are simple and no frills. Mini-bar, dressing table, large mirror (by the way, there are only three of them in the room), a couple of chairs, three wardrobes, a safe, a coffee table. The beds are comfortable - checked. Pair of bedside tables. All the furniture is solid, made of solid wood, but old.
Our door that opened access to the mini-bar just hung on one hinge, the second hinge did not work due to the fact that the frog did not hold the door. The screws were simply torn out of the wood.
On the balcony are a couple of wicker chairs and a table with an ashtray. We used them as a place to dry things. The balcony, by the way, is of normal size, and not “Schaub Bulo”.
The TV is the simplest and smallest, with a light bulb screen. The safe is hidden in one of the wardrobes. At first we thought there was no safe. Only on the second day did they think of looking into the closet in the hallway.
From the negative - the air conditioner is very noisy and with some kind of not very clear control system. It is impossible to sleep without air conditioning, because you have to sleep with the windows closed. It would be great to open the windows, at night the temperature is very comfortable, but Egyptian mosquitoes are something. They are quiet and inconspicuous, when they bite you do not feel, and there are a lot of them.
A kind of ninja mosquito race. Once I sat on the balcony in the evening, read a book, in the morning I was horrified by all my legs as if in a rash, it was the mosquitoes that tried. But I felt nothing, nothing at all.
Thank God for the day we were so exhausted that in the room we just fell on the bed and fell asleep, no air conditioner could interfere with us.
Ants, cockroaches? Well, yes, I have seen ants in the toilet several times. Five pieces, probably in two weeks. I did not see cockroaches, but I saw lizards. Lizards are funny.
Hotel area
The hotel is very big, so big that they move around it in these little open buses called taf-taf. They are fun to ride. Buses run infrequently, but not infrequently. Everywhere there are bus stops and signs about which routes pass along this road. All buses must pass by the administration.
Our traditional route was to the administration, and then down past the Coral Bay restaurant to the beach. Our room was located not far and not close to the central administration (guests from Oasis and Aquamarine are served in it). You could walk, or you could wait for the bus and ride it. There was no difference in time. 10 minutes went by.
The territory of the hotel is green, planted with all sorts of plants. True, there is no riot of vegetation, the dryness of the climate affects, but what is quite enough. We were at the end of May before the start of the heat, right in front of us, many flowers faded and withered, and the palm trees began to turn pretty yellow.
The hotel is designed for a large number of people, but it seems that no one lives in it. For two weeks we did not meet a single vacationer in our building. But everywhere you meet traces of human presence. Here someone ordered food in the room and put the dishes out of it. There was a car in the courtyard.
So, someone came to her. Here is an empty bus. Here in one of the neighboring rooms, someone left a towel on the balcony. There are things, some kind of activity is going on with them, but you can’t see the people themselves.
The hotel itself is quite boring. We tried to walk along it, in general, nothing special. No special sights were found. Rooms, flower beds, occasionally you meet hotel employees or security. In short, in the "sleeping areas" of the hotel, there is an incessant sleep hour.
And it's actually good.
The hotel has several swimming pools, and even an artificial lake. In general, I don’t understand in my life why pools are needed at all when there is a sea. But! Due to the large area of the hotel, some parts of it are quite far from the sea (on foot 15 minutes or so), so I admit that some lazy vacationers will prefer to sunbathe and swim without moving far from the room.
Maintenance staff and service
The staff is adequate and polite. They try to be inconspicuous and helpful.
Animators are quite sane people. In combination, they also sell various excursions. They don't get bored with endless whining, buy this, buy that. They will come up, ask if we want to go on an excursion or go to a disco, which you didn’t know about. If you say that you do not want or think, then they will leave behind. If you show interest, they will tell and explain. In short, the animators are not annoying, but if you want to be active or part with the money, they are right there.
Merchants, as befits merchants, are clingy and impudent. They sell high and don't want to drop prices.
The cleaners don't understand either Russian or English. Only numerals and temporal characteristics - one, two, tomorrow, in an hour, in two hours. Numerals are best accompanied by finger gestures.
They clean regularly either every day or every other day, but they come at the most unexpected moments. For example, we indulge in an afternoon nap or sex, and he knocks on the door. Well yo-ma-yo.
Repairmen are like ants. He ran, he did, he ran away.
guest relations. It is they who resolve all kinds of problems with the condition of the rooms, take orders for various services and answer questions from guests. Reception, unlike them, is only in charge of check-in and paperwork. There are usually two girls there. One speaks Russian, the other speaks English, I don't know which of them speaks Italian. It happens that you want to learn something from them, and there is only one that is in English. The only thing she can do is offer to wait for a colleague.
The cooks and waiters do not understand in any way. Gestures, a few common words. They work slowly, with laziness.
The workers dejectedly pound their caulks on the ground, suggesting that slavery still exists in Egypt.
What is most interesting, among the workers come across and our Russians. We talked with one, it turns out that a guy from St. Petersburg came here just for fun. Insanely tanned with a big snow-white smile, for some reason he reminded me of Maguli from the cartoon.
We contacted guest relations several times to resolve various minor issues such as a non-working TV remote or a locked safe. In all cases, the response was immediate. Nothing to complain about.
The only bad luck happened to the beach boy. We unknowingly took towels three times. It turns out that according to some rules that we did not know about, you can take and return towels to one room only twice a day. We had to quarrel a bit, after which this particular beach-boy always greeted us with emphatic politeness, putting as much poison into the greeting as he had. We didn’t give a damn about his experiences, so we warmly welcomed him in return.
Contingent
The hotel mainly rests Italians, Russians and Ukrainians. There are a lot of Italians, or at least it seems that way, because Italians are very noisy and they are different from us. Someone said that there are 70 percent of them. Ukrainians cannot be distinguished from Russians, since everyone communicates in Russian. In any case, I have never heard Ukrainian, but many of the vacationers introduced themselves as tourists from Ukraine.
A few paragraphs about Italians. For the most part, the girls they have are scary and fat. There were very few really beautiful Italian women. Many are tanned to a chocolate color and this is not hyperbole, it is the way it is. Men, on the contrary, are handsome and fit, even those who are aged (this is the opinion of his wife). Quite a lot of pensioners. With the Italians, we did not intersect in any way, with rare exceptions, such as leaving sunbeds as a legacy to Italian grandmothers.
When we sang along to the songs of Toto Cutugno at the disco, the Italians looked at us disapprovingly. They don't seem to like him very much.
There were no conflicts either. Let's go to the disco at Smaila's bar. In general, there was such a good disco, then the performer said that there are Russians among us, they say, come on stage. Come out and dance. Well, here, as usual, one bullshit creates the impression of the whole people. A drunken man, either Russian or Ukrainian, climbed onto the stage and started waving his arms there and interfering with the performance. An awkward situation arose - the guards do not catch mice, but how can the soloist deal with him? He pushes the drunk off the stage, and he rests, poke harder, a fight will begin. They took it out with difficulty. As we descended from the stage, I noticed in the eyes of some Italians a mixture of such fear with disgust.
I just can't understand why we have such moronic behavior. There was an Italian standing next to our seat.
There was nowhere to be drunker, he stood with difficulty, but he did not climb onto the stage, did not interfere with anyone. Quietly he circled himself in a corner.
Were in Turkey, where our booze with the British. After drinking, the British go to sleep, and ours make a row with the bus driver, because he is such a miser who does not want to sell them a can of cola for $ 1, but tries to sell them for $ 2. Take the same Germans, well, yes, they eat in a bar they are struck by a meter, but there’s no problem with them, but our slightly sorted ones make a scandal for the fact that it seemed to them that the waiter somehow looked at them the wrong way. That's why they don't like us. As we drink, we are looking for adventures on our ass.
The next day after such a “performance”, a company of young Italians sitting nearby was actively discussing something with a clearly negative connotation. The words “Russians” and “Smaila’s” slipped into their speech. See us and discussed.
It ended up that an elderly Italian woman got up from her sunbed and began to lecture them, and when they started to be cheeky to her, the animator drove up (A rather colorful young lady, by the way, walks along the shore and shouts: “Girlfriends! Aqua aerobics! ”) And quite harshly ran into them. The youth shut up.
Picture number two. Two men come to the bar and say to the bartender: "We'll have ten large glasses of beer and four vodkas. " It was written on their faces: “We will eat this now. ” You should have seen his face. He tried to bargain with them, then twice forgot how much they ordered. Then, under pressure, he still gave them what they wanted.
Picture number three. Such a glamorous young lady stands all out of herself and in fairly clean but neutral English: “I’ll have ice-cream”. But damn it, you can't fool us. We, too, are not made with a finger. I ask a question in pure Russian: “Oba-na, why do they give ice cream here?
” She twitched, then caught herself, she shouldn’t understand from the legend. The look was sizzling. I understand the desire to disguise themselves as other foreigners, but damn Russians have “Russian” written on their foreheads and you can’t fix it with any English.
Beach and sea
The Egyptian sun is very, very hot. A lot of burnt Russians up to blisters. Burning out in just one hour of exposure to the sun is easy. The Italians don't seem to mind that much. There are enough sun loungers, but not enough umbrellas. If you come to the beach late, then there will not be enough space under the umbrella. Therefore, with sunbathing, be very, very careful. Creams with SPF 20 - 50 are what you need for the Egyptian sun. So here's cream, an umbrella, and feel free to throw on a T-shirt or white shirt. Even with such a conservative approach to tanning, you will tan. We tried to come to breakfast as early as possible, then immediately went to the beach from the restaurant.
Watch how the shadow of the umbrella moves, and gradually move the sunbed to be in the shade all the time. Slippers are required, during the day the sand is hot, so the foot does not endure.
The beach itself is sandy, sand and small pebbles. There is no smooth entry into the water, at least on the central beach. The absence of a sandy bottom and a smooth descent into the water is normal, no matter what you think there. On other beaches, it seems that the descent is cut into the coral. Coral begins a meter after the water's edge, you can't walk there. Firstly, it is forbidden, and secondly, it is easy to break a leg. The width of the coral is 30 meters, then there is a sharp descent and there is the most relish. A large white and blue pontoon just makes it possible to pass over the coral and dive. I consider it senseless to describe what kind of sea it is (deep cobalt color), what kind of coral is there (of all colors and shapes), what kind of fish are there (it's just an ear). It's impossible to put into words. Look at the photos.
There are several rules:
Don't touch the coral and swim carefully near the edge of the coral. First, a sudden wave can throw you onto the coral itself, and you get hurt. Secondly, you can be pricked by a sea urchin. They are very, very invisible. I was only able to spot the sea urchin when I realized I was looking straight at it. In addition, there are scorpions (lionfish, Pterois) and rays. During the day they sit in shelters and try not to rise to the surface. However, I have seen them and shallow. In the evening they come out to hunt, and the chance of meeting them is much higher. That is why everyone is warned that after sunset it is impossible to climb into the water.
Don't feed your fish bread. They say that their stomach swells and they die. May be so. But no one says that they are blown away by the smell of bread and they throw themselves at people, trying to take away the bread.
The bread is there, your fingers in which you hold the bread, or the melting pans in which you put the cracker to carry it past the rescuers, it doesn't matter to them. They bite off hard coral with their jaws, you can imagine what will happen when they try to grab your pod. I got bitten several times. Once even to the point of blood.
A little bit about underwater shooting and snorkeling.
What they give at the hotel (masks, snorkels, fins) for rent is garbage. It is scratched, it lets water through, it fogs up, the tube sips water (the design of the tube matters). If you intend to buy it there, in the hotel, it will cost you more than if you bought the equipment in Russia. You should not save on equipment, this is your comfort, these are your impressions not spoiled by cloudy glass, a crushed nose bridge or constant slurping of water when a wave covers you. For example, this is comfortable: Tusa M-32 IMPREX 3D HYPERDRY, Tusa SP-580 IMPREX II HYPERDRY, Tusa RF-12 FULL FOOT FIN. And don't forget the mask glass spray.
It is better to sit for 10 minutes abundantly and diligently smearing the spray on the glass of the mask and then not get out of the water for an hour, than to suffer from constant fogging and rinse the mask in water every five minutes. When we were in the Ras Muhammad reserve, everyone, without exception, was given very poor masks with an offer to rinse them in water.
Now a few remarks about underwater photography. Without a doubt, if you want to shoot underwater, then it is better to go to specialized sites. A few remarks (refer to the simplest option - a regular camera and a box for shooting underwater, no filters, no special lighting, no scuba gear):
1. Flash kills volume and color reproduction. Better without her.
2. The deeper, the darker (everything becomes green).
3. Usually fish do not pay attention to the photographer, but the smaller the fish, the more chaotic and fast it usually moves.
4.
Large fish, as a rule, do not like close attention and do not allow you to swim closer to them. In addition, they tend to swim at greater depths where there is little light.
5. Normal color reproduction can only be obtained in a small layer of water, 0 - 1 meter deep at the edge of the coral. There is enough light to shoot without a flash.
6. At shallow depths, excitement matters. The photographer constantly shakes, so it is difficult to aim. In addition, when there is strong excitement, corals hide, and when it is calm, they bloom. At great depths, the photographer is dragged to the surface. The main problem is the stabilization of its position relative to the subject.
7. When the light rays come at an angle (in the morning), the fish are brighter. In addition, nocturnal predators are still active, so there is a chance to shoot them and not run into someone in the dark.
8. Shoot a lot and in RAW format. Then there will be plenty to choose from and some photos can be “pulled out” by Photoshop.
To do this, insert a larger memory card into the camera, spare batteries and at least a netbook so that there is somewhere to drop and view photos.
Based on this, the ideal place and time for shooting in such a Chaikov's version is the edge of the coral, the morning immediately after sunrise and until 11 o'clock, calm or almost calm.
Nutrition
The food at the hotel is satisfactory. Lots of different vegetable salads, including individual ingredients for do-it-yourself salads. I strained with sour cream, there were rather such yogurts similar to sour cream, but it still wasn’t sour cream.
Lots of delicious baked goods.
They rarely cook meat, and they don't know how to cook it. In two weeks, we ate normal meat dishes only twice - once there were chopped cutlets, the other time stew. There is fried or baked chicken, but we didn’t eat it, are we on vacation or at home, huh?
Soups are standard mashed soups.
There are practically no fish.
To enter the restaurant, food cards are issued, which must be shown each time at the entrance. However, in two weeks they were checked two or three times, and it was precisely these three times that we forgot the cards in the room and each time passed by snorting something in the ears of the inspectors.
Next to the central restaurant is the Sheikh Abdulla minimarket, where you can buy any junk food familiar to our stomach, as well as fruits, juices and, most importantly, drinking water (1.5 liters - $ 1). In all other places you will be charged 4 - 7 dollars.
Tour operator and its representatives
Pegas Touristic - goats.
1. We flew there, for the sake of filling the plane, we flew through Antalya. Everyone is tired.
2. We flew back, arranged a flight for us at 8 am, i. e. , having come from the evening show at 12 am, we suddenly found that we weren’t sleeping today, we weren’t sunbathing the last day, but were going to leave.
3. Forgot to reserve breakfast for us.
Fortunately, the hotel did not become stingy and, seeing our discouraged faces, gave out breakfast without any documents.
4. Guides were almost always absent from their place.
Tour operator: Pegas Tour.
Departure from Yekaterinburg, Koltsovo.
Summary of the hotel for those who do not want to read everything below
The hotel is definitely not 5 star. These are such honest iron 4 stars. For a 5 star hotel the price is very reasonable. Nothing in the hotel bothered me personally, except for the tour operator, the lack of fish on the table and free tea in the evening. I would go there again, taking with me more decent booze, and more money in particular for diving courses and excursions. The hotel is good, worth the money.
Duty Free in Koltsovo
This store in Koltsovo has improved a lot. The range is wide. If you think that you will buy everything you need on the way back, in Egypt, you risk miscalculating. The duty free shop at Sharm El Sheikh Airport has a significantly smaller assortment. Perfumes and booze are about 30 to 50 percent cheaper than in regular stores.
Some drinks are three times cheaper, but this is already a question of the conscience of our traders. For example, cognac Hine Antique X. O. , which costs about a hundred dollars in duty free, can be bought in a regular store "only" for eight to nine thousand rubles. The savings are especially noticeable on expensive products. All prices are written in Euro. A good selection of imported spirits - cognacs, whiskeys and liqueurs. Very few wines. If you are traveling with a company and plan to drink spirits together, then it is better to buy them here, because of all Egyptian alcoholic drinks, only beer can be consumed without disgust.
However, those who fly often already know all this. I write for those who fly rarely or even for the first time.
Arrival and transfer
Time in the air was about 5 hours.
The tour operator decided to combine people flying to Turkey and Egypt on one plane, so we first sat down at Antalya International Airport, and then flew to Sharm El Sheikh. About the tour operator later. The first thing that strikes you after getting off the plane is the heat. It was like stepping into a very hot and dry bath. Immediately at the airport you will need to fill out a questionnaire. A typical picture is a bunch of people, turmoil, you don’t know where to rush and what to do. You have two options: fill out the questionnaire yourself and stand in line at the cashier, and then stand in line for a visa, or a local man will fill out the form right where the passport is stamped. The difference is 5 dollars. In the first case, give 15 dollars per person, in the second case, 20 dollars. Naturally, with the option of filling out the questionnaire on your own, it takes longer. In any case, representatives of the tour operator will wait for you.
Buses are air conditioned.
The distance from the airport to the hotel is short. If there are no arrivals at other hotels, then you will get there in 10 - 15 minutes. Since there are actually several hotels in Domina Coral Bay Oasis - Garden, Aquamarine, Sultan, Harem, etc ...then the bus will probably drive up to everyone. That is, he will actually travel around the territory of one hotel, approaching different administrations.
Settlement
Do not be surprised when you are asked to leave your luggage at the bus parking lot, and proceed to the reception yourself. You don't have to carry all your luggage with you. A special person makes sure that nothing happens to him. There you fill out all the documents, get the keys, then all the luggage is loaded onto the taf-taf bus and the hotel employee takes you to your room. He brings the luggage into the room, pretending how hard it is for him, and how much luggage you have. The unfortunate man, with a groan and lamentations, bends under an unbearable burden that you carried in Russia with one left.
For his services, the unfortunate man usually wants ten dollars, but will give him two to five dollars.
The administration gives out a magazine of a very bright appearance, which looks like an ordinary advertising booklet. You should suppress the natural desire to send it to the wastebasket. This magazine contains useful information. In particular, this is a description of the services provided by the hotel and, most importantly, a map of the hotel with a route map of all buses.
Rooms
We lived in building number 32. It's on the mountain. You have a view of the hotel and the sea. The view is excellent. The rooms themselves are simple and no frills. Mini-bar, dressing table, large mirror (by the way, there are only three of them in the room), a couple of chairs, three wardrobes, a safe, a coffee table. The beds are comfortable - checked. Pair of bedside tables. All the furniture is solid, made of solid wood, but old.
Our door that opened access to the mini-bar just hung on one hinge, the second hinge did not work due to the fact that the frog did not hold the door. The screws were simply torn out of the wood.
On the balcony are a couple of wicker chairs and a table with an ashtray. We used them as a place to dry things. The balcony, by the way, is of normal size, and not “Schaub Bulo”.
The TV is the simplest and smallest, with a light bulb screen. The safe is hidden in one of the wardrobes. At first we thought there was no safe. Only on the second day did they think of looking into the closet in the hallway.
From the negative - the air conditioner is very noisy and with some kind of not very clear control system. It is impossible to sleep without air conditioning, because you have to sleep with the windows closed. It would be great to open the windows, at night the temperature is very comfortable, but Egyptian mosquitoes are something. They are quiet and inconspicuous, when they bite you do not feel, and there are a lot of them.
A kind of ninja mosquito race. Once I sat on the balcony in the evening, read a book, in the morning I was horrified by all my legs as if in a rash, it was the mosquitoes that tried. But I felt nothing, nothing at all.
Thank God for the day we were so exhausted that in the room we just fell on the bed and fell asleep, no air conditioner could interfere with us.
Ants, cockroaches? Well, yes, I have seen ants in the toilet several times. Five pieces, probably in two weeks. I did not see cockroaches, but I saw lizards. Lizards are funny.
Hotel area
The hotel is very big, so big that they move around it in these little open buses called taf-taf. They are fun to ride. Buses run infrequently, but not infrequently. Everywhere there are bus stops and signs about which routes pass along this road. All buses must pass by the administration.
Our traditional route was to the administration, and then down past the Coral Bay restaurant to the beach. Our room was located not far and not close to the central administration (guests from Oasis and Aquamarine are served in it). You could walk, or you could wait for the bus and ride it. There was no difference in time. 10 minutes went by.
The territory of the hotel is green, planted with all sorts of plants. True, there is no riot of vegetation, the dryness of the climate affects, but what is quite enough. We were at the end of May before the start of the heat, right in front of us, many flowers faded and withered, and the palm trees began to turn pretty yellow.
The hotel is designed for a large number of people, but it seems that no one lives in it. For two weeks we did not meet a single vacationer in our building. But everywhere you meet traces of human presence. Here someone ordered food in the room and put the dishes out of it. There was a car in the courtyard.
So, someone came to her. Here is an empty bus. Here in one of the neighboring rooms, someone left a towel on the balcony. There are things, some kind of activity is going on with them, but you can’t see the people themselves.
The hotel itself is quite boring. We tried to walk along it, in general, nothing special. No special sights were found. Rooms, flower beds, occasionally you meet hotel employees or security. In short, in the "sleeping areas" of the hotel, there is an incessant sleep hour.
And it's actually good.
The hotel has several swimming pools, and even an artificial lake. In general, I don’t understand in my life why pools are needed at all when there is a sea. But! Due to the large area of the hotel, some parts of it are quite far from the sea (on foot 15 minutes or so), so I admit that some lazy vacationers will prefer to sunbathe and swim without moving far from the room.
Maintenance staff and service
The staff is adequate and polite. They try to be inconspicuous and helpful.
Animators are quite sane people. In combination, they also sell various excursions. They don't get bored with endless whining, buy this, buy that. They will come up, ask if we want to go on an excursion or go to a disco, which you didn’t know about. If you say that you do not want or think, then they will leave behind. If you show interest, they will tell and explain. In short, the animators are not annoying, but if you want to be active or part with the money, they are right there.
Merchants, as befits merchants, are clingy and impudent. They sell high and don't want to drop prices.
The cleaners don't understand either Russian or English. Only numerals and temporal characteristics - one, two, tomorrow, in an hour, in two hours. Numerals are best accompanied by finger gestures.
They clean regularly either every day or every other day, but they come at the most unexpected moments. For example, we indulge in an afternoon nap or sex, and he knocks on the door. Well yo-ma-yo.
Repairmen are like ants. He ran, he did, he ran away.
guest relations. It is they who resolve all kinds of problems with the condition of the rooms, take orders for various services and answer questions from guests. Reception, unlike them, is only in charge of check-in and paperwork. There are usually two girls there. One speaks Russian, the other speaks English, I don't know which of them speaks Italian. It happens that you want to learn something from them, and there is only one that is in English. The only thing she can do is offer to wait for a colleague.
The cooks and waiters do not understand in any way. Gestures, a few common words. They work slowly, with laziness.
The workers dejectedly pound their caulks on the ground, suggesting that slavery still exists in Egypt.
What is most interesting, among the workers come across and our Russians. We talked with one, it turns out that a guy from St. Petersburg came here just for fun. Insanely tanned with a big snow-white smile, for some reason he reminded me of Maguli from the cartoon.
We contacted guest relations several times to resolve various minor issues such as a non-working TV remote or a locked safe. In all cases, the response was immediate. Nothing to complain about.
The only bad luck happened to the beach boy. We unknowingly took towels three times. It turns out that according to some rules that we did not know about, you can take and return towels to one room only twice a day. We had to quarrel a bit, after which this particular beach-boy always greeted us with emphatic politeness, putting as much poison into the greeting as he had. We didn’t give a damn about his experiences, so we warmly welcomed him in return.
Contingent
The hotel mainly rests Italians, Russians and Ukrainians. There are a lot of Italians, or at least it seems that way, because Italians are very noisy and they are different from us. Someone said that there are 70 percent of them. Ukrainians cannot be distinguished from Russians, since everyone communicates in Russian. In any case, I have never heard Ukrainian, but many of the vacationers introduced themselves as tourists from Ukraine.
A few paragraphs about Italians. For the most part, the girls they have are scary and fat. There were very few really beautiful Italian women. Many are tanned to a chocolate color and this is not hyperbole, it is the way it is. Men, on the contrary, are handsome and fit, even those who are aged (this is the opinion of his wife). Quite a lot of pensioners. With the Italians, we did not intersect in any way, with rare exceptions, such as leaving sunbeds as a legacy to Italian grandmothers.
When we sang along to the songs of Toto Cutugno at the disco, the Italians looked at us disapprovingly. They don't seem to like him very much.
There were no conflicts either. Let's go to the disco at Smaila's bar. In general, there was such a good disco, then the performer said that there are Russians among us, they say, come on stage. Come out and dance. Well, here, as usual, one bullshit creates the impression of the whole people. A drunken man, either Russian or Ukrainian, climbed onto the stage and started waving his arms there and interfering with the performance. An awkward situation arose - the guards do not catch mice, but how can the soloist deal with him? He pushes the drunk off the stage, and he rests, poke harder, a fight will begin. They took it out with difficulty. As we descended from the stage, I noticed in the eyes of some Italians a mixture of such fear with disgust.
I just can't understand why we have such moronic behavior. There was an Italian standing next to our seat.
There was nowhere to be drunker, he stood with difficulty, but he did not climb onto the stage, did not interfere with anyone. Quietly he circled himself in a corner.
Were in Turkey, where our booze with the British. After drinking, the British go to sleep, and ours make a row with the bus driver, because he is such a miser who does not want to sell them a can of cola for $ 1, but tries to sell them for $ 2. Take the same Germans, well, yes, they eat in a bar they are struck by a meter, but there’s no problem with them, but our slightly sorted ones make a scandal for the fact that it seemed to them that the waiter somehow looked at them the wrong way. That's why they don't like us. As we drink, we are looking for adventures on our ass.
The next day after such a “performance”, a company of young Italians sitting nearby was actively discussing something with a clearly negative connotation. The words “Russians” and “Smaila’s” slipped into their speech. See us and discussed.
It ended up that an elderly Italian woman got up from her sunbed and began to lecture them, and when they started to be cheeky to her, the animator drove up (A rather colorful young lady, by the way, walks along the shore and shouts: “Girlfriends! Aqua aerobics! ”) And quite harshly ran into them. The youth shut up.
Picture number two. Two men come to the bar and say to the bartender: "We'll have ten large glasses of beer and four vodkas. " It was written on their faces: “We will eat this now. ” You should have seen his face. He tried to bargain with them, then twice forgot how much they ordered. Then, under pressure, he still gave them what they wanted.
Picture number three. Such a glamorous young lady stands all out of herself and in fairly clean but neutral English: “I’ll have ice-cream”. But damn it, you can't fool us. We, too, are not made with a finger. I ask a question in pure Russian: “Oba-na, why do they give ice cream here?
” She twitched, then caught herself, she shouldn’t understand from the legend. The look was sizzling. I understand the desire to disguise themselves as other foreigners, but damn Russians have “Russian” written on their foreheads and you can’t fix it with any English.
Beach and sea
The Egyptian sun is very, very hot. A lot of burnt Russians up to blisters. Burning out in just one hour of exposure to the sun is easy. The Italians don't seem to mind that much. There are enough sun loungers, but not enough umbrellas. If you come to the beach late, then there will not be enough space under the umbrella. Therefore, with sunbathing, be very, very careful. Creams with SPF 20 - 50 are what you need for the Egyptian sun. So here's cream, an umbrella, and feel free to throw on a T-shirt or white shirt. Even with such a conservative approach to tanning, you will tan. We tried to come to breakfast as early as possible, then immediately went to the beach from the restaurant.
Watch how the shadow of the umbrella moves, and gradually move the sunbed to be in the shade all the time. Slippers are required, during the day the sand is hot, so the foot does not endure.
The beach itself is sandy, sand and small pebbles. There is no smooth entry into the water, at least on the central beach. The absence of a sandy bottom and a smooth descent into the water is normal, no matter what you think there. On other beaches, it seems that the descent is cut into the coral. Coral begins a meter after the water's edge, you can't walk there. Firstly, it is forbidden, and secondly, it is easy to break a leg. The width of the coral is 30 meters, then there is a sharp descent and there is the most relish. A large white and blue pontoon just makes it possible to pass over the coral and dive. I consider it senseless to describe what kind of sea it is (deep cobalt color), what kind of coral is there (of all colors and shapes), what kind of fish are there (it's just an ear). It's impossible to put into words. Look at the photos.
There are several rules:
Don't touch the coral and swim carefully near the edge of the coral. First, a sudden wave can throw you onto the coral itself, and you get hurt. Secondly, you can be pricked by a sea urchin. They are very, very invisible. I was only able to spot the sea urchin when I realized I was looking straight at it. In addition, there are scorpions (lionfish, Pterois) and rays. During the day they sit in shelters and try not to rise to the surface. However, I have seen them and shallow. In the evening they come out to hunt, and the chance of meeting them is much higher. That is why everyone is warned that after sunset it is impossible to climb into the water.
Don't feed your fish bread. They say that their stomach swells and they die. May be so. But no one says that they are blown away by the smell of bread and they throw themselves at people, trying to take away the bread.
The bread is there, your fingers in which you hold the bread, or the melting pans in which you put the cracker to carry it past the rescuers, it doesn't matter to them. They bite off hard coral with their jaws, you can imagine what will happen when they try to grab your pod. I got bitten several times. Once even to the point of blood.
A little bit about underwater shooting and snorkeling.
What they give at the hotel (masks, snorkels, fins) for rent is garbage. It is scratched, it lets water through, it fogs up, the tube sips water (the design of the tube matters). If you intend to buy it there, in the hotel, it will cost you more than if you bought the equipment in Russia. You should not save on equipment, this is your comfort, these are your impressions not spoiled by cloudy glass, a crushed nose bridge or constant slurping of water when a wave covers you. For example, this is comfortable: Tusa M-32 IMPREX 3D HYPERDRY, Tusa SP-580 IMPREX II HYPERDRY, Tusa RF-12 FULL FOOT FIN. And don't forget the mask glass spray.
It is better to sit for 10 minutes abundantly and diligently smearing the spray on the glass of the mask and then not get out of the water for an hour, than to suffer from constant fogging and rinse the mask in water every five minutes. When we were in the Ras Muhammad reserve, everyone, without exception, was given very poor masks with an offer to rinse them in water.
Now a few remarks about underwater photography. Without a doubt, if you want to shoot underwater, then it is better to go to specialized sites. A few remarks (refer to the simplest option - a regular camera and a box for shooting underwater, no filters, no special lighting, no scuba gear):
1. Flash kills volume and color reproduction. Better without her.
2. The deeper, the darker (everything becomes green).
3. Usually fish do not pay attention to the photographer, but the smaller the fish, the more chaotic and fast it usually moves.
4.
Large fish, as a rule, do not like close attention and do not allow you to swim closer to them. In addition, they tend to swim at greater depths where there is little light.
5. Normal color reproduction can only be obtained in a small layer of water, 0 - 1 meter deep at the edge of the coral. There is enough light to shoot without a flash.
6. At shallow depths, excitement matters. The photographer constantly shakes, so it is difficult to aim. In addition, when there is strong excitement, corals hide, and when it is calm, they bloom. At great depths, the photographer is dragged to the surface. The main problem is the stabilization of its position relative to the subject.
7. When the light rays come at an angle (in the morning), the fish are brighter. In addition, nocturnal predators are still active, so there is a chance to shoot them and not run into someone in the dark.
8. Shoot a lot and in RAW format. Then there will be plenty to choose from and some photos can be “pulled out” by Photoshop.
To do this, insert a larger memory card into the camera, spare batteries and at least a netbook so that there is somewhere to drop and view photos.
Based on this, the ideal place and time for shooting in such a Chaikov's version is the edge of the coral, the morning immediately after sunrise and until 11 o'clock, calm or almost calm.
Nutrition
The food at the hotel is satisfactory. Lots of different vegetable salads, including individual ingredients for do-it-yourself salads. I strained with sour cream, there were rather such yogurts similar to sour cream, but it still wasn’t sour cream.
Lots of delicious baked goods.
They rarely cook meat, and they don't know how to cook it. In two weeks, we ate normal meat dishes only twice - once there were chopped cutlets, the other time stew. There is fried or baked chicken, but we didn’t eat it, are we on vacation or at home, huh?
Soups are standard mashed soups.
There are practically no fish.
To enter the restaurant, food cards are issued, which must be shown each time at the entrance. However, in two weeks they were checked two or three times, and it was precisely these three times that we forgot the cards in the room and each time passed by snorting something in the ears of the inspectors.
Next to the central restaurant is the Sheikh Abdulla minimarket, where you can buy any junk food familiar to our stomach, as well as fruits, juices and, most importantly, drinking water (1.5 liters - $ 1). In all other places you will be charged 4 - 7 dollars.
Tour operator and its representatives
Pegas Touristic - goats.
1. We flew there, for the sake of filling the plane, we flew through Antalya. Everyone is tired.
2. We flew back, arranged a flight for us at 8 am, i. e. , having come from the evening show at 12 am, we suddenly found that we weren’t sleeping today, we weren’t sunbathing the last day, but were going to leave.
3. Forgot to reserve breakfast for us.
Fortunately, the hotel did not become stingy and, seeing our discouraged faces, gave out breakfast without any documents.
4. Guides were almost always absent from their place.
Translated automatically from Russian. View original
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