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Amenities:
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LUXURIOUS HOTEL OF THE SOVIET PERIOD
Brief information about the hotel «Savoy» 5*
The Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5* hotel is part of the SAVOY GROUP hotel group (Chairman of the Savoy Sharm El Sheikh Emad Aziz group, General Manager of the Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5* hotel - Jacques Peter). The group includes hotels: Royal Savoy 5*, Sierra Resort 5* and SOHO Square. The hotel was opened in 2000.
Located on an area of .22 hectares.
The hotel is designed for a respectable holiday. For VIP tourists there are villas with a private pool.
Hotel "Savoy Sharm El-Sheikh" 5 * is located on the seashore, in the picturesque bay "White Knight Beach" ("White Knight Beach") - the national park. Next to the hotel is the SOHO Square center, where there are all kinds of entertainment for vacationers.
The hotel is located 8 km from Sharm El Sheikh International Airport in the SHARKS BAY in the WHITE KNIGHT BEACH. Distance to "NAAMA BAY": 11 km, to OLD MARKET (Old Town): 22 km.
The nearest hotel on the left (look at the sea) is "Island View Resort" 5 *.
In the vicinity of the hotel
SOHO Square
At the entrance to the hotel "Savoy Sharm El-Sheikh" 5 * is the famous square "SOHO Square", to plunge into the evening splendor of which come even from remote Dahab. From many hotels in Sharm El Sheikh, free shuttle buses run to SOHO Square. SOHO Square is a chic promenade, a whole block of prestigious cafes, trendy clubs and branded shops, including duty-free.
SOHO Square is a unique feature of the Savoy 5* Hotel, which is erroneously stated in some advertisements to not belong to the hotel, but according to the Deputy General Manager of the hotel, is part of the SAVOY GROUP hotel group. And few hotels in Sharm El Sheikh can boast of such a unique phenomenon. It is possible that only thanks to "SOHO Square" the prestige of the "Savoy" 5 * hotel has been raised so high. Having visited this hotel, I did not notice any other special uniqueness.
(Read more on pages 9-11)
Sharks Bay and White Knight
Sharks Bay, Sharks Bay Beaches, White Knight Bay, King's Bay Coast - read on p. 7 - 9.
Before departure to Egypt
End of August. I, like last year, on the eve of autumn, am again going to the Red Moreno now with the sole purpose of learning what a “luxury hotel” (“Savoy Sharm El Sheikh” 5 *) is, as it is advertised on the Internet. I am only flying to this hotel today, but with my second spiritual essence I have been there for a long time. And this is facilitated by my preliminary, within three weeks, acquaintance with this hotel from various sources of information, including, from the reviews of tourists who have been there.
To be convinced of this, looking from the inside, I decided to complete my book “The Red Sea: A Corner of the Earthly Paradise. Travel notes from Egypt”, visit this hotel, as they say, for a complete set of hotels, ranging from 3 * to 5 * VIP category.
And I took the cheapest tour for eight days on the cheapest BB food system, in the cheapest Standard Garden View Rooms category, but at one of the most expensive prices in Egypt - for 2.000 UAH. (that's $800). I understand that for me, as a Ukrainian pensioner with a minimum pension of 949 UAH. ($37) per month is expensive. But what can you do? There are no cheaper tours to the Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5 * hotel, and art requires sacrifice ...
I understand that the Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5 * hotel is for reputable clients, such as our deputies in the Verkhovna Rada, especially, judging by the price of the Presidential Suite Sea View room category - $ 4206 - in just eight days with one breakfast - scrambled eggs and scrambled eggs(! ), and according to the "Ultra All Inclusive" system - the price of a one-room apartment in Kyiv! Maybe I will meet some of them there, I will definitely say hello, despite belonging to blocs or parties, but I promise, no more). And I will be there as the only white crow in the history of the hotel ...
Speaking of "white crows".
The tourist crisis in Egypt, as a result of a decrease in the flow of tourists by several times, forces even the once branded VIP hotels to change their marketing policy and reorganize for a different, less well-off contingent of potential tourists - those who, according to their financial capabilities, could afford to stay in hotels of categories , maximum 4*. That is, for the sake of their own survival, they intercept clients of 3 * and 4 * hotels, dooming them to bankruptcy. And that's why many hotels are closed. For us tourists, the bankruptcy of these hotels is the least of our worries. But the opportunity to learn and feel for yourself how VIPs live and relax is already a class! And at the same time to fulfill the "great mission": to support fashionable hotels in their difficult hours.
At the same time, the VIPs themselves are outraged by such an invasion of people outside their circle into their rest homes.
And this indignation pours out something like this: “You better continue to visit hotels with powdered juices, beer and wine diluted with soda, with the cheapest Egyptian drinks and products. Leave the Savoy to us. It would be better that people like you and others with a ram on the beach were not there. It is a pity that due to problems with the tourist flow, hotels of this level have to make special offers with low prices in order to stay afloat. I hope this will end soon and we will again see the usual contingent of regular, like us, guests. ” (KATKOOTA, Tourist, Odessa, Ukraine, 27 May 2017 at 19:35 – grammar saved)
But it's not about that. I want to write about the Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5 * hotel as it really is and from the point of view of an ordinary tourist, not a VIP person.
Yes, and a VIP-person will not write anything, first of all, in order not to disclose their income, sometimes stolen, and they will completely keep silent where and for how much they rested - this, firstly. And, secondly, I want to show the reality of recreation in such prestigious hotels of VIP categories - to us, mere mortals ...
Loaded with bags, I'm going to the subway. With his rapped and well-placed voice, the announcer regularly announces stops, bringing me closer and closer to my final one - Kharkivskaya, where I will transfer to the Scy bus and in an hour I will be at terminal D of Boryspil airport. From the experience of past flights, I know that check-in will begin earlier than two hours before departure. And before registration, an hour and a half, so I will be one of the first at registration and get a good seat at the window. I love to contemplate my native Zemelka from an ever-increasing height, up to 1.000 meters.
Borispol airport"
The mood is despondent.
And all because, in contrast to yesterday's sunny day, today there is a sharp cold snap, it is cloudy and the impression is that it is already late in the evening. Plus, it's raining. Wet asphalt. Like a wet chicken - a bus that should take us to the plane of the Windrose airline. For some reason, the plane is far away, a kilometer from the airport terminal - somewhere in the outskirts. And why is he being punished? But, as I believe, all these are echoes of the same economical charter: parking there is much cheaper. Yes, and the operator "Tez Toyur", through which I fly to Egypt, in all likelihood, is "weaker" than "Aneks Toyur", with which I used to fly all the past times. But now Aneks Toyur for some reason blocked the sale of tours to the Savoy Hotel and I was lucky to find a relatively inexpensive tour to this hotel through another tour operator. In addition, I discovered an amazing thing: here is a tour of the E-class food system for the same date and time as in Join Up, but on the Special Class system!
And this is a win in food: there is an additional opportunity to dine in themed a-la-carte restaurants, use and bars and various “snacks” on site, as well as discounts in Soho restaurants and bars!
I thought about this when I boarded the plane of the Rosa Vetrov airline, which, together with the tour operator Tez Toyr, gave me the happy opportunity to visit Egypt on the Red Sea again.
"...know your sixth"
This is the second time I am taking a tour to Egypt on the BB (Breakfast Only) food system. To the bewildered but silent questions of my interlocutors, I usually, jokingly, answer that my liver cannot stand four times (this summer, and six times since the beginning of the year) “All-inclusive” and asks to rest ...After all, it’s inconvenient to show that you are like that a beggar and you don't have the funds for the All Inclusive. But for me, such a strategy (“BB”) is fully justified.
Firstly, in such luxurious and expensive hotels, which are among the “five” of the best hotels in Sharm El Sheikh, even breakfasts should be and eat at the highest level, despite the crisis. This is the range of dishes and the quality of their preparation. After such a breakfast, if you “refuel” to the eyeballs, that is, you don’t feel like it until the evening. Secondly, you do not get distracted for an hour or two from the Red Sea and the coral reef, but constantly, all day long on the beach. Lunch on the beach (or rather, a snack) is not lunch, but a perversion, compared to lunch in a chic main restaurant (both in terms of food intake and in terms of its assortment), and therefore, if there is such an opportunity, then it must be used. In addition, after a full meal and in the conditions of the August heat, it always pulls “for an hour” into a cool and no less luxurious room, to sleep ...Thirdly, you are free all day and are not tied to the so-called. "feeding trough" - the restaurant.
You can devote the whole day, until late at night, to any of your desires, excursions, diving and other trips you like outside the hotel, without worrying that lunches and dinners may be lost. Fourthly, of course, the price… Overpaying for a tour by $100 a day is more expensive for the sake of having lunch or dinner, when you don’t always want to, it’s too much… Sometimes it’s much more profitable to go to lunch or dinner, paying on the spot: cheaper and without intermediaries.
Understanding all these advantages of the “BB” food system, I still cannot get rid of the feeling of my own inferiority (and even inferiority) when only breakfast is available to me, and the rest is closed, which is given “free of charge” to everyone else under the “All inclusive” system. What you don't realize, though, is that "free" is actually very expensive.
I don’t so much need lunch and dinner as bars where you can sit until midnight or around the clock, chat with new friends and, regardless of prices, enjoy the entire range of available drinks.
In the end, you realize the wild injustice that for someone everything, and for someone - nothing! At the same time, for some reason, I am not shocked by even wilder injustice in the ordinary, real life of the capital, when many people drive around in expensive Lexuses, dine in chic restaurants, dress in brands worth many thousands of dollars. They live in mansions on the embankment of the Dnieper...And you, with your minimum pension of $36 a month, have to watch so as not to miss the delivery of a "social" loaf for 4-15 UAH, instead of 8...But this is by analogy with food tours " All inclusive" (or "Ultra All") in the same Egyptian Sharm El Sheikh or another resort.
And therefore, in order not to complex and not spoil my vacation, I decided to sit in the bars of the hotel for as long as my Soul desires, sometimes ordering at the bar for cash, but more often - to drink my prepared one, because customs gives the go-ahead for many things ...
Looking ahead, I will say that this idea justified itself. Moreover, some strong alcoholic drinks remained untouched: in the heat of forty degrees, you can’t force yourself or your friends to drink alcohol for forty degrees even under a gun ...
Check-in hotel
I arrived at the Savoy Sharm El-Sheikh 5* hotel late in the evening, after 20:00 (it gets dark in Egypt from six in the evening). The hotel has increased safety measures for vacationers. The first control, very simplified, is carried out at the entrance to the territory of SOHO Square, and this is a few hundred meters from the main gate.
Further - more thorough control of transport - at the main gate, and the most thorough - each tourist through a metal detector frame, and all things - through an X-ray machine, like at an airport. But still, these checks and overall security at the Savoy Hotel are less impressive and inferior to the same procedures that are organized at the entrance and in general at the Grand Rotana 5 * hotel.
When registering at the porter service (reception) of the Savoy 5 * hotel, I was treated to iced hibiscus tea and, as usual, I was asked to fill out a questionnaire.
Lobby
The lobby is located in a round four-story main building, occupies the entire top floor and therefore, of course, has a round shape, which is already original. In the lobby, to the right of the entrance, there is a porter service (reception), which is no different from similar services in other hotels.
The same sweetly smiling and friendly receptionist, even two, one of which speaks excellent Russian, a standard desk made of dark natural wood and five clocks on the wall, showing the time of cities in different time zones: Cairo, London, Dubai, Roma, Moscow...and that's it. Ukraine (Kyiv) is not. But pleases a pleasant memory that at the entrance to the flagpole sways in the wind first (in Arabic, from right to left), one of the seven - the Ukrainian national flag! In all likelihood, here, as in all of Egypt, they believe that Ukraine is a temporary significant phenomenon in the country's tourism business, as a lifeline for this business during the crisis. And Russia, most likely, is his future...
The lobby of the Savoy 5* hotel pleasantly surprised me with its original architectural and design solution.
The tradition of water, as a symbol of the life of all life on Earth and especially revered in desert Egypt, finds its most vivid reflection here. Imagine, almost the entire area of the lobby - a round pond, twenty-five meters in diameter. Yes, not just a reservoir, but decorated so skillfully in the form of a pond with a bridge in the middle of natural logs fastened together with thick ropes, and in the water there are plants similar to our line and cattail, which to the maximum extent reflects the naturalness of Nature, namely Ukrainian (or Russian ), that is, our latitudes.
As I was convinced later, in the Savoy 5 * hotel, water, in the form of fountains, ponds, streams and, of course, pools, is at every step. And if the Egyptians were pagans, I am more than sure that their main God would be the God of Water.
To be honest, I was pleasantly shocked when, after walking a few meters from the entrance deep into the lobby, I saw Water in the center.
And not just water, as in many other hotels, in the form of fountains, but a real pond! And that's not all marvel in this corner of the Red Sea. Here, our backwater is reflected to the smallest detail, almost swampy with black water (the bottom of this reservoir is painted black) and this contrasts especially against the background of the white marble of the shores. In this backwater grow six bushes of tropical plants with long stems, something like our reeds. And one gets the impression of the expected picture that because of these “reeds” a terrible water one will suddenly appear and howl so that the blood freezes in the veins ...
And that is not all! You are invited without fail (because there is no other way) to go through this damn backwater for real, as in ancient times in our remote Ukrainian farm, a wooden bridge built without a single nail from ordinary logs connected by a rope!
This last element of the interior of the hall made such an impression on me, a native of the countryside, that I almost cried tears of the sensitivity of the Soul - it was so close to me in spirit. And where - in distant lands, thousands of kilometers from their native places, on the border of Africa with Asia, moreover, in one of the most luxurious hotels on the Red Sea. Even for this backwater in the lobby, made contrary to logic and all the principles of special luxury, it was worth paying a thousand dollars to see this masterpiece and stay next to it in the hotel for ten days! And this is not the only place in the Savoy 5 * hotel that affects me so sensitively.
Only one thing raises doubts: will every urbanized tourist who has never seen a real backwater in wildlife, and not in an artist’s picture, and will appreciate what he is so persistently trying to bring to us a genius artist-designer?
Here, in this fashionable hotel, is part of my homeland! Perhaps this hotel was designed in those distant 80s of the last century, my brilliant countryman, as an echo of the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United Arab Republic and the warming of relations since the mid-1980s, thanks to the personal participation of the President Hosni Mubarak...
But the Savoy 5 * hotel is still in an Arab country, and not in Ukraine or Russia.
That is why the vestibule along the entire circumference around the "devil's backwater" has Arabic-style arched entrances and openings with wooden lattice structures made of many chiseled dark brown elements. I saw similar structures in other 5* hotels, for example, in the Grand Rotana hotel, but there the wooden elements of the structures are made not of chiseled, but of blocks. Here, at the Savoy Hotel, everything is thought out to the smallest detail, and even these little things are executed at the highest level.
But the hall should be a real hall and have comfortable soft chairs, sofas and coffee tables next to them. And therefore, all this is available on small areas of white marble near the water itself and a little higher around the pond, as well as at the reception - for business meetings, procedures related to the settlement and recreation. At the entrance to these sites, two large black vases with tropical plants are installed.
Hotel check-in
Rooms
The number of rooms at the Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5 * hotel has 414 rooms.
Room types:
Standard Garden View Rooms. Standard Pool View Rooms, Standard Sea View Rooms, Triple Garden View (Family Rooms), 2 rooms for disabled people, Diplomatic Suites Presidential Suite (200 sqm, sea view).
Room price:
Standard Garden - $750
Triple (Family) Room - $798
Interconnecting Garden View - $798
Pool View - $846
Interconnecting Pool View - $894
Seaview - $942
Interconnecting SeaView - $990
Diplomatic Suite Garden View - $1998
Diplomatic Suite Pool View - $2278
Diplomatic Suite Sea View - $2558
Presidential Suite Sea View - $4206
The location of the rooms.
The rooms in their internal content in their category differ little from each other. Their main qualitative difference is their remoteness, first of all, from the sea and, secondly, from the hotel "civilization" and from the main restaurant. These are three spheres of constant and daily use of the tourist: the restaurant - the sea, the beach - and entertainment.
The worst arrangement of rooms in the buildings of the Savoy Hotel, as in many other hotels of the first beach line of Sharm El Sheikh, is in the buildings located outside the main hotel building towards the entrance gate - on a plateau, and not on terraces near the sea . One gets the impression that such buildings are outside the active recreation area of the hotel, where pools, bars, restaurants are concentrated, animation is carried out, that is, the entire infrastructure for recreation and are located in the technical area of the hotel, where warehouses, garages and other premises and office buildings economic purpose. Naturally, much less attention is paid to the improvement and maintenance of this “secondary” territory. And even in these buildings, the most inconvenient, in terms of location, rooms are in the ends of these buildings that are farthest from the main building - near the road to the sea, on the border with a neighboring hotel.
At the same time, there are rooms of the same category and at the same price, but in more prestigious places, on the same level with the main pool or a little higher - on the terraces, this is in buildings No. 2 and 3, and they are located mainly on ground floor on the far side of the buildings from the main pool.
They gave me room 6116 in the sixth building - this is practically outside the hotel's recreation area, next to and at the same level as the worst building No. 7. The porter grabbed my things to bring to the room and earn his dollar tip, but was stopped by me: I asked first to show the room itself and the view from its window. As I expected (judging by the answer to my written request to find the possibility of normal conditions for creativity), they gave a room that was not quite suitable - with a view not of the garden, but of the bare walls and roofs of the lower buildings. The condition and renovation of the room, although exceptional, was of the least interest to me.
Such a wilderness ...(By the way, this number is “on duty” and it is offered to everyone who comes back in a row: I saw it on the card of tourists from Alma-Ata, who also refused it and were given a number in the second building in 2007; about the amount of the surcharge, if such was, I can not judge, I do not know). And at about one in the morning, I nevertheless decided to check into the originally provided room ...I chose the best of the two worst options. There is no bad without good. While the issue of improving the room was being resolved (or not resolved), I had enough time to get used to the hotel - the territory and its face - the lobby (hall).
Rooms.
The room that I was given (No. 6116, building 6 - to the left of the main building) is of a solid size, like the entire Savoy 5 * hotel and like everything in it. First of all, what I liked is that the room is replete with natural wood, from the massive front door to the cabinets.
And this furniture is made in the style of "retro", it can be considered antique, which creates a special charm for the entire interior of the room. Only one thing surprises me, how could such a luxury be preserved for decades and with a change of several hundred guests? It is possible that it had to be constantly restored.
At the entrance to the room - just two wardrobes, which is very convenient. Between them is an open niche with lighting, mirrors and a painting. In this niche there is a kettle and, daily replenished, the necessary set for tea and coffee. True, tea is only one variety - Lihton (Yellow Label - the cheapest), at the same time a couple of weeks ago at the Grand Rotana 5 * hotel, the tea set was completed with three varieties of tea, including Twinings (of London). A trifle, but nice.
Under the tea section is a safe (new, works like a watch), and below is a mini-bar. In the "Standard" room category and the "BB" ("Breakfast Only") food system, it is empty, so I used it as a mini fridge.
Unfortunately, it cools slightly: even the water in it is a little cool. Saving…
To the left of the entrance is a bathroom with a toilet. Large sizes - up to six square meters and, which surprised me, three sections with some individual isolation: a toilet (an outdated toilet bowl, no bidet, which can be a reason for inconvenience, especially for the female half), a washbasin, and behind it a shower-bath behind a glass partition. The washbasin is equipped with everything you need, from a hair dryer to mirrors, as well as a daily updated set of shampoo, gel, lotion and soap in Savoy branded packaging and mini bottles. In the bathroom compartment, the shower head is built into the wall, but I did not experience any discomfort from this, as some write in their reviews. The bathroom itself is large and clean. I took a bath several times - I enjoyed it very much ...
Next - a large square-shaped living room - 25 sq. m..
All the furniture is also made of solid wood, in a retro style, but not old, apparently, it is regularly restored and the lining is changed. TV - plasma with a large (up to one meter) screen. There are a hundred channels in total, five of them are Russian (3) and Ukrainian (2) - No. 11.34, 80.81, 86 (it would not hurt to indicate all these channels with their names in the memo to the tourist when checking in, so that the tourist does not constantly scour all one hundred channels looking for what you need).
For the entire width of the living room of the room there is a plastic window with a glass door on roller sliders. Exit to a large, about 15 square meters balcony. There would be a wonderful view if it were not for the closed space (on the ground floor with numbers 6001 and up to 6048 - the garden of a narrow strip with the wall of the next building) or with a view of the roofs of all buildings located below (numbers 6101 - 6148, my room, including).
The balcony deserves special mention.
This is not a balcony, but a whole living room with two sofas, with soft pillows on them, comfortable armchairs and a coffee table. And, of course, in the Arabic style, with an arch. If it were not so hot at night (after all, August is the hottest month in Egypt), we could spend the night on the balcony. Surprisingly, for the entire period of my vacation, I did not see or hear a single nasty mosquito buzzing, even somehow unusual. And all because electric fumigators are installed throughout the Savoy Hotel under the guise of small boulder stones with gratings.
The room has a silent air conditioner that works so efficiently that it can be used for a short time and will be enough for a comfortable temperature.
August 23.2017. Sunday
Beach. Sea
Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5* Hotel owns 300 meters of sandy beach "White Knight" of Shark Bay, which are washed by the warm waters of the Red Sea all year round and are ideal for swimming, snorkeling and diving. Two pontoons of 25 and 30m (entrance to the sea - only on pontoons). A beautiful coral reef and a wide sandy beach, the width of the beach strip is 40 m. There are enough sun loungers on the beach for all hotel guests. Strict demarcation in places under the sun for "Royal Savoy" 5 *, "Savoy" 5 * and "Sierra Resort": on the left side - a small area of the Royal Savoy beach of increased comfort, fenced off from the rest of the beach by a wall of dense cut bushes; further on? the length of the beach - “Savoy”, its beach is fenced off from the beach of “Sierra Resort” with just sun loungers piled on top of each other ...
Early morning of the first day of my first acquaintance with the sea and corals off the coast of the Red Sea at the Savoy 5 * hotel.
The first thing that impresses is a wide sandy beach - naturally, I emphasize, sandy along its entire length: from new buildings to the border with the Island View Resort 5 * hotel and from the very edge of the water - inland. Four rows of umbrellas with sun loungers. Moreover, all the sun loungers in the Savoy 5 * hotel are of a new design made of aluminum alloy with a rectangular shade hinged overhead. I met such sun loungers at the Grand Rotana 5 * hotel, but only by the pools, but everywhere here. And it's already impressive.
This is a natural beach with direct access to the sea, as we are used to in the Black or Azov Seas! And not the beach in separate sections on the platforms among the rocks at a height of five meters or more above the sea, as is the case with many hotels on the first beach line of Sharm El Sheikh.
I, like a lark, wake up at dawn, and therefore I have the opportunity to take the best sun lounger - on the first line of umbrellas near the sea and closest to the pontoon.
The fact is that even though the beach is adjacent to the sea itself, the entrance to the sea is possible only by pontoons, of which there are two. True, the right one (if you look at the sea) is located on part of the beach of the Sierra Resort hotel, but it is still accessible to all hotel guests. Only sun loungers and towels - others, striped - this is so that vacationers from the less prestigious Sierra Resort hotel are not located on the beach of the Savoy 5 * hotel. The same goes for the pools. And the guests of the Sierra Resort hotel have bracelets on their hands. But this is not about this, secondary, but about a great beach!
I look at this long and wide sandy beach and I can't help but rejoice: such a beach beauty! I have lost the habit of such beaches, recently being only in Sharm El Sheikh. In Hurghada, where I have been before, there are also beaches near the water, but there they are short and in artificial bays between two long artificial piers - also parts of the beach.
Such a real beach pleases me so much that when I look at this exceptional phenomenon in my resort epic in Sharm El Sheikh, I cannot hold back the nostalgic, betrayal tear of sensitivity that betrays me. It betrays my feelings, which, unfortunately, in our cruel material world are perceived, at best, with surprise, at worst, which happens more often, with contempt ...
Tiran Island
I look and try, by realizing with my mind that I see pictures of the subtle world with my inner gaze, to transfer them to the external, real world. This is the essence of my creativity. For example, while relaxing on the beach of the Savoy 5 * hotel, I look at the island of Tiran and its mountains, and they, towering over the Red Sea, seem to me in their supremacy over the elements of the sea.
After all, why conceal the truth, the mountains already existed before the appearance of the seas and oceans, when the outer shell of the earth's crust was formed and life on Earth was ruled by fire-breathing volcanoes, spewing magma from its depths. And one sign on the mountain of Tiran Island confirms this - a horizontal strip of solidified magma. Before, while relaxing in my four previous hotels in Sharm El Sheikh, I saw Tiran Island, but only in passing, not as deeply as now, and therefore they did not impress me so much and there was no reason for creativity, even superficial. Now my feelings are seething and playing, but I don’t know yet, so clearly and with awareness they will manifest themselves in this world in the form of lines on a piece of paper ...
The underwater world of the Red Sea at the Savoy Hotel 5 *
Coral reef. corals
"Shark Bay" is not much different in certain areas of the hotels located in it. I am already in the fourth hotel in this bay and did not notice any special differences.
Yes, the territory of hotels, architecture and landscape design, as a visiting card for all hotels, are radically different, even the coast and beaches (only the pontoons are the same for all - mostly plastic blue and white), differ from each other. But the sea, its inhabitants and the coral reef are almost identical, with a few exceptions, and even then, for a very observant eye. The remoteness of the coral reef from the coast is very significant. Here, at the Savoy 5 * hotel - only thirty meters (on the left, at the Royal Savoy 5 * hotel, and on the right, at the Sierra Resort 5 * hotel - a little longer) - a miser, compared to hotels north along the Sinai peninsula where the pontoons to reach the coral reef, hundreds of meters long! And in this regard, the Savoy 5 * hotel is pleasantly pleasing.
Moreover, to the left of the short pontoon (which is closer to the Royal Savoy Hotel), in violation of the Egyptian Environmental Legislation, corals were nevertheless cleared, almost to the very shore (five meters remain), and therefore the coral reef begins almost at the shore, which gave me the ability to go into the sea, if the lifeguard does not see it, directly from the beach, which I did several times. But in general, the line of the coral reef in Shark Bay either approaches the shore by ten meters, as it is at the cape of the neighboring hotel under construction - on the border with the Four Seasons 5* hotel, then moves away up to a hundred meters.
On the second day of my stay at the Savoy Hotel, I nevertheless made a swim along the reef in both directions from the hotel, almost a kilometer, I saw the reef along its entire length. And I got so carried away, losing track of time and space, that I didn’t notice how the ebb tide carried me so far, almost to the Four Seasons Hotel 5 *.
And I thought with horror that again, as it was this spring, when I sailed to the border from the Grand Oasis 5 * hotel, security will jump out from behind a rock and start screaming wildly and waving like a windmill, hands with a walkie-talkie, that I violated the territorial waters of the hotel, where princes and princesses of royal blood rest. And so, with great difficulty, keeping as close as possible to the reef, where the current is less, I barely swam to my pontoon - no less than forty minutes. And this is only some 200-300 meters! On the other hand, I fully explored the topography of the reef and the seabed in this area and have a complete understanding of it, which is important for its description.
It is the loss of time and space that characterizes the state when you swim along a coral reef and admire the beauty and diversity of its inhabitants ...And so it can take half an hour, or an hour, or more ...Until you finally freeze, which is very difficult, being all the time in motion and at a water temperature of more than +26? S. From the grace of the sea, you jump out onto a hot beach to warm up, so that in half an hour, after warming up, you continue your pleasure from contemplating the underwater world and the coral reef.
Due to the fact that the coral reef has protrusions about five meters towards the open sea, then depressions towards the land, there is an additional interest in its observation: when you swim along the reef, you get the impression that you are watching a movie with diverse and non-repeating plots.
After all, there is not a single square meter of reef with corals similar to each other: the beauty and their diversity never ceases to amaze you. Moreover, after visiting the same coral reef dozens of times, you think: “Well, what else can I see in it? Tired of the monotony, it's time to change the hotel! » But when you look closely at the reef and the corals on it, you discover more and more layers of unknown beauty, and there are an infinite number of such stories - life will not be enough to consider and explore them!
The corals on the reef at the Savoy 5 * hotel are practically the same as at the Grand Rotana 5 * hotel, which I described above and their varieties are no more than ten to fifteen. Yes, and the coral reef is the same - not a sheer rectilinear wall, but with ledges and depressions, which creates, as I already wrote, additional interest for research in these kind of coral lagoons.
Daily, several times a day, diving into the underwater world in a mask and snorkel, allowed me to supplement my knowledge of the Red Sea reef, compared to the knowledge that I accumulated in my past visits to Sharm El Sheikh hotels.
The most beautiful and attractive, albeit few in number, coral color here is a bright lilac color, with its various variations of shades towards purple and crimson colors. And this is all against a light beige background of the rest of the numerous corals. They are very different in shape: in the form of numerous small Christmas trees, lumps, “pencils” with pointed ends and numerous processes along their lateral surfaces, sinuous, worm-like formations, etc. , enclosed in a common spherical shape.
Bright matte-white corals attract attention and also please the eye - such an interesting and unusual color, as if illuminated from the inside ...These are the corals that appear on the surface during low tides. But in the air, they no longer have such bright colors. When I looked closely at the gray mass of the rest of the corals, I found some of their masterpieces there too. I especially liked corals in the form of small columns closely spaced to each other with bright whitish tips - growth points. They somehow reminded me of our usual hedgehog! It was against its background that I saw, off the coast of the Grand Rotana Hotel, a motionless chameleon fish hiding with the same rippled spots on its back.
Here, on a coral reef, for the first time in the Red Sea, I saw two types of seaweed: one - in the form of a piece of brown mink or sable fur, only with longer hair.
And these hairs played like a fan, in accordance with the internal flows of water. The second type of algae is also playing on the internal currents, but already in the form of elongated swamp-colored balls. These are the only living and mobile algae among the frozen "mummies" of corals. In these algae, one feels an active, and therefore fleeting, life - for several years. At the same time, corals, wise in their calmness, already live for thousands of years and will live for the same amount more ...if a person allows them. These algae, moving on the underwater currents, together with colorful fish, bring to the frozen world of corals and against their background, a feeling of active life.
Low tides on the Red Sea periodically alternate with high tides, but chaotically, without reference to the time of day.
And he dies if he cannot escape over the edge of the coral reef - there, to a five-meter depth. And, since corals do not have legs or fins, like fish, they naturally die. And on this wide strip of the seabed, they have long since died, long before the detrimental impact on human Nature, leaving a sad picture of the dead zone for the eyes. But life was once rampant here, because it was not just that corals appeared and grew for thousands of years ...
It turns out that Nature also has such “inhuman” cruelty that can destroy and heartlessly destroy life, that is, itself! Without reason, without pity and any compassion towards a dying life. And I used to think that Nature is ideal and without evil ...
When I look at this underwater living world ruined by someone’s evil will, I, like the character of a famous film, want to cry and say: “It’s a pity for the bird ... ” At the same time, causing laughter from others ...I want to exclaim indignantly: “How I hate this, incredibly cruel, our World! And with what pleasure I would destroy you! » True, I would have destroyed, including myself, as part of this World, since I also have enough of this evil. And the fact that for two hours now I have been sensually crying with my inner crying because of the ruined beauty of Nature is due to the moment during which I penetrated into the world of absolute goodness and goodness during the creative process. And at the same time, I thought, and not for the same reason that the saint from the caves of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra cried all his life? And what a pity that I didn't get it...
Bottom topography behind a coral reef.
Positive for the coral reef and all underwater flora is the fact that the reef is located almost on the horizontal platform of the seabed. A little further, after 5-10 meters from it, the bottom deepens at an angle of 30-45? to a depth of twenty or more meters! Moreover, the platform to the left of the short pontoon is larger and longer than to the right. There are also various underwater animals on this site, but most of them live near the coral reef, where there is an abundance of food for them. That is, corals are a favorable environment for the life of various plankton and other microscopic lower plants and animals, which the Red Sea fish love so much.
An interesting bottom of the sea with its originality at the pontoon (on the left, if you look at the sea). To the left and in front of him, even at great depths, there are many corals and there is one huge, five meters in diameter, coral in the form of a spherical block of crowded green “ropes”.
And to the right to the depth there is a crevice between the corals, the bottom of which is even deeper! Such a landscape of the underwater world near the pontoon, in all likelihood, is explained by the fact that from the section of the sea cleared of corals to the left of it, all the corals were moved here, to a depth in front of the pontoon. And these corals have taken root in a new place.
Rescuer of the Red Sea.
A man sits on the edge of the pontoon, usually a young Arab in good physical shape in a special distinctive dress: in the Savoy 5 * hotel, this is a white T-shirt with an inscription on the back, as in all beach workers - "Life Guaro", and black shorts.
Watching the work of the "rescuer" on the pontoon, I came to the conclusion that the main task of this person is to save the Red Sea from people - vacationers, and not the vacationers themselves, he looks so carefully and warns with his piercing whistle any, even a minor violation of environmental legislation: I swam close to the corals, was above them - he whistles; went into the water from the shore for a meter and a half to dash into the water under the reef (there is such a place cleared of corals to the right of the pontoon with an entrance from the shore) - he whistles ...He takes out with his sharp whistle all the vacationers on the beach, especially those who doze off. And, most often, at low tide, when everyone is curious: what is left there, at the bottom after the water has left?
I felt this duty of his to save the Red Sea from people three times today: when I went into the sea from the side of the beach - to the edge of the cleared reef, and this is about three meters from the shore and flopped into a crevice under this reef. The "rescue" whistle was late when I was already under water and had no particular effect on me. And I ignored him, which made the “rescuer” very upset. He was right when he thought: "If this one broke the rules once, then he will break the rules all the time. "
And therefore I was constantly, during my entire voyage, under the vigilant control of his strict gaze ...The second time I received a warning from the restless caretaker of the Red Sea - when I chatted with a rope with a buoy, slapping my new girlfriend fish on the nose, which since yesterday has been constantly swimming up to me and provokes me to play with her when I find myself on her territory (in the extreme left corner from the pontoon - swim up, she will also play with you! ) - again the “rescuer” whistle. Okay, I think yours took! I left my fish girlfriend, no matter how offended I was, and swam further, along the perimeter of the permitted swimming area, away from the annoying watchman to look for new adventures.
And the third time, when, swimming along the buoys, I saw a small black box with a red protrusion on the side and a long “tail” - either pipes or ropes (as it turned out later, it turned out to be a French-made shark repeller, which I wrote about in the comments to the reviews Hotel Manager Jacques Peter). Well, how was it possible not to pay attention to such a curiosity and swim past without hitting it? After all, at such a depth (about fifteen meters) at the bottom there are no longer any corals, and fish - all the more so: solid, with rare exceptions, emptiness and monotony - to the point of boring! Such sadness overwhelms you. And this is doubly - against the backdrop of bustling life near the coral reef itself. But what can you do, the day before I “signed up” to explore the topography of the seabed outside the coral reef near the Savoy Hotel and describe it ...And I couldn’t help myself not to pull this “tail” and received the third whistle-remark . Well, I think I got it!
By the way, once again about the whistles of the "rescuer" and about its main function here. Resting on the beach and, naturally, sometimes plunging into the kingdom of the god Morphia (not having smoked a hookah, but simply falling asleep), you suddenly wake up in a cold sweat and with a rapid heartbeat from a sharp, like a dagger in the heart, the whistle of the “rescuer” - this is how he warns one out of a hundred vacationers who entered the water a meter or two from the shore. And whistles until he comes out of the water. He whistles and waves his arms vigorously to one, and hundreds are horrified by his whistle! And so you want to shove the whistle to the whistler somewhere! . . And at low tide, when there are many who want to look at the gifts of the sea, there are dozens of times more of these piercing whistles and not only on the beach of the Savoy Hotel, but also along the entire coast of Shark Bay.
You came thousands of kilometers away to relax, to sleep nicely in the shade of an umbrella under the sound of the sea surf, and then there is such a cacophony of whistles that are annoying, like daggers to the Soul, that you start cursing both the Savoy Hotel and its beach ...
Well, something must be done with this whistler for the benefit of hundreds of vacationers! For example, to confiscate his whistle and force him to run (running is useful for everyone) along the beach and culturally explain to the violators the main positions of the Egyptian environmental legislation in the Sinai Peninsula.
Fish of the Red Sea.
This year I have been resting in Shark Bay for the fourth time. And therefore now, at the Savoy 5 * Hotel, when for the first time I dived with a mask and a snorkel under the water, I involuntarily (to myself) exclaimed: “Hello, my old friends fish! I missed you very much! “I don’t know if they heard me, but they surrounded me in a dense flock, most of them striped, as I called them earlier, “Ward No. 6”.
She flaps her large wide fins like a bird's wings, only she swims in a vertical position, and not in a horizontal one, like a bird. But still, sometimes, turning around, it takes a horizontal position for a few seconds and then its view is amazing. Moreover, the size is quite large compared to other fish - up to forty centimeters in length! Sometimes you think that it looks more like a stingray - the same shape and with pointed tail fins ...
Among the new species of fish, I got acquainted here with a fish with a “flattened”, flat nape - I have not yet thought of a name for it, but I don’t know the real one. And also - with two species of chameleon fish, one of which is marsh-colored, trying to be invisible against the background of beige corals, becoming motionless, but it does not work well for her. And the second is pockmarked, really invisible ...
Here, more often than in other places, you can see the large size of the Napoleon fish.
And in general, large fish off the coast is a rarity and always causes exorbitant interest and joyful exclamations from vacationers.
Pools
The hotel offers its guests to relax on comfortable sun loungers by the pools: three outdoor pools for adults (two heated in winter), two children's pools (1 heated, 1 with sea water on the beach).
I, as I wrote earlier, am not a supporter of swimming in chlorinated pool water. But still, one day, after a steam room and a sauna (by the way, even with the cheapest BB power system, it is allowed to use this benefit in the daytime at least every day, but once), I experienced some joy of immersing my body, emaciated from steam, into the pool , which is located nearby - five meters from the spa. And, you know, I got pleasure from the reservoir in the open space, which is the pool.
And my friends even complained about anuria with an increase in body temperature up to 39? …
Features of the food system and services "Savoy"
I have not seen such a complex and intricate system of food and services as in the Savoy 5 * hotel in any hotel in Egypt, although I have visited such prestigious hotels as the Sunerise Arabian Beach Resort (Grand Select) 5 *, Sharm- El Sheikh, Grand Rotana Resort & Spa 5*, Sharm El Sheikh.
First of all, it should be noted a special system of cards and receipts, which was introduced in this hotel to recognize different food systems and avoid wearing colored bracelets on your hands. Cards from the room are provided in confirmation of accommodation at the hotel and when signing checks for meals in restaurants, drinks in bars and for various services.
Such a varied catering system using room cards and checks, according to the hotel management, “was introduced for the convenience of guests. Each guest is given the opportunity to choose individually, according to their wishes and possibilities, the most convenient option.
Not everyone likes the All Inclusive system, some prefer only breakfast at the hotel and be free all day from being tied to the hotel (daily excursions, diving from morning to late evening, etc. ), and many, having arrived for two weeks, like visit different restaurants every day, and so that these restaurants do not repeat. The provision of different food systems opens up the possibility of choosing this hotel by potential tourists with different tastes, wishes and preferences, and is not focused only on one contingent of tourists. But my opinion is that the same is possible with a simpler, as in all other hotels in Egypt, a system of three or four multi-colored bracelets.
And vacationers do not have a headache with checking accounts, so that everything is entered correctly in terms of the number of orders and price; so that everything is “zero”, in accordance with the selected power supply system, or on orders in excess of this system; immediately, promptly, drink a glass of water, and not wait five to ten minutes for the order to be completed ...Yes, and the hotel staff, including the number of waiters, can be reduced, rather than recruiting extra ones, in order to reduce the service time for each vacationer. And the contingent of vacationers at the Savoy 5 * hotel, as I noticed, is not such a big bar to perceive bracelets worn on hands as infamy. My conclusion: the check system at the Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5 * hotel was introduced to control so that less hotel staff plundered the hotel and to the detriment of vacationers!
) And many peck at such a “freebie” at half the price, getting not everyone the usual “All inclusive”, but, in fact, full board: breakfast-lunch-dinner. By the way, in order not to duplicate, this power supply system was completely removed.
Therefore, having hardly dealt with this "scam", I took, as I noted above, the "BB" power supply system. Actually, he took a cat in a poke and for a whole week before departure he could not figure out what breed this cat was, and if he was black? Because on all sites in the “BB” section there is only one line, I quote: “Breakfast at the main restaurant Tirana. Drinks and meals during the day for an additional fee. And that's it! Even such a respected website of the tour operator "Join up" generally ignored the "BB" food system and did not include it in the list for detailed review.
Nutrition concept.
A feature of the food system at the Savo 5 * hotel is that, regardless of the concept of food, everywhere in all restaurants, except for the main restaurant "Tirana" (and then only for breakfast, lunch and dinner, in which the buffet system), and Also, in all bars of the hotel and at SOHO Square, payment for ordered dishes and drinks is provided only by checks with the provision of a card - an electronic key to the room for personal identification. If there are zeros in the check, then the ordered dishes are included in the catering concept, if not, then you will have to pay extra. And the concept of food "All inclusive" is divided into several subcategories, and therefore not all "All" is such. And this causes some irritation and discomfort for tourists, especially for beginners. For tourists, the only advantage of such a food system is that there are no bracelets, which, according to the hotel administration, are very “oppressive” for individual citizens.
For hoteliers, the advantage is that, first of all, there is strict control over the consumption of food and drinks to such a degree of rigidity that the waiter himself cannot even drink a glass of juice without an appointment: everything is under control. In this regard, I recall the constant picture of half-meat dishes on distribution even before lunch or dinner, in connection with the uncontrolled nutrition of hotel employees before the appointed time at the Poinciana Sharm Resort 4 *, Sharm El Sheikh, (January 2016 ). In addition, such dishes were not replenished and only the first visitors of the restaurant were enough for them: “Whoever had time, he ate, the rest remained hungry. ” And the disadvantage of such a food system is a certain discomfort for tourists: after all, in order to drink even a glass of water in a restaurant, having come from the beach, you need to order it, and orders with a sufficiently large number of restaurant visitors, which naturally, are not executed instantly.
“When the hotel is fully loaded, the lead time really increases, ” confirms the hotel representative himself.
So evaluate what is better: moral discomfort with a “collar” on your hand or physical discomfort from red tape with service.
The Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5 * hotel provides the following food systems:
BB - $750
Breakfast at the main restaurant Tirana. Drinks and meals throughout the day at an additional cost.
HBDR - Half Board Dine Around - $942
DINE AROUND HB - half board, includes breakfast and dinner.
Drinks for an additional fee
Special All Inclusive - ("Hard All") - $1090
Temporary special offer of a simplified "All Inclusive" only for the tour operator "Join UP" (I have not met with other tour operators): includes only breakfast, lunch and dinner in the main buffet restaurant and local drinks in all hotel bars (non-alcoholic, alcoholic , water, tea, instant coffee).
All Inclusive - "E Class" - $1038
Main restaurant "Tirana": breakfast, lunch and dinner.
A-la-carte restaurants (Italian, Asian, Hot Rock Caligula International Restaurant): dinner. Snacks and ice cream at the pool bar and on the beach.
In room: Soft drinks (Pepsi, Seven up, juice, small mineral water) and beer (once per stay)
Ultra All Inclusive - “S Class” - $1926
Meals: Lunch at the Fish Ala Carte restaurant, dinner at any a-la-carte restaurant (Italian, Fish, Asian, Hot Rock Caligula International Restaurant). The food system includes 9 restaurants in SOHO Square (Indian, Chinese, Thai, Oriental, 2 Japanese restaurants, Mediterranean restaurant, Lebanese cafe, Steak House): dinner by prior reservation. According to the "S Class" system, it is possible to visit all a-la-carte restaurants once on a special menu.
In room: Mineral water, beer, soft drinks (once per stay - provided on the second day after arrival). In the Diplomatic suites: mineral water, beer, soft drinks and snacks with daily replenishment.
Everything else is the same as in the "E Class" system.
In the restaurant "Tirana", regardless of the food system, only soft drinks, beer and local wine are served during lunch and dinner (strong alcoholic drinks are not served).
Restaurants. Bars. General information
The Savoy Sharm El Sheikh has 5.14 restaurants (13 a-la-carte: 8 in SOHO Square), 16 bars (10 in SOHO Square),
Restaurants of the Savoy Hotel
Tirana
Main buffet restaurant.
International cuisine. Breakfast 06:30 - 10:30. Lunch 13:00 - 15:00. Dinner 18:30 - 21:00. (Indoors).
For children, there is a diet corner, a children's fast food menu and even high chairs.
The main restaurant "Tirana" provides a selection of dishes to suit different tastes, both European and Middle Eastern.
Breakfast: Includes a corner where chefs prepare egg dishes to your taste: scrambled eggs or scrambled eggs, with or without vegetables, with a coup (for scrambled eggs) or fried eggs - everything at the request of the guest; as well as: falafel, waffles and pancakes, 15 types of hot dishes, a large selection of natural hard and soft cheeses, cold cuts, cold cuts, potatoes, sausages, baked tomatoes, rice and wheat porridge, several types of cereals, fresh pastries, pancakes, salads , breads, yoghurts, jams, honey, butter, seasonal fruits and more.
Lunch and dinner: restaurant "Tirana" offers a choice of main dishes (chicken, meat, fish), soups, side dishes, a corner where chefs prepare fresh pasta and more, salads, a diet corner, seasonal fruits and desserts. Fruits are seasonal.
Themed a-la-carte restaurants in the hotel
In themed restaurants, mainly products and spices from the countries of origin of the dish are used, which is currently difficult due to interruptions in the supply of imports to Egypt and many products have no analogues in Egypt. Therefore, the staff warns about the presence or absence of dishes listed on the menu.
"Rosmarino"
Italian restaurant - a corner of Italy in the heart of the hotel. Connoisseurs of Italian cuisine can enjoy both traditional dishes prepared in accordance with all the canons of national cuisine and chef's author's creations. (Indoors). Dinner: 18:00 - 23:30
East
This superb Asian restaurant serving Asian cuisine including sushi is located on a large and cozy terrace surrounded by oriental-style man-made ponds.
The main dishes are oriental dishes with an emphasis on sushi, sashimi and teppanyaki, as well as wok-fried dishes. Dinner: 19:00 - 23:00
Seafood Island
Amazing views of the azure sea, the calm sounds of the waves and the cool coastal breeze complete the atmosphere of this traditional Mediterranean restaurant. It offers the best selection of fresh seafood, which is prepared right in front of you on an open grill. Lunch 12:00 - 17:00
"Hot Rock - Caligula"
Restaurant "Caligula Hot Rock" - a unique restaurant with an original interior and a new concept of service in Sharm El Sheikh. A piece of volcanic stone is served on your table, which is specially heated for several hours. After that, you can choose for self-cooking any of the proposed dishes: the freshest meat and fish fillets, as well as Australian lamb sirloin, beef ribs, Cajun salmon steak or tuna steak. (Indoors). Dinner: 19:00 - 23:00
Fish restaurant
Dinner by prior reservation for an additional fee (25% discount on food, depending on the food system).
Restaurants in SOHO Square
Bombay, Mai Thai, Luxor, L'Entrec? te, Sushi Lounge, Teppanyaki - Opening hours: 18:30 - 00:00.
Zen, Mandarin Bistro (terrace), Akuna Matata, Fusion 21 - Opening hours: 18:00 - 01:00.
Caf? Chino - Opening hours: 12:00 - 03:00.
Food Court at SOHO Square
9 Restaurants in SOHO Square (Indian, Chinese, Thai, Oriental, 2 Japanese Restaurants, Mediterranean Restaurant, Lebanese Cafe, Steak House): Dinner by reservation at an additional cost (25% discount on food and drinks).
The bars of the Savoy Hotel
Safari
Colonial-style shuttered windows absorb hot sunlight and let you enjoy the coolness. The walls are decorated with beautiful and unusual drawings of animals. Dark wood furniture contributes to an authentic Sahara desert atmosphere. The bar is for adults only. Opening hours: 11:00 - 01:00
Le Balcony
This is the place you need to visit to see the stunning view of the entire hotel and Tiran Island. Relax and enjoy the surroundings. Opening hours (summer only): 19:00 -00:00.
Rocky
The spacious pool bar is an essential part of your holiday. You don't have to waste time waiting for your clothes to dry, you don't even have to leave the pool. Sit on one of the bar stools set right in the water and enjoy a drink from the menu. Opening hours: from 09:00 to sunset (snacks and ice cream from 11:30).
"Oriental Cave"
Here you can try the famous oriental hookah with different flavors, a variety of cocktails. Opening hours: 12:00 to midnight.
"White Knight"
The bar is located on the beach. Here you can order cold drinks with ice, delicious snacks and hookah, which will be delivered to your sun lounger. Opening hours: 09:00 to sunset (snacks and ice cream from 11:30)
Bars in SOHO Square
Ice Bar - Opening hours: 18:30 - 02:00; Mandarin (17:00 - 02:00); Electric & Oxygen Bar (18:30 - 04:00); Queen Vic (12:00 - 01:00); Fontana (17:00 - 02:00); Nightclub Pangea (23:00 - 04:00); Cafe El Kahwa (17:00 - 02:00); Tea Salon - Salon de Th? (16:00 - 00:00); Ju & Co (13:00 - 01:00); Crystal Live Lounge (18:00 - 01:00); View Lounge (17:00 - 02:00); "Heineken" Bar (18:00 - 00:00); "Kitano" Bar (18:00 - 00:00); "Kouroum of the Nile" Bar (18:00 - 00:00).
Special conditions.
Dress code for indoor evenings: long trousers and closed shoes are mandatory for men.
Meals in a la carte restaurants for children under 12 years old are served only from the children's menu.
Recreation in a cool way: "BB" ("Breakfast Only")
I sit on the beach all day, from eight in the morning until six in the evening. But more often, I lie down or sleep. I write a lot. I sleep - because yesterday's, until midnight, visits to the hotel bars are hard to bear. It is also not easy to get used to a one-time meal according to the "BB" - "Breakfast Only" system. But at the same time I feel free, without binding myself to the feeder. There is an opportunity to be by the sea and with the sea all the time - is this not my dream - the dream of the Poet? There is no bad without good!
Everything is good in terms of service, except for one thing: the restaurants and bars in SOHO Square are outside the free market of services and are tied to the Savoy 5 * hotel, to the prices of its tours, and the main consumers of their services are hotel guests who rest on the food system "Ultra All Inclusive". And that is why the prices in them are several times overpriced compared to a-la-carte restaurants in other hotels, both for third-party vacationers and for guests of the Savoy 5 * hotel of other food systems, for which 25% discounts are provided. And all because, in fact, "SOHO Square" is on the balance sheet of the "Savoy" 5 * hotel: all these chic entertainment almost until the morning on an area of more than ten hectares, restaurants, bars, recreation areas, hundreds, if not thousands of employees, service personnel and security ...(After all, nothing happens for nothing! And therefore I would suggest excluding the word “free”, and, moreover, “freebie” from the lexicon, and leave it in dictionaries with the note “humor”). And all this is included in the price of the Ultra All Inclusive tour.
This grandiose show for the whole Sharm El Sheikh is hosted by the Savoy 5* hotel! That is why, when the travel agency first suggested visiting this hotel, I replied that I would not like to pay for the maintenance of SOHO Square, since I was already familiar with this whole area of u200bu200bentertainment three months ago while relaxing at the Grand Oasis by Look Hotels 4 * "(April-May 2017), which is three hundred meters from SOHO Square and visited it several times with free access, though with very careful security control at the entrance, no less thorough than at the airport. That is, resting in the nearest hotels from SOHO Square, or using free bus trips from distant hotels, you can use all this for free.
I really wanted to know, so what is really in this, one of the most luxurious hotels on the Red Sea, as advertising says about it, but at the same time no less controversial hotel, judging by the reviews of tourists who have visited this hotel. And it was the passion of the explorer that drew me to this hotel, not the passion of curiosity. And therefore, in order to feed the “freeloaders” as less as possible, I took a tour at the lowest price - “BB” (“Breakfast Only”) and the cheapest room of the “Standard Garden View Rooms” category (although we must pay tribute to the hotel, the “Standard” rooms are here chic and even the cheapest room in it is better than in some hotels of the 5 * category, and, moreover, 4 *! )
This is the second time I've been in a prestigious 5 * hotel on the BB (Breakfast Only) food system. I used to be in a hotel of this level - "Grand Rotana Resort & Spa" 5 * (from 07.13. to 07.21. 17.
Therefore, in my opinion, the number of cabbage dishes, as the cheapest product, is a litmus test, a criterion for the quality level of a hotel's food. And the Savoy 5 * hotel passed this test perfectly! But I'm not going to extol the restaurateurs and hotel administrators to the skies and write them down as holy virtues. To be honest, the cost of the tour, based on the day, does not allow it to be otherwise. After all, I had 4 * All Inclusive hotels for $ 25 per day (together with the flight), and here, at the Savoy 5 * “breakfast only” hotel - $ 100! Do you feel the difference? At the same time, I spontaneously gave birth to an aphorism: For $100, anyone can feed, try to feed a voracious and, moreover, whimsical Ukrainian for $1!
August 27.2017. Thursday
Breakfast
I, as I already wrote, have a nutrition system - “Breakfast only”, therefore I can describe it in the most detailed way, as I felt it on my own skin, more precisely, on my own stomach.
Given the variety of food for breakfast and its quality at the Savoy 5 * Hotel, from the very beginning I resigned myself to the absence of regular daily lunches and dinners (if I had a special desire, I used them, but for an additional fee), a coma of one - dinner. And all because, starting from noon, barbecues are lit in the courtyard of the Tirana restaurant, and a little later, grilled meat, shish kebabs and so on are fried. At the same time, the smell of specific smoke with a hint of delicious dishes rises and stretches along the corridor of building No. 6, where I live, and even seeps into my room (the Tirana restaurant is located on the floor below). This continues until late at night (dinner ends at 22:00). And every time I return to my room from the beach, I catch this delicious smell with my nostrils, disturbing my stomach and my entire physical being. Well, how not to break the “BB” food system (“Breakfast only”? ) here. But back to our “rams” (breakfasts).
Surprisingly, what was not in any of the twelve hotels in Egypt (including 5 *), where I have been over the past two years, is a very long breakfast, lasting from dawn (from 6:30) until almost lunch (11 : 00) – four and a half hours! This allows not only a long sleep for the lazy and "owls" until almost noon after a "fun" night, including in "SOHO Square", but also to have breakfast twice for "larks", which I belong to, which I sometimes did. Moreover, there is no such strict control over visiting vacationers for breakfast, with a mark in the lists, as it was in my previous hotel according to the “BB” system - “Grand Rotana” 5 *, when there is a risk of billing at the end of the holiday for a second breakfast! But after this article of mine, it is possible that something will appear ...
I always wake up very early, sometimes even before sunrise, and before breakfast I manage to run to the sea, meet the sunrise, capture it in a photo, plunge into the sea (there is not very strict control over this, although swimming is allowed from 8:00 according to the rules: 00) and, importantly, take the best sun lounger - closer to the pontoon and the sea! On the way to the beach and from the beach, take a dozen pictures on the territory of the hotel in soft lighting before the harsh daytime shadows, then drop into the room, take a cold shower (running around the hotel up and down you sweat a lot) and by 7:00 I am already in the restaurant "Tirana". And my rise was so early, despite the late end of the previous day, far after midnight: such is the “climate” here, on the Red Sea. Especially since my physiology “knows” that it will get its share of sleep, and even more, during the day on the beach.
The name of the restaurant "Tirana" is very symbolic, as the hotel "Savoy" 5 * is located in the "Shark Bay" opposite the island of Tiran.
But to take them, if you are not the first, then it is very problematic. The chairs at the tables are soft and comfortable with new drapery, which is obviously updated often. On the tables, as usual, all the necessary utensils, linen napkins, spices, and immediately, as soon as you sit down at the table, the waiter puts a stainless steel thermos with hot coffee and boiling water. By the way, thermoses are excellent and keep the boiling point for several hours! Cups, three types of tea bags, as well as sugar and a bowl of milk are already in advance. That is, the service in this regard in the Tirana restaurant of the Savoy 5 * hotel is impeccable. Only, just like in other hotels of this category, there are no paper napkins on the table and you have to look for them, which is not entirely clear.
The range of dishes for breakfast does not change and is the same from day to day. But on the other hand, there is such a wide variety of them that if you really want to eat them (and not just try them), then a few days will not be enough.
But seven days was enough for me! Today I tried to count them, but after fifty, on more than a dozen pastries, I lost count ...There are more than a dozen jars of jam and marmalade alone - take it open and eat!
The main dish, as in all restaurants in hotels in Egypt, is scrambled eggs and scrambled eggs, cooked in your presence and according to your order: with vegetables, hard cheese or without them. I admire the skill of the cook, with which he so skillfully throws an omelette into the air and catches it on the fly with the other side! For the main course, I would also include bean puree with the addition of vegetables, pepper and olive oil, as well as poured with lime juice, which replaced the first course for me and was poured by the cook from a special pear-shaped container, constantly heated by the fire of an alcohol stove. And next - hot fried lumps of "falafel"!
Of course, after a couple of days you already feel the monotony of the dishes, but you immediately understand that the chefs are trying so that after midnight (and do they sleep at all? ), By six in the morning, cook so many dishes and feed such a bunch of holiday-goers! ..
Further, according to the degree of "materiality", there are hot dishes: sausages of three types: two types - boiled: beef and chicken (to taste - none and differ only in color: light - chicken, red - beef - some kind of divorce! ), the third dish is tastier: the same sausages, but overcooked with vegetables and tomatoes. Then hot boiled eggs, scrambled eggs (I called it "cook's laziness"), hot pancakes with chocolate glaze or jam syrup. And fried potatoes, to tell the truth, are tasteless in all of Egypt and in all restaurants - compared to ours, Ukrainian, and, moreover, Belarusian bulba!
And I had a reassessment of values. As it once seemed to be an unusual and inaccessible hotel, in reality it turned out to be quite ordinary and even inferior to some hotels that I had previously visited. And so I got a little disappointed. Over the past five days, I got used to it and any previously apparent mystery dissipated like fog. That's what habit means. I already knew everything, however, superficially, I experienced everything basic in the hotel, and therefore for me it became almost a gray everyday life. Maybe all this is due to my creative nature, constantly craving more and more new discoveries and impressions. Perhaps this is how the human essence manifests itself in the process of any cognition - movement along the vertical. And the first joys of knowing heights and unusualness soon turn into almost everyday fuss.
At the same time, I am horrified when trying to choose the next hotel and new requirements for it in connection with the already achieved level and imagine how uncomfortable it will be for me in 3 * and 4 * hotels, and even in many 5 *. And that's why I understand those critics who, with such passion, spread in their reviews all the negative perception of this or that hotel. No wonder the Bible says that knowledge leads to sorrow...
Nevertheless, I feel a certain pride in myself that I managed to reach a certain peak of service, increased comfort of a resort holiday, architectural and landscape design. And I calmed down for a while - until I get information about a more comfortable and inaccessible hotel for me. And this, in all likelihood, will be the Four Seasons Resort Sharm El Sheikh 5 * hotel, where breakfast alone, judging by the prices for the tour, will cost me not a hundred dollars, as here at the Savoy 5 * hotel, but all $300 and up, depending on the room category!
That is, for one breakfast you will have to give at least your pension for the year! .
August 28.2017. Friday
Bars. My visits.
Today, in the last days of rest at the Savoy 5 * hotel, having enjoyed the sea to the full - five full days from morning to sunset - on the beach, with a frequency of at least an hour by diving under water in a mask with a snorkel to corals and fish, finally decided to visit the bars of the hotel: it was their turn. Two bars attracted my greatest attention - the Safari lobby bar and the bar at the bottom of the hotel, almost by the sea - Oriental Cave, as they are the most accessible and open until late at night.
Safari lobby bar
The first was the "Safari" bar, which I was casually familiar with, when admiring the lobby and passing the wooden bridge over the "whirlpool", I immediately got into this bar. But then I didn’t even sit down at the table, but only walked around it to have a general idea. Now I decided to devote the whole evening to him.
And after 20:00, when the animation for adults begins (there are different tricks, Miss Mr. Hotel, etc. ), there was not a single person in the bar. I sat in the Safari bar, drinking dry wine, for several hours in a row, almost until closing time, and enjoyed this bar to my heart's content.
What is special about this bar is, like all other restaurants in the hotel and SOHO Square, the dress code is trousers and closed shoes for men and dress for women. In my presence, the bartender refused to serve a young man in shorts and a T-shirt who popped into the bar for a cup of coffee.
In accordance with the name, "Safari-bar" is made with a predominance of paintings of nature and other safari elements: on the end walls there are large oil paintings on canvas, right up to the ceiling: elephants, bison, zebras, rhinos and other wild animals, so natural and detailed depicted, that at first I thought it was just a photo, like a photo wallpaper, but, looking closer, I saw a canvas and paints.
And even the lamps in the bar are made with backlight on their glasses depicting safari animals. Inside the bar - twilight - corresponds to the style and contributes to peaceful rest, friendly conversation and lyrical mood.
In the bar, all the furniture and other elements, as well as the bars on the windows, in the openings and niches, are made of natural wood, which is also in the safari style. On the ceiling there are vaulted niches, originally lined with red refractory bricks. In the niches there are lamps-chandeliers made of blackened copper. The subdued light from these lamps does not disturb the intimate twilight of the bar.
Ceiling fans work interestingly: they rapidly drive fresh air over those tables at which visitors are sitting and barely rotate over empty ones thanks to special sensors: energy saving. So it is always cool in the bar at any time of the day and in the evening.
The overall impression of the lobby bar "Safari" is quite pleasant.
A solid, well-invested bar with an original style that has been hard-worked by talents in architecture and design. However, unfortunately, this bar remains, for some unknown reason, unclaimed. With almost 100% occupancy of the hotel - such a minuscule number of visitors! Perhaps this is because the main contingent of guests of the Savoy 5 * hotel are Arabs, and oriental people do not like to stay in bars for a long time, and the Koran forbids the use of alcoholic beverages as a reason to extend your stay in a bar for several hours ...
"Oriental Cave"
My next visit was a bar near the beach - "Oriental Cave", which is located next to the Asian restaurant "Eest". So often advertised bar under the waterfall, I have not seen day or night. And all because the roof of the bar, which is also the bottom of the waterfall pool, is leaking.
Therefore, for the whole day, the stone walls and the roof are so hot under the August sun that they do not give even the smallest chance for a comfortable rest, even in the late evening hours. For this reason, there are practically no visitors in this bar. However, for the purity of the experiment, I still stood in this bar for more than two hours - this is my feat! Only thanks to the fact that I went into it before everyone else and chose a table, as elsewhere in the bars of the Savoy 5 * hotel, with chic soft chairs and a sofa, at the only most serviceable fan, although it rattled like a tractor. The rest of the fans, if they worked, then intermittently. Near the table was the company of the director of this bar with the guests. That's all for that time bar visitors. True, a few more people jumped in for 5-10 minutes - to smoke a hookah ...
But today, even before breakfast, the usual rhythm of life was already disturbed by impressions of the architectural and landscape design of the lower part of the hotel - right by the beach ...
Territory. Architecture. Design
“Magnificent architecture and expressive architectural appearance, the elegant design of the Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5 * hotel prepares you a lot of pleasant surprises: a cave bar hiding in the shadow of a seething waterfall, a winter garden, many fountains and openwork bridges, amazing blue illumination of the hotel at night time. The territory of the hotel is immersed in greenery. Flora and fauna, waterfalls and picturesque landscapes will not leave you indifferent. Tropical landscape and evergreen vegetation - a real oasis, located between the mountain ranges and the pristine coast of the Red Sea. - This is just an advertisement, at least two years old, and does not quite correspond to the reality of those realities at the end of August 2017, when I was in this hotel.
) hours waiting for a better view from the window of the room than on the roofs of buildings, which was uselessly requested twice by letter three weeks before arrival. Yes, there is amazing flora and picturesque landscapes, but there is no fauna in the hotel, except for lizards on the territory, and many pigeons on the beach, especially when children feed them with bread! But this is a plus, only for small children: I watched with great pleasure how they recklessly run after pigeons, trying to grab them by the tail ...
I do not rule out that during short-term checks by the authorities controlling the hotels, everything turns on and is illuminated with an "amazing blue light", even numerous searchlights at a five-meter depth in the sea near the pontoon, but during my eight-day stay at the Savoy Hotel 5 * such a diva and there were no beliefs.
The hotel consists of a main 4-storey round building of the main building and a complex of seven 2- and 3-storey buildings fanning out from it in different directions.
The naturalness of wildlife on this site of the Savoy 5 * hotel with ponds, streams, bridges is displayed to such an extent that you begin to realize that this is all natural, and not an artificial oasis in the middle of the desert. So everything is thought out and implemented to the smallest detail: if it is a stream, then with stones at the bottom, on which sun glare is reflected from the waves on the surface of the water; if it is the bank of a stream, then reeds and other aquatic plants are a must. The only thing missing is live silver fish and imposing turtles in the water of the stream. But immediately you are convinced that this problem has also been solved by a brilliant designer: all this natural living creatures are frozen in bronze on the shore in the form of small sculptural forms and are lazily warming themselves, gleaming, in the sun.
I was so carried away by the pictures of natural Nature that I did not notice how long ago breakfast had already begun. My stomach, as the personification of real physical life, brought me back to reality from the world of spiritual illusions. He pointed out to me that in addition to the spiritual, I also have a physical essence, which also requires at least a fraction of my attention. And I, sighing heavily because of such a mandatory and unwanted ballast imposed on me, trudged to the Tiran restaurant, where all the awakened noble people of the Savoy Hotel had already begun to flock to satisfy their needs for physical food.
Today, only on the third day of my stay at the Savoy Hotel, I turned my attention, and even got used to this small area of the hotel, several hundred square meters, with natural Nature. And even casually slipped past VIP-mansions and villas.
So, I contacted the guest service with a complaint about the work of the room cleaner (two towels were seized from the room), but the problem was solved (plus the dirt in the room after cleaning - I specifically showed the cleaner and the manager, smearing my finger (mine, not theirs) dirty spots on the floor), and “promptly” - three days later, when I closed the janitor in the room (I understand that this is an article of the Criminal Code - restriction of individual freedom) and forced to call the manager ...But I earned two small bottles of water from the manager as compensation inconvenience for these three (! ) days.
Sports and entertainment. Services
Free of charge: Sauna, steam bath, jacuzzi (complex - from 9:00 to 17:00 - one hour a day), (although I was refused and forced to pay, but I refused ... ), 3 outdoor pools, two of them heated in winter period, gym, beach volleyball, darts, 4 clay tennis courts (lighting and equipment rental are paid additionally).
Table soccer. Group training and games - prior agreement required, evening shows (at SOHO Square), Pangea disco (at SOHO Square), bus to Naama Bay (fixed time, 2 times a day), safe at reception, Wi -Fi throughout the hotel (sending messages and browsing), high-speed Internet - for a fee, By world standards, free Internet is always provided with a usage limit. Unlimited access is also provided, but for an additional fee.
For a fee: Bowling, squash, ice rink, billiards, diving school, water sports.
Animation is only on the beach of the Sierra Hotel. There is no animation in the hotel: all show programs are on SOHO Square, which was built in order to transfer entertainment outside the Savoy 5 * hotel, to enable hotel guests, while on vacation, to choose between the silence of the hotel and noisy entertainment at SOHO Square.
For kids
If you would like to invite friends who are not staying at the Savoy Hotel, please note that your meeting can only take place in the lobby area. The admission of visitors to the rooms is prohibited.
Security
The territory of the Savoy 5 * hotel and SOHO Square is patrolled 24 hours by the security service. Only uniformed employees with name badges are allowed to enter the room.
The installation of marine predator safety nets in the Red Sea is not permitted by Egyptian law. The hotel has electronic protection against Sharks ("Shark shield") made in France.
My trip to Naama Bay
I visited Naama Bay today. For government account. True, not the first time, but the second.
At the same time, at the Grand Rotana Resort & Spa 5 * hotel, where I was last month, both trips to Naama Bay are organized in the evening, and the last one is from 22:00 to 24:00, and there is no end to those who wish. Of course, “SOHO Square” is much higher in solidity than Naama Bay, but for a change and comparison, in the evening there would still be those who wish, because I went to SOHO Square twice, enjoyed everything that is there (visually) and the third time I was not drawn there ...
I went to Naama Bay in order to find out more about everything that the Savoy 5 * hotel offers and my research itch pulled me there - to know what no one had yet known and described. So, I'm in Naama Bay. The heat in the sun is over sixty, stuffy, like in a dry steam room and there is not a single tree - there is solid stone around, and the walls of white buildings reflect the midday heat on you. It even seems that the sky is breathing like a hot dome from above on you...Everything froze in this hot, incredibly stuffy stuff.
It is impossible to stand still - it burns the heels like in a hellish frying pan. And so you quickly move your feet: before you had time to bake one foot, the second one had already cooled down in the air, creating a comfortable breeze in motion, and is ready to step on the red-hot stone of the sidewalk again. And so all the way. From the outside, this probably seems ridiculous ...I would have laughed to my heart's content if I myself had not been a participant in this cruel process ...
Always looking for some small shadow. But she’s not there: the Sun has just left the zenith and started looking to the West, but for some reason it’s not in a hurry to go there ...I walk through the deserted streets slowly and, as it were, with self-deepening - the latter somehow helps not to fall into despair and not break loose...
And there is not a soul: the city seems to have died out.
Shops and small shops are deafly closed, all restaurants and bars have covered chairs and tables with gray capes from dust and direct sunlight, which in a day can burn any textile to the state of a faded rag. Only one young Arab loader with long "smoke breaks" (he will unload a couple of boxes - he rests for half an hour) unloads a truck of some drinks in plastic boxes. I try to hide closer to the walls of buildings and not at all in the shade, but so that they would not see me and think of me as some kind of European fool, roaming along the red-hot stone streets in such heat: all smart tourists are right there, through quarter sit up to their necks in the sea on the city beach. By the way, about the city beach in Naama Bay: I visited it and here is my impression. This is something incredible in terms of barbaric neglect.
I just stepped on the beach and couldn’t go further for fear of absorbing all the dirt and all the impurities that were on this beach: torn and greasy mattresses lie on broken sun loungers, the condition, and probably their smell, is the same as ours. Kyiv homeless rooming houses. And in general, the entire strip of the beach presented such a dull and dirty look that I even felt sorry for the handsome Red Sea, who was forced to wash the dirty sand of this beach, taking over part of this brood ...In this situation, I instantly lost the desire to plunge into the waters of the Red Sea and the heat and heat of the stone streets became sweeter, and I quickly retired deep into the white and clean buildings of Naama Bay.
And only closer to four o'clock in the afternoon did the first little men appear - just as slow and dull in their movements, like all this specious day. By five o'clock the sun is already casting long shadows from the white buildings.
The heat subsides by a couple of degrees (from 50 to forty-five), a small fresh breeze appears and you begin to feel comfortable. Moreover, every minute the restless shadow crawls farther and farther along the stone pavement street, winning back its living space from the smoky day. The wind is getting stronger and colder...
I went ten meters deep into the quarter and was also horrified by the devastation that I saw. Worse than in the ruins in the center of old Moscow in the early 90s! (although so far I have never seen worse, except for Hurghada in 2015). And only now I realized the biggest mistake of the administration of the Savoy Hotel, sending their guests at ten in the morning and at noon, and not at night, to watch all this horror! After all, the night includes illumination, searchlights and lighting on sham places of a false celebration of life, hiding the terrible tragedy of everyday life that I saw today ...
I was so dejected and shocked by all this that I completely forgot about the camera around my neck and I did not take a single picture. I was in a fog, until the moment the minibus crossed the border of the Savoy Hotel at the entrance gate and my Savoy 5 * hotel became so nice to me!
God forbid to live, let alone rest in the conditions that I saw an hour ago! And even more pitiful was the young Arabs, who not only live, but also work in these terrible conditions, earning their daily bread ...
Evening mountains of Sinai
Evening. The sun has already disappeared behind the rocky shores of the Red Sea, and from there it casts the red slanting rays of its fading onto the sky and the Earth.
If it were not for the Sun, which makes the Sinai mountains play so beautifully, they would remain invisible, like a props in the west of the peninsula, distant, tens of kilometers from civilization. They just wouldn't be noticed. And if in the Crimea the mountains are literally at arm's length from the sea and they impressed me so much that I created a whole cycle of poems about them, then here, on the Sinai Peninsula, only today I really examined them, almost the only time in the last two of the year. And the role of the Sun in this case, as a catalyst for sensory perception of distant mountains. And for this I am very grateful to the Sun that it revealed to me one more facet of Nature from the environment of the Red Sea.
August 29.2017. Saturday
Last day at the beach
The last, seventh, full day at Savoy 5*. Tomorrow is the flight. The speed of time is incredible.
Everything good and beautiful comes slowly, lingers a little longer with me, and instantly disappears into the past, it becomes already “yesterday”.
I, as always, from early morning and for the whole day - on the sea: the beach in the shade of an umbrella, periodic, for half an hour, or even for an hour, swims along the reef in a mask with a snorkel: the water temperature allows it. I dilute the monotony of beach pictures with an inexhaustible variety of coral species and various colorful fish. I even began to bring them into a system and memorize individual plots of repetitive pictures of fairy tales of the underwater world, that is, to put things in order in my impressions of the Red Sea, as at home.
The last day… I looked inside myself and tried to extract from there the answer to the question: “What do I feel? ” Got the answer: “Satisfied, with a sense of accomplishment!
» Even in Kyiv, I set myself the task of looking from the inside at such a controversial hotel, which seems to tourists who have visited it and write reviews, but at the same time, is advertised as a fashionable hotel and therefore pulls prices for tours to it to the highest levels that I met in Egypt. And, in principle, I coped with this task. First, as much as possible, I saw everything with my own eyes. Secondly, I recorded especially sensual things that touched me to the depths of my Soul on dozens of sheets of paper - it will be, at least within a month after arrival in Kyiv, to “rake”, digitize and share with my subscribers on the Internet.
Thirdly, and most importantly, even more was fixed in my subconscious against my will and will definitely come up when I describe my impressions of the Savoy 5 * hotel, just by looking at the photos that I took or reading a line of my manuscripts. And so my day passes calmly and balanced, without any nuances.
And time flows inexorably, winding the rings of current plots on a ball of similar plots of the past. And lunch has already begun on the beach. Waiters in white uniforms scurry all over the beach with trays, with various dishes and drinks on them for at least half of the remaining beachgoers who have been in the morning. The rest were not too lazy to walk a few hundred meters in such an August heat and preferred the comfort of the hotel restaurants, with a much larger variety of dishes. And the concentrated work of the jaws begins to chew everything ordered.
In such heat, at all times, both before lunch, during it, and after, which is natural, a sea of liquid is poured inside from various packages and containers: from metal jars, from glasses, bottles, glasses, wine glasses with and without tubes … Indeed, for many, all this is free, that is, according to the “All inclusive” system. And at the end of this whole procedure, pink sheets of bills for lunch dishes and drinks flash everywhere, which are signed by well-fed tourists, in most cases, without looking.
After - gleam in the rays of the Sun and in the hands of the same waiters - hookahs, spreading a haze of fragrant smells along the beach - the joy of an oriental person and an integral attribute of his daily lifestyle. Our Europeans also joined him. One should not be surprised here: tradition is tradition, especially for many centuries, if not millennia.
In a short period of time I visited several different hotels in Egypt, ranging from 3 * to luxurious 5 *. And I had to see, meet and communicate with many different people in these hotels. Thanks to this, I have the opinion that the “star” of a hotel is like a sieve that sifts people from all over the world in order to single out a certain category of them and place them in a particular hotel. Speaking figuratively, I would say that the "star" of the hotel is a criterion of caste, that is, the belonging of a vacationer in this hotel to one or another caste of our world community, like castes in India. Naturally, the main criterion for sifting is the price of the tour, and the "star" of the hotel in which a person is resting can indicate his social level.
Yes, because 70% of all vacationers at 3 * and 4 * resorts in Egypt are Ukrainians, and in the conditions of the war in Ukraine, a sharp rise in the price of everything, only those working in the field of trade and similar areas, as well as thieves and bribe-takers, can afford expensive foreign resort…
In abbreviation. Full text: "Holidays in Egypt" https://www. facebook. com/sashasim. Egypt/
And in the book: Sasha Sim. Red Sea: Corner of the earthly Paradise. Travel notes from Egypt. - Kyiv: SIM & HAM Publishing House, - 2017. - 535 p. , illus. ISBN 966-8802-17-9
© Sasha Sim (Alexander Golovko), 2017
Brief information about the hotel «Savoy» 5*
The Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5* hotel is part of the SAVOY GROUP hotel group (Chairman of the Savoy Sharm El Sheikh Emad Aziz group, General Manager of the Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5* hotel - Jacques Peter). The group includes hotels: Royal Savoy 5*, Sierra Resort 5* and SOHO Square. The hotel was opened in 2000.
Located on an area of .22 hectares.
The hotel is designed for a respectable holiday. For VIP tourists there are villas with a private pool.
Hotel "Savoy Sharm El-Sheikh" 5 * is located on the seashore, in the picturesque bay "White Knight Beach" ("White Knight Beach") - the national park. Next to the hotel is the SOHO Square center, where there are all kinds of entertainment for vacationers.
The hotel is located 8 km from Sharm El Sheikh International Airport in the SHARKS BAY in the WHITE KNIGHT BEACH. Distance to "NAAMA BAY": 11 km, to OLD MARKET (Old Town): 22 km.
The nearest hotel on the left (look at the sea) is "Island View Resort" 5 *.
In the vicinity of the hotel
SOHO Square
At the entrance to the hotel "Savoy Sharm El-Sheikh" 5 * is the famous square "SOHO Square", to plunge into the evening splendor of which come even from remote Dahab. From many hotels in Sharm El Sheikh, free shuttle buses run to SOHO Square. SOHO Square is a chic promenade, a whole block of prestigious cafes, trendy clubs and branded shops, including duty-free.
SOHO Square is a unique feature of the Savoy 5* Hotel, which is erroneously stated in some advertisements to not belong to the hotel, but according to the Deputy General Manager of the hotel, is part of the SAVOY GROUP hotel group. And few hotels in Sharm El Sheikh can boast of such a unique phenomenon. It is possible that only thanks to "SOHO Square" the prestige of the "Savoy" 5 * hotel has been raised so high. Having visited this hotel, I did not notice any other special uniqueness.
(Read more on pages 9-11)
Sharks Bay and White Knight
Sharks Bay, Sharks Bay Beaches, White Knight Bay, King's Bay Coast - read on p. 7 - 9.
Before departure to Egypt
End of August. I, like last year, on the eve of autumn, am again going to the Red Moreno now with the sole purpose of learning what a “luxury hotel” (“Savoy Sharm El Sheikh” 5 *) is, as it is advertised on the Internet. I am only flying to this hotel today, but with my second spiritual essence I have been there for a long time. And this is facilitated by my preliminary, within three weeks, acquaintance with this hotel from various sources of information, including, from the reviews of tourists who have been there.
To be convinced of this, looking from the inside, I decided to complete my book “The Red Sea: A Corner of the Earthly Paradise. Travel notes from Egypt”, visit this hotel, as they say, for a complete set of hotels, ranging from 3 * to 5 * VIP category.
And I took the cheapest tour for eight days on the cheapest BB food system, in the cheapest Standard Garden View Rooms category, but at one of the most expensive prices in Egypt - for 2.000 UAH. (that's $800). I understand that for me, as a Ukrainian pensioner with a minimum pension of 949 UAH. ($37) per month is expensive. But what can you do? There are no cheaper tours to the Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5 * hotel, and art requires sacrifice ...
I understand that the Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5 * hotel is for reputable clients, such as our deputies in the Verkhovna Rada, especially, judging by the price of the Presidential Suite Sea View room category - $ 4206 - in just eight days with one breakfast - scrambled eggs and scrambled eggs(! ), and according to the "Ultra All Inclusive" system - the price of a one-room apartment in Kyiv! Maybe I will meet some of them there, I will definitely say hello, despite belonging to blocs or parties, but I promise, no more). And I will be there as the only white crow in the history of the hotel ...
Speaking of "white crows".
The tourist crisis in Egypt, as a result of a decrease in the flow of tourists by several times, forces even the once branded VIP hotels to change their marketing policy and reorganize for a different, less well-off contingent of potential tourists - those who, according to their financial capabilities, could afford to stay in hotels of categories , maximum 4*. That is, for the sake of their own survival, they intercept clients of 3 * and 4 * hotels, dooming them to bankruptcy. And that's why many hotels are closed. For us tourists, the bankruptcy of these hotels is the least of our worries. But the opportunity to learn and feel for yourself how VIPs live and relax is already a class! And at the same time to fulfill the "great mission": to support fashionable hotels in their difficult hours.
At the same time, the VIPs themselves are outraged by such an invasion of people outside their circle into their rest homes.
And this indignation pours out something like this: “You better continue to visit hotels with powdered juices, beer and wine diluted with soda, with the cheapest Egyptian drinks and products. Leave the Savoy to us. It would be better that people like you and others with a ram on the beach were not there. It is a pity that due to problems with the tourist flow, hotels of this level have to make special offers with low prices in order to stay afloat. I hope this will end soon and we will again see the usual contingent of regular, like us, guests. ” (KATKOOTA, Tourist, Odessa, Ukraine, 27 May 2017 at 19:35 – grammar saved)
But it's not about that. I want to write about the Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5 * hotel as it really is and from the point of view of an ordinary tourist, not a VIP person.
Yes, and a VIP-person will not write anything, first of all, in order not to disclose their income, sometimes stolen, and they will completely keep silent where and for how much they rested - this, firstly. And, secondly, I want to show the reality of recreation in such prestigious hotels of VIP categories - to us, mere mortals ...
Loaded with bags, I'm going to the subway. With his rapped and well-placed voice, the announcer regularly announces stops, bringing me closer and closer to my final one - Kharkivskaya, where I will transfer to the Scy bus and in an hour I will be at terminal D of Boryspil airport. From the experience of past flights, I know that check-in will begin earlier than two hours before departure. And before registration, an hour and a half, so I will be one of the first at registration and get a good seat at the window. I love to contemplate my native Zemelka from an ever-increasing height, up to 1.000 meters.
Borispol airport"
The mood is despondent.
And all because, in contrast to yesterday's sunny day, today there is a sharp cold snap, it is cloudy and the impression is that it is already late in the evening. Plus, it's raining. Wet asphalt. Like a wet chicken - a bus that should take us to the plane of the Windrose airline. For some reason, the plane is far away, a kilometer from the airport terminal - somewhere in the outskirts. And why is he being punished? But, as I believe, all these are echoes of the same economical charter: parking there is much cheaper. Yes, and the operator "Tez Toyur", through which I fly to Egypt, in all likelihood, is "weaker" than "Aneks Toyur", with which I used to fly all the past times. But now Aneks Toyur for some reason blocked the sale of tours to the Savoy Hotel and I was lucky to find a relatively inexpensive tour to this hotel through another tour operator. In addition, I discovered an amazing thing: here is a tour of the E-class food system for the same date and time as in Join Up, but on the Special Class system!
And this is a win in food: there is an additional opportunity to dine in themed a-la-carte restaurants, use and bars and various “snacks” on site, as well as discounts in Soho restaurants and bars!
I thought about this when I boarded the plane of the Rosa Vetrov airline, which, together with the tour operator Tez Toyr, gave me the happy opportunity to visit Egypt on the Red Sea again.
"...know your sixth"
This is the second time I am taking a tour to Egypt on the BB (Breakfast Only) food system. To the bewildered but silent questions of my interlocutors, I usually, jokingly, answer that my liver cannot stand four times (this summer, and six times since the beginning of the year) “All-inclusive” and asks to rest ...After all, it’s inconvenient to show that you are like that a beggar and you don't have the funds for the All Inclusive. But for me, such a strategy (“BB”) is fully justified.
Firstly, in such luxurious and expensive hotels, which are among the “five” of the best hotels in Sharm El Sheikh, even breakfasts should be and eat at the highest level, despite the crisis. This is the range of dishes and the quality of their preparation. After such a breakfast, if you “refuel” to the eyeballs, that is, you don’t feel like it until the evening. Secondly, you do not get distracted for an hour or two from the Red Sea and the coral reef, but constantly, all day long on the beach. Lunch on the beach (or rather, a snack) is not lunch, but a perversion, compared to lunch in a chic main restaurant (both in terms of food intake and in terms of its assortment), and therefore, if there is such an opportunity, then it must be used. In addition, after a full meal and in the conditions of the August heat, it always pulls “for an hour” into a cool and no less luxurious room, to sleep ...Thirdly, you are free all day and are not tied to the so-called. "feeding trough" - the restaurant.
You can devote the whole day, until late at night, to any of your desires, excursions, diving and other trips you like outside the hotel, without worrying that lunches and dinners may be lost. Fourthly, of course, the price… Overpaying for a tour by $100 a day is more expensive for the sake of having lunch or dinner, when you don’t always want to, it’s too much… Sometimes it’s much more profitable to go to lunch or dinner, paying on the spot: cheaper and without intermediaries.
Understanding all these advantages of the “BB” food system, I still cannot get rid of the feeling of my own inferiority (and even inferiority) when only breakfast is available to me, and the rest is closed, which is given “free of charge” to everyone else under the “All inclusive” system. What you don't realize, though, is that "free" is actually very expensive.
I don’t so much need lunch and dinner as bars where you can sit until midnight or around the clock, chat with new friends and, regardless of prices, enjoy the entire range of available drinks.
In the end, you realize the wild injustice that for someone everything, and for someone - nothing! At the same time, for some reason, I am not shocked by even wilder injustice in the ordinary, real life of the capital, when many people drive around in expensive Lexuses, dine in chic restaurants, dress in brands worth many thousands of dollars. They live in mansions on the embankment of the Dnieper...And you, with your minimum pension of $36 a month, have to watch so as not to miss the delivery of a "social" loaf for 4-15 UAH, instead of 8...But this is by analogy with food tours " All inclusive" (or "Ultra All") in the same Egyptian Sharm El Sheikh or another resort.
And therefore, in order not to complex and not spoil my vacation, I decided to sit in the bars of the hotel for as long as my Soul desires, sometimes ordering at the bar for cash, but more often - to drink my prepared one, because customs gives the go-ahead for many things ...
Looking ahead, I will say that this idea justified itself. Moreover, some strong alcoholic drinks remained untouched: in the heat of forty degrees, you can’t force yourself or your friends to drink alcohol for forty degrees even under a gun ...
Check-in hotel
I arrived at the Savoy Sharm El-Sheikh 5* hotel late in the evening, after 20:00 (it gets dark in Egypt from six in the evening). The hotel has increased safety measures for vacationers. The first control, very simplified, is carried out at the entrance to the territory of SOHO Square, and this is a few hundred meters from the main gate.
Further - more thorough control of transport - at the main gate, and the most thorough - each tourist through a metal detector frame, and all things - through an X-ray machine, like at an airport. But still, these checks and overall security at the Savoy Hotel are less impressive and inferior to the same procedures that are organized at the entrance and in general at the Grand Rotana 5 * hotel.
When registering at the porter service (reception) of the Savoy 5 * hotel, I was treated to iced hibiscus tea and, as usual, I was asked to fill out a questionnaire.
Lobby
The lobby is located in a round four-story main building, occupies the entire top floor and therefore, of course, has a round shape, which is already original. In the lobby, to the right of the entrance, there is a porter service (reception), which is no different from similar services in other hotels.
The same sweetly smiling and friendly receptionist, even two, one of which speaks excellent Russian, a standard desk made of dark natural wood and five clocks on the wall, showing the time of cities in different time zones: Cairo, London, Dubai, Roma, Moscow...and that's it. Ukraine (Kyiv) is not. But pleases a pleasant memory that at the entrance to the flagpole sways in the wind first (in Arabic, from right to left), one of the seven - the Ukrainian national flag! In all likelihood, here, as in all of Egypt, they believe that Ukraine is a temporary significant phenomenon in the country's tourism business, as a lifeline for this business during the crisis. And Russia, most likely, is his future...
The lobby of the Savoy 5* hotel pleasantly surprised me with its original architectural and design solution.
The tradition of water, as a symbol of the life of all life on Earth and especially revered in desert Egypt, finds its most vivid reflection here. Imagine, almost the entire area of the lobby - a round pond, twenty-five meters in diameter. Yes, not just a reservoir, but decorated so skillfully in the form of a pond with a bridge in the middle of natural logs fastened together with thick ropes, and in the water there are plants similar to our line and cattail, which to the maximum extent reflects the naturalness of Nature, namely Ukrainian (or Russian ), that is, our latitudes.
As I was convinced later, in the Savoy 5 * hotel, water, in the form of fountains, ponds, streams and, of course, pools, is at every step. And if the Egyptians were pagans, I am more than sure that their main God would be the God of Water.
To be honest, I was pleasantly shocked when, after walking a few meters from the entrance deep into the lobby, I saw Water in the center.
And not just water, as in many other hotels, in the form of fountains, but a real pond! And that's not all marvel in this corner of the Red Sea. Here, our backwater is reflected to the smallest detail, almost swampy with black water (the bottom of this reservoir is painted black) and this contrasts especially against the background of the white marble of the shores. In this backwater grow six bushes of tropical plants with long stems, something like our reeds. And one gets the impression of the expected picture that because of these “reeds” a terrible water one will suddenly appear and howl so that the blood freezes in the veins ...
And that is not all! You are invited without fail (because there is no other way) to go through this damn backwater for real, as in ancient times in our remote Ukrainian farm, a wooden bridge built without a single nail from ordinary logs connected by a rope!
This last element of the interior of the hall made such an impression on me, a native of the countryside, that I almost cried tears of the sensitivity of the Soul - it was so close to me in spirit. And where - in distant lands, thousands of kilometers from their native places, on the border of Africa with Asia, moreover, in one of the most luxurious hotels on the Red Sea. Even for this backwater in the lobby, made contrary to logic and all the principles of special luxury, it was worth paying a thousand dollars to see this masterpiece and stay next to it in the hotel for ten days! And this is not the only place in the Savoy 5 * hotel that affects me so sensitively.
Only one thing raises doubts: will every urbanized tourist who has never seen a real backwater in wildlife, and not in an artist’s picture, and will appreciate what he is so persistently trying to bring to us a genius artist-designer?
Here, in this fashionable hotel, is part of my homeland! Perhaps this hotel was designed in those distant 80s of the last century, my brilliant countryman, as an echo of the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United Arab Republic and the warming of relations since the mid-1980s, thanks to the personal participation of the President Hosni Mubarak...
But the Savoy 5 * hotel is still in an Arab country, and not in Ukraine or Russia.
That is why the vestibule along the entire circumference around the "devil's backwater" has Arabic-style arched entrances and openings with wooden lattice structures made of many chiseled dark brown elements. I saw similar structures in other 5* hotels, for example, in the Grand Rotana hotel, but there the wooden elements of the structures are made not of chiseled, but of blocks. Here, at the Savoy Hotel, everything is thought out to the smallest detail, and even these little things are executed at the highest level.
But the hall should be a real hall and have comfortable soft chairs, sofas and coffee tables next to them. And therefore, all this is available on small areas of white marble near the water itself and a little higher around the pond, as well as at the reception - for business meetings, procedures related to the settlement and recreation. At the entrance to these sites, two large black vases with tropical plants are installed.
Hotel check-in
Rooms
The number of rooms at the Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5 * hotel has 414 rooms.
Room types:
Standard Garden View Rooms. Standard Pool View Rooms, Standard Sea View Rooms, Triple Garden View (Family Rooms), 2 rooms for disabled people, Diplomatic Suites Presidential Suite (200 sqm, sea view).
Room price:
Standard Garden - $750
Triple (Family) Room - $798
Interconnecting Garden View - $798
Pool View - $846
Interconnecting Pool View - $894
Seaview - $942
Interconnecting SeaView - $990
Diplomatic Suite Garden View - $1998
Diplomatic Suite Pool View - $2278
Diplomatic Suite Sea View - $2558
Presidential Suite Sea View - $4206
The location of the rooms.
The rooms in their internal content in their category differ little from each other. Their main qualitative difference is their remoteness, first of all, from the sea and, secondly, from the hotel "civilization" and from the main restaurant. These are three spheres of constant and daily use of the tourist: the restaurant - the sea, the beach - and entertainment.
The worst arrangement of rooms in the buildings of the Savoy Hotel, as in many other hotels of the first beach line of Sharm El Sheikh, is in the buildings located outside the main hotel building towards the entrance gate - on a plateau, and not on terraces near the sea . One gets the impression that such buildings are outside the active recreation area of the hotel, where pools, bars, restaurants are concentrated, animation is carried out, that is, the entire infrastructure for recreation and are located in the technical area of the hotel, where warehouses, garages and other premises and office buildings economic purpose. Naturally, much less attention is paid to the improvement and maintenance of this “secondary” territory. And even in these buildings, the most inconvenient, in terms of location, rooms are in the ends of these buildings that are farthest from the main building - near the road to the sea, on the border with a neighboring hotel.
At the same time, there are rooms of the same category and at the same price, but in more prestigious places, on the same level with the main pool or a little higher - on the terraces, this is in buildings No. 2 and 3, and they are located mainly on ground floor on the far side of the buildings from the main pool.
They gave me room 6116 in the sixth building - this is practically outside the hotel's recreation area, next to and at the same level as the worst building No. 7. The porter grabbed my things to bring to the room and earn his dollar tip, but was stopped by me: I asked first to show the room itself and the view from its window. As I expected (judging by the answer to my written request to find the possibility of normal conditions for creativity), they gave a room that was not quite suitable - with a view not of the garden, but of the bare walls and roofs of the lower buildings. The condition and renovation of the room, although exceptional, was of the least interest to me.
Such a wilderness ...(By the way, this number is “on duty” and it is offered to everyone who comes back in a row: I saw it on the card of tourists from Alma-Ata, who also refused it and were given a number in the second building in 2007; about the amount of the surcharge, if such was, I can not judge, I do not know). And at about one in the morning, I nevertheless decided to check into the originally provided room ...I chose the best of the two worst options. There is no bad without good. While the issue of improving the room was being resolved (or not resolved), I had enough time to get used to the hotel - the territory and its face - the lobby (hall).
Rooms.
The room that I was given (No. 6116, building 6 - to the left of the main building) is of a solid size, like the entire Savoy 5 * hotel and like everything in it. First of all, what I liked is that the room is replete with natural wood, from the massive front door to the cabinets.
And this furniture is made in the style of "retro", it can be considered antique, which creates a special charm for the entire interior of the room. Only one thing surprises me, how could such a luxury be preserved for decades and with a change of several hundred guests? It is possible that it had to be constantly restored.
At the entrance to the room - just two wardrobes, which is very convenient. Between them is an open niche with lighting, mirrors and a painting. In this niche there is a kettle and, daily replenished, the necessary set for tea and coffee. True, tea is only one variety - Lihton (Yellow Label - the cheapest), at the same time a couple of weeks ago at the Grand Rotana 5 * hotel, the tea set was completed with three varieties of tea, including Twinings (of London). A trifle, but nice.
Under the tea section is a safe (new, works like a watch), and below is a mini-bar. In the "Standard" room category and the "BB" ("Breakfast Only") food system, it is empty, so I used it as a mini fridge.
Unfortunately, it cools slightly: even the water in it is a little cool. Saving…
To the left of the entrance is a bathroom with a toilet. Large sizes - up to six square meters and, which surprised me, three sections with some individual isolation: a toilet (an outdated toilet bowl, no bidet, which can be a reason for inconvenience, especially for the female half), a washbasin, and behind it a shower-bath behind a glass partition. The washbasin is equipped with everything you need, from a hair dryer to mirrors, as well as a daily updated set of shampoo, gel, lotion and soap in Savoy branded packaging and mini bottles. In the bathroom compartment, the shower head is built into the wall, but I did not experience any discomfort from this, as some write in their reviews. The bathroom itself is large and clean. I took a bath several times - I enjoyed it very much ...
Next - a large square-shaped living room - 25 sq. m..
All the furniture is also made of solid wood, in a retro style, but not old, apparently, it is regularly restored and the lining is changed. TV - plasma with a large (up to one meter) screen. There are a hundred channels in total, five of them are Russian (3) and Ukrainian (2) - No. 11.34, 80.81, 86 (it would not hurt to indicate all these channels with their names in the memo to the tourist when checking in, so that the tourist does not constantly scour all one hundred channels looking for what you need).
For the entire width of the living room of the room there is a plastic window with a glass door on roller sliders. Exit to a large, about 15 square meters balcony. There would be a wonderful view if it were not for the closed space (on the ground floor with numbers 6001 and up to 6048 - the garden of a narrow strip with the wall of the next building) or with a view of the roofs of all buildings located below (numbers 6101 - 6148, my room, including).
The balcony deserves special mention.
This is not a balcony, but a whole living room with two sofas, with soft pillows on them, comfortable armchairs and a coffee table. And, of course, in the Arabic style, with an arch. If it were not so hot at night (after all, August is the hottest month in Egypt), we could spend the night on the balcony. Surprisingly, for the entire period of my vacation, I did not see or hear a single nasty mosquito buzzing, even somehow unusual. And all because electric fumigators are installed throughout the Savoy Hotel under the guise of small boulder stones with gratings.
The room has a silent air conditioner that works so efficiently that it can be used for a short time and will be enough for a comfortable temperature.
August 23.2017. Sunday
Beach. Sea
Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5* Hotel owns 300 meters of sandy beach "White Knight" of Shark Bay, which are washed by the warm waters of the Red Sea all year round and are ideal for swimming, snorkeling and diving. Two pontoons of 25 and 30m (entrance to the sea - only on pontoons). A beautiful coral reef and a wide sandy beach, the width of the beach strip is 40 m. There are enough sun loungers on the beach for all hotel guests. Strict demarcation in places under the sun for "Royal Savoy" 5 *, "Savoy" 5 * and "Sierra Resort": on the left side - a small area of the Royal Savoy beach of increased comfort, fenced off from the rest of the beach by a wall of dense cut bushes; further on? the length of the beach - “Savoy”, its beach is fenced off from the beach of “Sierra Resort” with just sun loungers piled on top of each other ...
Early morning of the first day of my first acquaintance with the sea and corals off the coast of the Red Sea at the Savoy 5 * hotel.
The first thing that impresses is a wide sandy beach - naturally, I emphasize, sandy along its entire length: from new buildings to the border with the Island View Resort 5 * hotel and from the very edge of the water - inland. Four rows of umbrellas with sun loungers. Moreover, all the sun loungers in the Savoy 5 * hotel are of a new design made of aluminum alloy with a rectangular shade hinged overhead. I met such sun loungers at the Grand Rotana 5 * hotel, but only by the pools, but everywhere here. And it's already impressive.
This is a natural beach with direct access to the sea, as we are used to in the Black or Azov Seas! And not the beach in separate sections on the platforms among the rocks at a height of five meters or more above the sea, as is the case with many hotels on the first beach line of Sharm El Sheikh.
I, like a lark, wake up at dawn, and therefore I have the opportunity to take the best sun lounger - on the first line of umbrellas near the sea and closest to the pontoon.
The fact is that even though the beach is adjacent to the sea itself, the entrance to the sea is possible only by pontoons, of which there are two. True, the right one (if you look at the sea) is located on part of the beach of the Sierra Resort hotel, but it is still accessible to all hotel guests. Only sun loungers and towels - others, striped - this is so that vacationers from the less prestigious Sierra Resort hotel are not located on the beach of the Savoy 5 * hotel. The same goes for the pools. And the guests of the Sierra Resort hotel have bracelets on their hands. But this is not about this, secondary, but about a great beach!
I look at this long and wide sandy beach and I can't help but rejoice: such a beach beauty! I have lost the habit of such beaches, recently being only in Sharm El Sheikh. In Hurghada, where I have been before, there are also beaches near the water, but there they are short and in artificial bays between two long artificial piers - also parts of the beach.
Such a real beach pleases me so much that when I look at this exceptional phenomenon in my resort epic in Sharm El Sheikh, I cannot hold back the nostalgic, betrayal tear of sensitivity that betrays me. It betrays my feelings, which, unfortunately, in our cruel material world are perceived, at best, with surprise, at worst, which happens more often, with contempt ...
Tiran Island
I look and try, by realizing with my mind that I see pictures of the subtle world with my inner gaze, to transfer them to the external, real world. This is the essence of my creativity. For example, while relaxing on the beach of the Savoy 5 * hotel, I look at the island of Tiran and its mountains, and they, towering over the Red Sea, seem to me in their supremacy over the elements of the sea.
After all, why conceal the truth, the mountains already existed before the appearance of the seas and oceans, when the outer shell of the earth's crust was formed and life on Earth was ruled by fire-breathing volcanoes, spewing magma from its depths. And one sign on the mountain of Tiran Island confirms this - a horizontal strip of solidified magma. Before, while relaxing in my four previous hotels in Sharm El Sheikh, I saw Tiran Island, but only in passing, not as deeply as now, and therefore they did not impress me so much and there was no reason for creativity, even superficial. Now my feelings are seething and playing, but I don’t know yet, so clearly and with awareness they will manifest themselves in this world in the form of lines on a piece of paper ...
The underwater world of the Red Sea at the Savoy Hotel 5 *
Coral reef. corals
"Shark Bay" is not much different in certain areas of the hotels located in it. I am already in the fourth hotel in this bay and did not notice any special differences.
Yes, the territory of hotels, architecture and landscape design, as a visiting card for all hotels, are radically different, even the coast and beaches (only the pontoons are the same for all - mostly plastic blue and white), differ from each other. But the sea, its inhabitants and the coral reef are almost identical, with a few exceptions, and even then, for a very observant eye. The remoteness of the coral reef from the coast is very significant. Here, at the Savoy 5 * hotel - only thirty meters (on the left, at the Royal Savoy 5 * hotel, and on the right, at the Sierra Resort 5 * hotel - a little longer) - a miser, compared to hotels north along the Sinai peninsula where the pontoons to reach the coral reef, hundreds of meters long! And in this regard, the Savoy 5 * hotel is pleasantly pleasing.
Moreover, to the left of the short pontoon (which is closer to the Royal Savoy Hotel), in violation of the Egyptian Environmental Legislation, corals were nevertheless cleared, almost to the very shore (five meters remain), and therefore the coral reef begins almost at the shore, which gave me the ability to go into the sea, if the lifeguard does not see it, directly from the beach, which I did several times. But in general, the line of the coral reef in Shark Bay either approaches the shore by ten meters, as it is at the cape of the neighboring hotel under construction - on the border with the Four Seasons 5* hotel, then moves away up to a hundred meters.
On the second day of my stay at the Savoy Hotel, I nevertheless made a swim along the reef in both directions from the hotel, almost a kilometer, I saw the reef along its entire length. And I got so carried away, losing track of time and space, that I didn’t notice how the ebb tide carried me so far, almost to the Four Seasons Hotel 5 *.
And I thought with horror that again, as it was this spring, when I sailed to the border from the Grand Oasis 5 * hotel, security will jump out from behind a rock and start screaming wildly and waving like a windmill, hands with a walkie-talkie, that I violated the territorial waters of the hotel, where princes and princesses of royal blood rest. And so, with great difficulty, keeping as close as possible to the reef, where the current is less, I barely swam to my pontoon - no less than forty minutes. And this is only some 200-300 meters! On the other hand, I fully explored the topography of the reef and the seabed in this area and have a complete understanding of it, which is important for its description.
It is the loss of time and space that characterizes the state when you swim along a coral reef and admire the beauty and diversity of its inhabitants ...And so it can take half an hour, or an hour, or more ...Until you finally freeze, which is very difficult, being all the time in motion and at a water temperature of more than +26? S. From the grace of the sea, you jump out onto a hot beach to warm up, so that in half an hour, after warming up, you continue your pleasure from contemplating the underwater world and the coral reef.
Due to the fact that the coral reef has protrusions about five meters towards the open sea, then depressions towards the land, there is an additional interest in its observation: when you swim along the reef, you get the impression that you are watching a movie with diverse and non-repeating plots.
After all, there is not a single square meter of reef with corals similar to each other: the beauty and their diversity never ceases to amaze you. Moreover, after visiting the same coral reef dozens of times, you think: “Well, what else can I see in it? Tired of the monotony, it's time to change the hotel! » But when you look closely at the reef and the corals on it, you discover more and more layers of unknown beauty, and there are an infinite number of such stories - life will not be enough to consider and explore them!
The corals on the reef at the Savoy 5 * hotel are practically the same as at the Grand Rotana 5 * hotel, which I described above and their varieties are no more than ten to fifteen. Yes, and the coral reef is the same - not a sheer rectilinear wall, but with ledges and depressions, which creates, as I already wrote, additional interest for research in these kind of coral lagoons.
Daily, several times a day, diving into the underwater world in a mask and snorkel, allowed me to supplement my knowledge of the Red Sea reef, compared to the knowledge that I accumulated in my past visits to Sharm El Sheikh hotels.
The most beautiful and attractive, albeit few in number, coral color here is a bright lilac color, with its various variations of shades towards purple and crimson colors. And this is all against a light beige background of the rest of the numerous corals. They are very different in shape: in the form of numerous small Christmas trees, lumps, “pencils” with pointed ends and numerous processes along their lateral surfaces, sinuous, worm-like formations, etc. , enclosed in a common spherical shape.
Bright matte-white corals attract attention and also please the eye - such an interesting and unusual color, as if illuminated from the inside ...These are the corals that appear on the surface during low tides. But in the air, they no longer have such bright colors. When I looked closely at the gray mass of the rest of the corals, I found some of their masterpieces there too. I especially liked corals in the form of small columns closely spaced to each other with bright whitish tips - growth points. They somehow reminded me of our usual hedgehog! It was against its background that I saw, off the coast of the Grand Rotana Hotel, a motionless chameleon fish hiding with the same rippled spots on its back.
Here, on a coral reef, for the first time in the Red Sea, I saw two types of seaweed: one - in the form of a piece of brown mink or sable fur, only with longer hair.
And these hairs played like a fan, in accordance with the internal flows of water. The second type of algae is also playing on the internal currents, but already in the form of elongated swamp-colored balls. These are the only living and mobile algae among the frozen "mummies" of corals. In these algae, one feels an active, and therefore fleeting, life - for several years. At the same time, corals, wise in their calmness, already live for thousands of years and will live for the same amount more ...if a person allows them. These algae, moving on the underwater currents, together with colorful fish, bring to the frozen world of corals and against their background, a feeling of active life.
Low tides on the Red Sea periodically alternate with high tides, but chaotically, without reference to the time of day.
And he dies if he cannot escape over the edge of the coral reef - there, to a five-meter depth. And, since corals do not have legs or fins, like fish, they naturally die. And on this wide strip of the seabed, they have long since died, long before the detrimental impact on human Nature, leaving a sad picture of the dead zone for the eyes. But life was once rampant here, because it was not just that corals appeared and grew for thousands of years ...
It turns out that Nature also has such “inhuman” cruelty that can destroy and heartlessly destroy life, that is, itself! Without reason, without pity and any compassion towards a dying life. And I used to think that Nature is ideal and without evil ...
When I look at this underwater living world ruined by someone’s evil will, I, like the character of a famous film, want to cry and say: “It’s a pity for the bird ... ” At the same time, causing laughter from others ...I want to exclaim indignantly: “How I hate this, incredibly cruel, our World! And with what pleasure I would destroy you! » True, I would have destroyed, including myself, as part of this World, since I also have enough of this evil. And the fact that for two hours now I have been sensually crying with my inner crying because of the ruined beauty of Nature is due to the moment during which I penetrated into the world of absolute goodness and goodness during the creative process. And at the same time, I thought, and not for the same reason that the saint from the caves of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra cried all his life? And what a pity that I didn't get it...
Bottom topography behind a coral reef.
Positive for the coral reef and all underwater flora is the fact that the reef is located almost on the horizontal platform of the seabed. A little further, after 5-10 meters from it, the bottom deepens at an angle of 30-45? to a depth of twenty or more meters! Moreover, the platform to the left of the short pontoon is larger and longer than to the right. There are also various underwater animals on this site, but most of them live near the coral reef, where there is an abundance of food for them. That is, corals are a favorable environment for the life of various plankton and other microscopic lower plants and animals, which the Red Sea fish love so much.
An interesting bottom of the sea with its originality at the pontoon (on the left, if you look at the sea). To the left and in front of him, even at great depths, there are many corals and there is one huge, five meters in diameter, coral in the form of a spherical block of crowded green “ropes”.
And to the right to the depth there is a crevice between the corals, the bottom of which is even deeper! Such a landscape of the underwater world near the pontoon, in all likelihood, is explained by the fact that from the section of the sea cleared of corals to the left of it, all the corals were moved here, to a depth in front of the pontoon. And these corals have taken root in a new place.
Rescuer of the Red Sea.
A man sits on the edge of the pontoon, usually a young Arab in good physical shape in a special distinctive dress: in the Savoy 5 * hotel, this is a white T-shirt with an inscription on the back, as in all beach workers - "Life Guaro", and black shorts.
Watching the work of the "rescuer" on the pontoon, I came to the conclusion that the main task of this person is to save the Red Sea from people - vacationers, and not the vacationers themselves, he looks so carefully and warns with his piercing whistle any, even a minor violation of environmental legislation: I swam close to the corals, was above them - he whistles; went into the water from the shore for a meter and a half to dash into the water under the reef (there is such a place cleared of corals to the right of the pontoon with an entrance from the shore) - he whistles ...He takes out with his sharp whistle all the vacationers on the beach, especially those who doze off. And, most often, at low tide, when everyone is curious: what is left there, at the bottom after the water has left?
I felt this duty of his to save the Red Sea from people three times today: when I went into the sea from the side of the beach - to the edge of the cleared reef, and this is about three meters from the shore and flopped into a crevice under this reef. The "rescue" whistle was late when I was already under water and had no particular effect on me. And I ignored him, which made the “rescuer” very upset. He was right when he thought: "If this one broke the rules once, then he will break the rules all the time. "
And therefore I was constantly, during my entire voyage, under the vigilant control of his strict gaze ...The second time I received a warning from the restless caretaker of the Red Sea - when I chatted with a rope with a buoy, slapping my new girlfriend fish on the nose, which since yesterday has been constantly swimming up to me and provokes me to play with her when I find myself on her territory (in the extreme left corner from the pontoon - swim up, she will also play with you! ) - again the “rescuer” whistle. Okay, I think yours took! I left my fish girlfriend, no matter how offended I was, and swam further, along the perimeter of the permitted swimming area, away from the annoying watchman to look for new adventures.
And the third time, when, swimming along the buoys, I saw a small black box with a red protrusion on the side and a long “tail” - either pipes or ropes (as it turned out later, it turned out to be a French-made shark repeller, which I wrote about in the comments to the reviews Hotel Manager Jacques Peter). Well, how was it possible not to pay attention to such a curiosity and swim past without hitting it? After all, at such a depth (about fifteen meters) at the bottom there are no longer any corals, and fish - all the more so: solid, with rare exceptions, emptiness and monotony - to the point of boring! Such sadness overwhelms you. And this is doubly - against the backdrop of bustling life near the coral reef itself. But what can you do, the day before I “signed up” to explore the topography of the seabed outside the coral reef near the Savoy Hotel and describe it ...And I couldn’t help myself not to pull this “tail” and received the third whistle-remark . Well, I think I got it!
By the way, once again about the whistles of the "rescuer" and about its main function here. Resting on the beach and, naturally, sometimes plunging into the kingdom of the god Morphia (not having smoked a hookah, but simply falling asleep), you suddenly wake up in a cold sweat and with a rapid heartbeat from a sharp, like a dagger in the heart, the whistle of the “rescuer” - this is how he warns one out of a hundred vacationers who entered the water a meter or two from the shore. And whistles until he comes out of the water. He whistles and waves his arms vigorously to one, and hundreds are horrified by his whistle! And so you want to shove the whistle to the whistler somewhere! . . And at low tide, when there are many who want to look at the gifts of the sea, there are dozens of times more of these piercing whistles and not only on the beach of the Savoy Hotel, but also along the entire coast of Shark Bay.
You came thousands of kilometers away to relax, to sleep nicely in the shade of an umbrella under the sound of the sea surf, and then there is such a cacophony of whistles that are annoying, like daggers to the Soul, that you start cursing both the Savoy Hotel and its beach ...
Well, something must be done with this whistler for the benefit of hundreds of vacationers! For example, to confiscate his whistle and force him to run (running is useful for everyone) along the beach and culturally explain to the violators the main positions of the Egyptian environmental legislation in the Sinai Peninsula.
Fish of the Red Sea.
This year I have been resting in Shark Bay for the fourth time. And therefore now, at the Savoy 5 * Hotel, when for the first time I dived with a mask and a snorkel under the water, I involuntarily (to myself) exclaimed: “Hello, my old friends fish! I missed you very much! “I don’t know if they heard me, but they surrounded me in a dense flock, most of them striped, as I called them earlier, “Ward No. 6”.
She flaps her large wide fins like a bird's wings, only she swims in a vertical position, and not in a horizontal one, like a bird. But still, sometimes, turning around, it takes a horizontal position for a few seconds and then its view is amazing. Moreover, the size is quite large compared to other fish - up to forty centimeters in length! Sometimes you think that it looks more like a stingray - the same shape and with pointed tail fins ...
Among the new species of fish, I got acquainted here with a fish with a “flattened”, flat nape - I have not yet thought of a name for it, but I don’t know the real one. And also - with two species of chameleon fish, one of which is marsh-colored, trying to be invisible against the background of beige corals, becoming motionless, but it does not work well for her. And the second is pockmarked, really invisible ...
Here, more often than in other places, you can see the large size of the Napoleon fish.
And in general, large fish off the coast is a rarity and always causes exorbitant interest and joyful exclamations from vacationers.
Pools
The hotel offers its guests to relax on comfortable sun loungers by the pools: three outdoor pools for adults (two heated in winter), two children's pools (1 heated, 1 with sea water on the beach).
I, as I wrote earlier, am not a supporter of swimming in chlorinated pool water. But still, one day, after a steam room and a sauna (by the way, even with the cheapest BB power system, it is allowed to use this benefit in the daytime at least every day, but once), I experienced some joy of immersing my body, emaciated from steam, into the pool , which is located nearby - five meters from the spa. And, you know, I got pleasure from the reservoir in the open space, which is the pool.
And my friends even complained about anuria with an increase in body temperature up to 39? …
Features of the food system and services "Savoy"
I have not seen such a complex and intricate system of food and services as in the Savoy 5 * hotel in any hotel in Egypt, although I have visited such prestigious hotels as the Sunerise Arabian Beach Resort (Grand Select) 5 *, Sharm- El Sheikh, Grand Rotana Resort & Spa 5*, Sharm El Sheikh.
First of all, it should be noted a special system of cards and receipts, which was introduced in this hotel to recognize different food systems and avoid wearing colored bracelets on your hands. Cards from the room are provided in confirmation of accommodation at the hotel and when signing checks for meals in restaurants, drinks in bars and for various services.
Such a varied catering system using room cards and checks, according to the hotel management, “was introduced for the convenience of guests. Each guest is given the opportunity to choose individually, according to their wishes and possibilities, the most convenient option.
Not everyone likes the All Inclusive system, some prefer only breakfast at the hotel and be free all day from being tied to the hotel (daily excursions, diving from morning to late evening, etc. ), and many, having arrived for two weeks, like visit different restaurants every day, and so that these restaurants do not repeat. The provision of different food systems opens up the possibility of choosing this hotel by potential tourists with different tastes, wishes and preferences, and is not focused only on one contingent of tourists. But my opinion is that the same is possible with a simpler, as in all other hotels in Egypt, a system of three or four multi-colored bracelets.
And vacationers do not have a headache with checking accounts, so that everything is entered correctly in terms of the number of orders and price; so that everything is “zero”, in accordance with the selected power supply system, or on orders in excess of this system; immediately, promptly, drink a glass of water, and not wait five to ten minutes for the order to be completed ...Yes, and the hotel staff, including the number of waiters, can be reduced, rather than recruiting extra ones, in order to reduce the service time for each vacationer. And the contingent of vacationers at the Savoy 5 * hotel, as I noticed, is not such a big bar to perceive bracelets worn on hands as infamy. My conclusion: the check system at the Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5 * hotel was introduced to control so that less hotel staff plundered the hotel and to the detriment of vacationers!
) And many peck at such a “freebie” at half the price, getting not everyone the usual “All inclusive”, but, in fact, full board: breakfast-lunch-dinner. By the way, in order not to duplicate, this power supply system was completely removed.
Therefore, having hardly dealt with this "scam", I took, as I noted above, the "BB" power supply system. Actually, he took a cat in a poke and for a whole week before departure he could not figure out what breed this cat was, and if he was black? Because on all sites in the “BB” section there is only one line, I quote: “Breakfast at the main restaurant Tirana. Drinks and meals during the day for an additional fee. And that's it! Even such a respected website of the tour operator "Join up" generally ignored the "BB" food system and did not include it in the list for detailed review.
Nutrition concept.
A feature of the food system at the Savo 5 * hotel is that, regardless of the concept of food, everywhere in all restaurants, except for the main restaurant "Tirana" (and then only for breakfast, lunch and dinner, in which the buffet system), and Also, in all bars of the hotel and at SOHO Square, payment for ordered dishes and drinks is provided only by checks with the provision of a card - an electronic key to the room for personal identification. If there are zeros in the check, then the ordered dishes are included in the catering concept, if not, then you will have to pay extra. And the concept of food "All inclusive" is divided into several subcategories, and therefore not all "All" is such. And this causes some irritation and discomfort for tourists, especially for beginners. For tourists, the only advantage of such a food system is that there are no bracelets, which, according to the hotel administration, are very “oppressive” for individual citizens.
For hoteliers, the advantage is that, first of all, there is strict control over the consumption of food and drinks to such a degree of rigidity that the waiter himself cannot even drink a glass of juice without an appointment: everything is under control. In this regard, I recall the constant picture of half-meat dishes on distribution even before lunch or dinner, in connection with the uncontrolled nutrition of hotel employees before the appointed time at the Poinciana Sharm Resort 4 *, Sharm El Sheikh, (January 2016 ). In addition, such dishes were not replenished and only the first visitors of the restaurant were enough for them: “Whoever had time, he ate, the rest remained hungry. ” And the disadvantage of such a food system is a certain discomfort for tourists: after all, in order to drink even a glass of water in a restaurant, having come from the beach, you need to order it, and orders with a sufficiently large number of restaurant visitors, which naturally, are not executed instantly.
“When the hotel is fully loaded, the lead time really increases, ” confirms the hotel representative himself.
So evaluate what is better: moral discomfort with a “collar” on your hand or physical discomfort from red tape with service.
The Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5 * hotel provides the following food systems:
BB - $750
Breakfast at the main restaurant Tirana. Drinks and meals throughout the day at an additional cost.
HBDR - Half Board Dine Around - $942
DINE AROUND HB - half board, includes breakfast and dinner.
Drinks for an additional fee
Special All Inclusive - ("Hard All") - $1090
Temporary special offer of a simplified "All Inclusive" only for the tour operator "Join UP" (I have not met with other tour operators): includes only breakfast, lunch and dinner in the main buffet restaurant and local drinks in all hotel bars (non-alcoholic, alcoholic , water, tea, instant coffee).
All Inclusive - "E Class" - $1038
Main restaurant "Tirana": breakfast, lunch and dinner.
A-la-carte restaurants (Italian, Asian, Hot Rock Caligula International Restaurant): dinner. Snacks and ice cream at the pool bar and on the beach.
In room: Soft drinks (Pepsi, Seven up, juice, small mineral water) and beer (once per stay)
Ultra All Inclusive - “S Class” - $1926
Meals: Lunch at the Fish Ala Carte restaurant, dinner at any a-la-carte restaurant (Italian, Fish, Asian, Hot Rock Caligula International Restaurant). The food system includes 9 restaurants in SOHO Square (Indian, Chinese, Thai, Oriental, 2 Japanese restaurants, Mediterranean restaurant, Lebanese cafe, Steak House): dinner by prior reservation. According to the "S Class" system, it is possible to visit all a-la-carte restaurants once on a special menu.
In room: Mineral water, beer, soft drinks (once per stay - provided on the second day after arrival). In the Diplomatic suites: mineral water, beer, soft drinks and snacks with daily replenishment.
Everything else is the same as in the "E Class" system.
In the restaurant "Tirana", regardless of the food system, only soft drinks, beer and local wine are served during lunch and dinner (strong alcoholic drinks are not served).
Restaurants. Bars. General information
The Savoy Sharm El Sheikh has 5.14 restaurants (13 a-la-carte: 8 in SOHO Square), 16 bars (10 in SOHO Square),
Restaurants of the Savoy Hotel
Tirana
Main buffet restaurant.
International cuisine. Breakfast 06:30 - 10:30. Lunch 13:00 - 15:00. Dinner 18:30 - 21:00. (Indoors).
For children, there is a diet corner, a children's fast food menu and even high chairs.
The main restaurant "Tirana" provides a selection of dishes to suit different tastes, both European and Middle Eastern.
Breakfast: Includes a corner where chefs prepare egg dishes to your taste: scrambled eggs or scrambled eggs, with or without vegetables, with a coup (for scrambled eggs) or fried eggs - everything at the request of the guest; as well as: falafel, waffles and pancakes, 15 types of hot dishes, a large selection of natural hard and soft cheeses, cold cuts, cold cuts, potatoes, sausages, baked tomatoes, rice and wheat porridge, several types of cereals, fresh pastries, pancakes, salads , breads, yoghurts, jams, honey, butter, seasonal fruits and more.
Lunch and dinner: restaurant "Tirana" offers a choice of main dishes (chicken, meat, fish), soups, side dishes, a corner where chefs prepare fresh pasta and more, salads, a diet corner, seasonal fruits and desserts. Fruits are seasonal.
Themed a-la-carte restaurants in the hotel
In themed restaurants, mainly products and spices from the countries of origin of the dish are used, which is currently difficult due to interruptions in the supply of imports to Egypt and many products have no analogues in Egypt. Therefore, the staff warns about the presence or absence of dishes listed on the menu.
"Rosmarino"
Italian restaurant - a corner of Italy in the heart of the hotel. Connoisseurs of Italian cuisine can enjoy both traditional dishes prepared in accordance with all the canons of national cuisine and chef's author's creations. (Indoors). Dinner: 18:00 - 23:30
East
This superb Asian restaurant serving Asian cuisine including sushi is located on a large and cozy terrace surrounded by oriental-style man-made ponds.
The main dishes are oriental dishes with an emphasis on sushi, sashimi and teppanyaki, as well as wok-fried dishes. Dinner: 19:00 - 23:00
Seafood Island
Amazing views of the azure sea, the calm sounds of the waves and the cool coastal breeze complete the atmosphere of this traditional Mediterranean restaurant. It offers the best selection of fresh seafood, which is prepared right in front of you on an open grill. Lunch 12:00 - 17:00
"Hot Rock - Caligula"
Restaurant "Caligula Hot Rock" - a unique restaurant with an original interior and a new concept of service in Sharm El Sheikh. A piece of volcanic stone is served on your table, which is specially heated for several hours. After that, you can choose for self-cooking any of the proposed dishes: the freshest meat and fish fillets, as well as Australian lamb sirloin, beef ribs, Cajun salmon steak or tuna steak. (Indoors). Dinner: 19:00 - 23:00
Fish restaurant
Dinner by prior reservation for an additional fee (25% discount on food, depending on the food system).
Restaurants in SOHO Square
Bombay, Mai Thai, Luxor, L'Entrec? te, Sushi Lounge, Teppanyaki - Opening hours: 18:30 - 00:00.
Zen, Mandarin Bistro (terrace), Akuna Matata, Fusion 21 - Opening hours: 18:00 - 01:00.
Caf? Chino - Opening hours: 12:00 - 03:00.
Food Court at SOHO Square
9 Restaurants in SOHO Square (Indian, Chinese, Thai, Oriental, 2 Japanese Restaurants, Mediterranean Restaurant, Lebanese Cafe, Steak House): Dinner by reservation at an additional cost (25% discount on food and drinks).
The bars of the Savoy Hotel
Safari
Colonial-style shuttered windows absorb hot sunlight and let you enjoy the coolness. The walls are decorated with beautiful and unusual drawings of animals. Dark wood furniture contributes to an authentic Sahara desert atmosphere. The bar is for adults only. Opening hours: 11:00 - 01:00
Le Balcony
This is the place you need to visit to see the stunning view of the entire hotel and Tiran Island. Relax and enjoy the surroundings. Opening hours (summer only): 19:00 -00:00.
Rocky
The spacious pool bar is an essential part of your holiday. You don't have to waste time waiting for your clothes to dry, you don't even have to leave the pool. Sit on one of the bar stools set right in the water and enjoy a drink from the menu. Opening hours: from 09:00 to sunset (snacks and ice cream from 11:30).
"Oriental Cave"
Here you can try the famous oriental hookah with different flavors, a variety of cocktails. Opening hours: 12:00 to midnight.
"White Knight"
The bar is located on the beach. Here you can order cold drinks with ice, delicious snacks and hookah, which will be delivered to your sun lounger. Opening hours: 09:00 to sunset (snacks and ice cream from 11:30)
Bars in SOHO Square
Ice Bar - Opening hours: 18:30 - 02:00; Mandarin (17:00 - 02:00); Electric & Oxygen Bar (18:30 - 04:00); Queen Vic (12:00 - 01:00); Fontana (17:00 - 02:00); Nightclub Pangea (23:00 - 04:00); Cafe El Kahwa (17:00 - 02:00); Tea Salon - Salon de Th? (16:00 - 00:00); Ju & Co (13:00 - 01:00); Crystal Live Lounge (18:00 - 01:00); View Lounge (17:00 - 02:00); "Heineken" Bar (18:00 - 00:00); "Kitano" Bar (18:00 - 00:00); "Kouroum of the Nile" Bar (18:00 - 00:00).
Special conditions.
Dress code for indoor evenings: long trousers and closed shoes are mandatory for men.
Meals in a la carte restaurants for children under 12 years old are served only from the children's menu.
Recreation in a cool way: "BB" ("Breakfast Only")
I sit on the beach all day, from eight in the morning until six in the evening. But more often, I lie down or sleep. I write a lot. I sleep - because yesterday's, until midnight, visits to the hotel bars are hard to bear. It is also not easy to get used to a one-time meal according to the "BB" - "Breakfast Only" system. But at the same time I feel free, without binding myself to the feeder. There is an opportunity to be by the sea and with the sea all the time - is this not my dream - the dream of the Poet? There is no bad without good!
Everything is good in terms of service, except for one thing: the restaurants and bars in SOHO Square are outside the free market of services and are tied to the Savoy 5 * hotel, to the prices of its tours, and the main consumers of their services are hotel guests who rest on the food system "Ultra All Inclusive". And that is why the prices in them are several times overpriced compared to a-la-carte restaurants in other hotels, both for third-party vacationers and for guests of the Savoy 5 * hotel of other food systems, for which 25% discounts are provided. And all because, in fact, "SOHO Square" is on the balance sheet of the "Savoy" 5 * hotel: all these chic entertainment almost until the morning on an area of more than ten hectares, restaurants, bars, recreation areas, hundreds, if not thousands of employees, service personnel and security ...(After all, nothing happens for nothing! And therefore I would suggest excluding the word “free”, and, moreover, “freebie” from the lexicon, and leave it in dictionaries with the note “humor”). And all this is included in the price of the Ultra All Inclusive tour.
This grandiose show for the whole Sharm El Sheikh is hosted by the Savoy 5* hotel! That is why, when the travel agency first suggested visiting this hotel, I replied that I would not like to pay for the maintenance of SOHO Square, since I was already familiar with this whole area of u200bu200bentertainment three months ago while relaxing at the Grand Oasis by Look Hotels 4 * "(April-May 2017), which is three hundred meters from SOHO Square and visited it several times with free access, though with very careful security control at the entrance, no less thorough than at the airport. That is, resting in the nearest hotels from SOHO Square, or using free bus trips from distant hotels, you can use all this for free.
I really wanted to know, so what is really in this, one of the most luxurious hotels on the Red Sea, as advertising says about it, but at the same time no less controversial hotel, judging by the reviews of tourists who have visited this hotel. And it was the passion of the explorer that drew me to this hotel, not the passion of curiosity. And therefore, in order to feed the “freeloaders” as less as possible, I took a tour at the lowest price - “BB” (“Breakfast Only”) and the cheapest room of the “Standard Garden View Rooms” category (although we must pay tribute to the hotel, the “Standard” rooms are here chic and even the cheapest room in it is better than in some hotels of the 5 * category, and, moreover, 4 *! )
This is the second time I've been in a prestigious 5 * hotel on the BB (Breakfast Only) food system. I used to be in a hotel of this level - "Grand Rotana Resort & Spa" 5 * (from 07.13. to 07.21. 17.
Therefore, in my opinion, the number of cabbage dishes, as the cheapest product, is a litmus test, a criterion for the quality level of a hotel's food. And the Savoy 5 * hotel passed this test perfectly! But I'm not going to extol the restaurateurs and hotel administrators to the skies and write them down as holy virtues. To be honest, the cost of the tour, based on the day, does not allow it to be otherwise. After all, I had 4 * All Inclusive hotels for $ 25 per day (together with the flight), and here, at the Savoy 5 * “breakfast only” hotel - $ 100! Do you feel the difference? At the same time, I spontaneously gave birth to an aphorism: For $100, anyone can feed, try to feed a voracious and, moreover, whimsical Ukrainian for $1!
August 27.2017. Thursday
Breakfast
I, as I already wrote, have a nutrition system - “Breakfast only”, therefore I can describe it in the most detailed way, as I felt it on my own skin, more precisely, on my own stomach.
Given the variety of food for breakfast and its quality at the Savoy 5 * Hotel, from the very beginning I resigned myself to the absence of regular daily lunches and dinners (if I had a special desire, I used them, but for an additional fee), a coma of one - dinner. And all because, starting from noon, barbecues are lit in the courtyard of the Tirana restaurant, and a little later, grilled meat, shish kebabs and so on are fried. At the same time, the smell of specific smoke with a hint of delicious dishes rises and stretches along the corridor of building No. 6, where I live, and even seeps into my room (the Tirana restaurant is located on the floor below). This continues until late at night (dinner ends at 22:00). And every time I return to my room from the beach, I catch this delicious smell with my nostrils, disturbing my stomach and my entire physical being. Well, how not to break the “BB” food system (“Breakfast only”? ) here. But back to our “rams” (breakfasts).
Surprisingly, what was not in any of the twelve hotels in Egypt (including 5 *), where I have been over the past two years, is a very long breakfast, lasting from dawn (from 6:30) until almost lunch (11 : 00) – four and a half hours! This allows not only a long sleep for the lazy and "owls" until almost noon after a "fun" night, including in "SOHO Square", but also to have breakfast twice for "larks", which I belong to, which I sometimes did. Moreover, there is no such strict control over visiting vacationers for breakfast, with a mark in the lists, as it was in my previous hotel according to the “BB” system - “Grand Rotana” 5 *, when there is a risk of billing at the end of the holiday for a second breakfast! But after this article of mine, it is possible that something will appear ...
I always wake up very early, sometimes even before sunrise, and before breakfast I manage to run to the sea, meet the sunrise, capture it in a photo, plunge into the sea (there is not very strict control over this, although swimming is allowed from 8:00 according to the rules: 00) and, importantly, take the best sun lounger - closer to the pontoon and the sea! On the way to the beach and from the beach, take a dozen pictures on the territory of the hotel in soft lighting before the harsh daytime shadows, then drop into the room, take a cold shower (running around the hotel up and down you sweat a lot) and by 7:00 I am already in the restaurant "Tirana". And my rise was so early, despite the late end of the previous day, far after midnight: such is the “climate” here, on the Red Sea. Especially since my physiology “knows” that it will get its share of sleep, and even more, during the day on the beach.
The name of the restaurant "Tirana" is very symbolic, as the hotel "Savoy" 5 * is located in the "Shark Bay" opposite the island of Tiran.
But to take them, if you are not the first, then it is very problematic. The chairs at the tables are soft and comfortable with new drapery, which is obviously updated often. On the tables, as usual, all the necessary utensils, linen napkins, spices, and immediately, as soon as you sit down at the table, the waiter puts a stainless steel thermos with hot coffee and boiling water. By the way, thermoses are excellent and keep the boiling point for several hours! Cups, three types of tea bags, as well as sugar and a bowl of milk are already in advance. That is, the service in this regard in the Tirana restaurant of the Savoy 5 * hotel is impeccable. Only, just like in other hotels of this category, there are no paper napkins on the table and you have to look for them, which is not entirely clear.
The range of dishes for breakfast does not change and is the same from day to day. But on the other hand, there is such a wide variety of them that if you really want to eat them (and not just try them), then a few days will not be enough.
But seven days was enough for me! Today I tried to count them, but after fifty, on more than a dozen pastries, I lost count ...There are more than a dozen jars of jam and marmalade alone - take it open and eat!
The main dish, as in all restaurants in hotels in Egypt, is scrambled eggs and scrambled eggs, cooked in your presence and according to your order: with vegetables, hard cheese or without them. I admire the skill of the cook, with which he so skillfully throws an omelette into the air and catches it on the fly with the other side! For the main course, I would also include bean puree with the addition of vegetables, pepper and olive oil, as well as poured with lime juice, which replaced the first course for me and was poured by the cook from a special pear-shaped container, constantly heated by the fire of an alcohol stove. And next - hot fried lumps of "falafel"!
Of course, after a couple of days you already feel the monotony of the dishes, but you immediately understand that the chefs are trying so that after midnight (and do they sleep at all? ), By six in the morning, cook so many dishes and feed such a bunch of holiday-goers! ..
Further, according to the degree of "materiality", there are hot dishes: sausages of three types: two types - boiled: beef and chicken (to taste - none and differ only in color: light - chicken, red - beef - some kind of divorce! ), the third dish is tastier: the same sausages, but overcooked with vegetables and tomatoes. Then hot boiled eggs, scrambled eggs (I called it "cook's laziness"), hot pancakes with chocolate glaze or jam syrup. And fried potatoes, to tell the truth, are tasteless in all of Egypt and in all restaurants - compared to ours, Ukrainian, and, moreover, Belarusian bulba!
And I had a reassessment of values. As it once seemed to be an unusual and inaccessible hotel, in reality it turned out to be quite ordinary and even inferior to some hotels that I had previously visited. And so I got a little disappointed. Over the past five days, I got used to it and any previously apparent mystery dissipated like fog. That's what habit means. I already knew everything, however, superficially, I experienced everything basic in the hotel, and therefore for me it became almost a gray everyday life. Maybe all this is due to my creative nature, constantly craving more and more new discoveries and impressions. Perhaps this is how the human essence manifests itself in the process of any cognition - movement along the vertical. And the first joys of knowing heights and unusualness soon turn into almost everyday fuss.
At the same time, I am horrified when trying to choose the next hotel and new requirements for it in connection with the already achieved level and imagine how uncomfortable it will be for me in 3 * and 4 * hotels, and even in many 5 *. And that's why I understand those critics who, with such passion, spread in their reviews all the negative perception of this or that hotel. No wonder the Bible says that knowledge leads to sorrow...
Nevertheless, I feel a certain pride in myself that I managed to reach a certain peak of service, increased comfort of a resort holiday, architectural and landscape design. And I calmed down for a while - until I get information about a more comfortable and inaccessible hotel for me. And this, in all likelihood, will be the Four Seasons Resort Sharm El Sheikh 5 * hotel, where breakfast alone, judging by the prices for the tour, will cost me not a hundred dollars, as here at the Savoy 5 * hotel, but all $300 and up, depending on the room category!
That is, for one breakfast you will have to give at least your pension for the year! .
August 28.2017. Friday
Bars. My visits.
Today, in the last days of rest at the Savoy 5 * hotel, having enjoyed the sea to the full - five full days from morning to sunset - on the beach, with a frequency of at least an hour by diving under water in a mask with a snorkel to corals and fish, finally decided to visit the bars of the hotel: it was their turn. Two bars attracted my greatest attention - the Safari lobby bar and the bar at the bottom of the hotel, almost by the sea - Oriental Cave, as they are the most accessible and open until late at night.
Safari lobby bar
The first was the "Safari" bar, which I was casually familiar with, when admiring the lobby and passing the wooden bridge over the "whirlpool", I immediately got into this bar. But then I didn’t even sit down at the table, but only walked around it to have a general idea. Now I decided to devote the whole evening to him.
And after 20:00, when the animation for adults begins (there are different tricks, Miss Mr. Hotel, etc. ), there was not a single person in the bar. I sat in the Safari bar, drinking dry wine, for several hours in a row, almost until closing time, and enjoyed this bar to my heart's content.
What is special about this bar is, like all other restaurants in the hotel and SOHO Square, the dress code is trousers and closed shoes for men and dress for women. In my presence, the bartender refused to serve a young man in shorts and a T-shirt who popped into the bar for a cup of coffee.
In accordance with the name, "Safari-bar" is made with a predominance of paintings of nature and other safari elements: on the end walls there are large oil paintings on canvas, right up to the ceiling: elephants, bison, zebras, rhinos and other wild animals, so natural and detailed depicted, that at first I thought it was just a photo, like a photo wallpaper, but, looking closer, I saw a canvas and paints.
And even the lamps in the bar are made with backlight on their glasses depicting safari animals. Inside the bar - twilight - corresponds to the style and contributes to peaceful rest, friendly conversation and lyrical mood.
In the bar, all the furniture and other elements, as well as the bars on the windows, in the openings and niches, are made of natural wood, which is also in the safari style. On the ceiling there are vaulted niches, originally lined with red refractory bricks. In the niches there are lamps-chandeliers made of blackened copper. The subdued light from these lamps does not disturb the intimate twilight of the bar.
Ceiling fans work interestingly: they rapidly drive fresh air over those tables at which visitors are sitting and barely rotate over empty ones thanks to special sensors: energy saving. So it is always cool in the bar at any time of the day and in the evening.
The overall impression of the lobby bar "Safari" is quite pleasant.
A solid, well-invested bar with an original style that has been hard-worked by talents in architecture and design. However, unfortunately, this bar remains, for some unknown reason, unclaimed. With almost 100% occupancy of the hotel - such a minuscule number of visitors! Perhaps this is because the main contingent of guests of the Savoy 5 * hotel are Arabs, and oriental people do not like to stay in bars for a long time, and the Koran forbids the use of alcoholic beverages as a reason to extend your stay in a bar for several hours ...
"Oriental Cave"
My next visit was a bar near the beach - "Oriental Cave", which is located next to the Asian restaurant "Eest". So often advertised bar under the waterfall, I have not seen day or night. And all because the roof of the bar, which is also the bottom of the waterfall pool, is leaking.
Therefore, for the whole day, the stone walls and the roof are so hot under the August sun that they do not give even the smallest chance for a comfortable rest, even in the late evening hours. For this reason, there are practically no visitors in this bar. However, for the purity of the experiment, I still stood in this bar for more than two hours - this is my feat! Only thanks to the fact that I went into it before everyone else and chose a table, as elsewhere in the bars of the Savoy 5 * hotel, with chic soft chairs and a sofa, at the only most serviceable fan, although it rattled like a tractor. The rest of the fans, if they worked, then intermittently. Near the table was the company of the director of this bar with the guests. That's all for that time bar visitors. True, a few more people jumped in for 5-10 minutes - to smoke a hookah ...
But today, even before breakfast, the usual rhythm of life was already disturbed by impressions of the architectural and landscape design of the lower part of the hotel - right by the beach ...
Territory. Architecture. Design
“Magnificent architecture and expressive architectural appearance, the elegant design of the Savoy Sharm El Sheikh 5 * hotel prepares you a lot of pleasant surprises: a cave bar hiding in the shadow of a seething waterfall, a winter garden, many fountains and openwork bridges, amazing blue illumination of the hotel at night time. The territory of the hotel is immersed in greenery. Flora and fauna, waterfalls and picturesque landscapes will not leave you indifferent. Tropical landscape and evergreen vegetation - a real oasis, located between the mountain ranges and the pristine coast of the Red Sea. - This is just an advertisement, at least two years old, and does not quite correspond to the reality of those realities at the end of August 2017, when I was in this hotel.
) hours waiting for a better view from the window of the room than on the roofs of buildings, which was uselessly requested twice by letter three weeks before arrival. Yes, there is amazing flora and picturesque landscapes, but there is no fauna in the hotel, except for lizards on the territory, and many pigeons on the beach, especially when children feed them with bread! But this is a plus, only for small children: I watched with great pleasure how they recklessly run after pigeons, trying to grab them by the tail ...
I do not rule out that during short-term checks by the authorities controlling the hotels, everything turns on and is illuminated with an "amazing blue light", even numerous searchlights at a five-meter depth in the sea near the pontoon, but during my eight-day stay at the Savoy Hotel 5 * such a diva and there were no beliefs.
The hotel consists of a main 4-storey round building of the main building and a complex of seven 2- and 3-storey buildings fanning out from it in different directions.
The naturalness of wildlife on this site of the Savoy 5 * hotel with ponds, streams, bridges is displayed to such an extent that you begin to realize that this is all natural, and not an artificial oasis in the middle of the desert. So everything is thought out and implemented to the smallest detail: if it is a stream, then with stones at the bottom, on which sun glare is reflected from the waves on the surface of the water; if it is the bank of a stream, then reeds and other aquatic plants are a must. The only thing missing is live silver fish and imposing turtles in the water of the stream. But immediately you are convinced that this problem has also been solved by a brilliant designer: all this natural living creatures are frozen in bronze on the shore in the form of small sculptural forms and are lazily warming themselves, gleaming, in the sun.
I was so carried away by the pictures of natural Nature that I did not notice how long ago breakfast had already begun. My stomach, as the personification of real physical life, brought me back to reality from the world of spiritual illusions. He pointed out to me that in addition to the spiritual, I also have a physical essence, which also requires at least a fraction of my attention. And I, sighing heavily because of such a mandatory and unwanted ballast imposed on me, trudged to the Tiran restaurant, where all the awakened noble people of the Savoy Hotel had already begun to flock to satisfy their needs for physical food.
Today, only on the third day of my stay at the Savoy Hotel, I turned my attention, and even got used to this small area of the hotel, several hundred square meters, with natural Nature. And even casually slipped past VIP-mansions and villas.
So, I contacted the guest service with a complaint about the work of the room cleaner (two towels were seized from the room), but the problem was solved (plus the dirt in the room after cleaning - I specifically showed the cleaner and the manager, smearing my finger (mine, not theirs) dirty spots on the floor), and “promptly” - three days later, when I closed the janitor in the room (I understand that this is an article of the Criminal Code - restriction of individual freedom) and forced to call the manager ...But I earned two small bottles of water from the manager as compensation inconvenience for these three (! ) days.
Sports and entertainment. Services
Free of charge: Sauna, steam bath, jacuzzi (complex - from 9:00 to 17:00 - one hour a day), (although I was refused and forced to pay, but I refused ... ), 3 outdoor pools, two of them heated in winter period, gym, beach volleyball, darts, 4 clay tennis courts (lighting and equipment rental are paid additionally).
Table soccer. Group training and games - prior agreement required, evening shows (at SOHO Square), Pangea disco (at SOHO Square), bus to Naama Bay (fixed time, 2 times a day), safe at reception, Wi -Fi throughout the hotel (sending messages and browsing), high-speed Internet - for a fee, By world standards, free Internet is always provided with a usage limit. Unlimited access is also provided, but for an additional fee.
For a fee: Bowling, squash, ice rink, billiards, diving school, water sports.
Animation is only on the beach of the Sierra Hotel. There is no animation in the hotel: all show programs are on SOHO Square, which was built in order to transfer entertainment outside the Savoy 5 * hotel, to enable hotel guests, while on vacation, to choose between the silence of the hotel and noisy entertainment at SOHO Square.
For kids
If you would like to invite friends who are not staying at the Savoy Hotel, please note that your meeting can only take place in the lobby area. The admission of visitors to the rooms is prohibited.
Security
The territory of the Savoy 5 * hotel and SOHO Square is patrolled 24 hours by the security service. Only uniformed employees with name badges are allowed to enter the room.
The installation of marine predator safety nets in the Red Sea is not permitted by Egyptian law. The hotel has electronic protection against Sharks ("Shark shield") made in France.
My trip to Naama Bay
I visited Naama Bay today. For government account. True, not the first time, but the second.
At the same time, at the Grand Rotana Resort & Spa 5 * hotel, where I was last month, both trips to Naama Bay are organized in the evening, and the last one is from 22:00 to 24:00, and there is no end to those who wish. Of course, “SOHO Square” is much higher in solidity than Naama Bay, but for a change and comparison, in the evening there would still be those who wish, because I went to SOHO Square twice, enjoyed everything that is there (visually) and the third time I was not drawn there ...
I went to Naama Bay in order to find out more about everything that the Savoy 5 * hotel offers and my research itch pulled me there - to know what no one had yet known and described. So, I'm in Naama Bay. The heat in the sun is over sixty, stuffy, like in a dry steam room and there is not a single tree - there is solid stone around, and the walls of white buildings reflect the midday heat on you. It even seems that the sky is breathing like a hot dome from above on you...Everything froze in this hot, incredibly stuffy stuff.
It is impossible to stand still - it burns the heels like in a hellish frying pan. And so you quickly move your feet: before you had time to bake one foot, the second one had already cooled down in the air, creating a comfortable breeze in motion, and is ready to step on the red-hot stone of the sidewalk again. And so all the way. From the outside, this probably seems ridiculous ...I would have laughed to my heart's content if I myself had not been a participant in this cruel process ...
Always looking for some small shadow. But she’s not there: the Sun has just left the zenith and started looking to the West, but for some reason it’s not in a hurry to go there ...I walk through the deserted streets slowly and, as it were, with self-deepening - the latter somehow helps not to fall into despair and not break loose...
And there is not a soul: the city seems to have died out.
Shops and small shops are deafly closed, all restaurants and bars have covered chairs and tables with gray capes from dust and direct sunlight, which in a day can burn any textile to the state of a faded rag. Only one young Arab loader with long "smoke breaks" (he will unload a couple of boxes - he rests for half an hour) unloads a truck of some drinks in plastic boxes. I try to hide closer to the walls of buildings and not at all in the shade, but so that they would not see me and think of me as some kind of European fool, roaming along the red-hot stone streets in such heat: all smart tourists are right there, through quarter sit up to their necks in the sea on the city beach. By the way, about the city beach in Naama Bay: I visited it and here is my impression. This is something incredible in terms of barbaric neglect.
I just stepped on the beach and couldn’t go further for fear of absorbing all the dirt and all the impurities that were on this beach: torn and greasy mattresses lie on broken sun loungers, the condition, and probably their smell, is the same as ours. Kyiv homeless rooming houses. And in general, the entire strip of the beach presented such a dull and dirty look that I even felt sorry for the handsome Red Sea, who was forced to wash the dirty sand of this beach, taking over part of this brood ...In this situation, I instantly lost the desire to plunge into the waters of the Red Sea and the heat and heat of the stone streets became sweeter, and I quickly retired deep into the white and clean buildings of Naama Bay.
And only closer to four o'clock in the afternoon did the first little men appear - just as slow and dull in their movements, like all this specious day. By five o'clock the sun is already casting long shadows from the white buildings.
The heat subsides by a couple of degrees (from 50 to forty-five), a small fresh breeze appears and you begin to feel comfortable. Moreover, every minute the restless shadow crawls farther and farther along the stone pavement street, winning back its living space from the smoky day. The wind is getting stronger and colder...
I went ten meters deep into the quarter and was also horrified by the devastation that I saw. Worse than in the ruins in the center of old Moscow in the early 90s! (although so far I have never seen worse, except for Hurghada in 2015). And only now I realized the biggest mistake of the administration of the Savoy Hotel, sending their guests at ten in the morning and at noon, and not at night, to watch all this horror! After all, the night includes illumination, searchlights and lighting on sham places of a false celebration of life, hiding the terrible tragedy of everyday life that I saw today ...
I was so dejected and shocked by all this that I completely forgot about the camera around my neck and I did not take a single picture. I was in a fog, until the moment the minibus crossed the border of the Savoy Hotel at the entrance gate and my Savoy 5 * hotel became so nice to me!
God forbid to live, let alone rest in the conditions that I saw an hour ago! And even more pitiful was the young Arabs, who not only live, but also work in these terrible conditions, earning their daily bread ...
Evening mountains of Sinai
Evening. The sun has already disappeared behind the rocky shores of the Red Sea, and from there it casts the red slanting rays of its fading onto the sky and the Earth.
If it were not for the Sun, which makes the Sinai mountains play so beautifully, they would remain invisible, like a props in the west of the peninsula, distant, tens of kilometers from civilization. They just wouldn't be noticed. And if in the Crimea the mountains are literally at arm's length from the sea and they impressed me so much that I created a whole cycle of poems about them, then here, on the Sinai Peninsula, only today I really examined them, almost the only time in the last two of the year. And the role of the Sun in this case, as a catalyst for sensory perception of distant mountains. And for this I am very grateful to the Sun that it revealed to me one more facet of Nature from the environment of the Red Sea.
August 29.2017. Saturday
Last day at the beach
The last, seventh, full day at Savoy 5*. Tomorrow is the flight. The speed of time is incredible.
Everything good and beautiful comes slowly, lingers a little longer with me, and instantly disappears into the past, it becomes already “yesterday”.
I, as always, from early morning and for the whole day - on the sea: the beach in the shade of an umbrella, periodic, for half an hour, or even for an hour, swims along the reef in a mask with a snorkel: the water temperature allows it. I dilute the monotony of beach pictures with an inexhaustible variety of coral species and various colorful fish. I even began to bring them into a system and memorize individual plots of repetitive pictures of fairy tales of the underwater world, that is, to put things in order in my impressions of the Red Sea, as at home.
The last day… I looked inside myself and tried to extract from there the answer to the question: “What do I feel? ” Got the answer: “Satisfied, with a sense of accomplishment!
» Even in Kyiv, I set myself the task of looking from the inside at such a controversial hotel, which seems to tourists who have visited it and write reviews, but at the same time, is advertised as a fashionable hotel and therefore pulls prices for tours to it to the highest levels that I met in Egypt. And, in principle, I coped with this task. First, as much as possible, I saw everything with my own eyes. Secondly, I recorded especially sensual things that touched me to the depths of my Soul on dozens of sheets of paper - it will be, at least within a month after arrival in Kyiv, to “rake”, digitize and share with my subscribers on the Internet.
Thirdly, and most importantly, even more was fixed in my subconscious against my will and will definitely come up when I describe my impressions of the Savoy 5 * hotel, just by looking at the photos that I took or reading a line of my manuscripts. And so my day passes calmly and balanced, without any nuances.
And time flows inexorably, winding the rings of current plots on a ball of similar plots of the past. And lunch has already begun on the beach. Waiters in white uniforms scurry all over the beach with trays, with various dishes and drinks on them for at least half of the remaining beachgoers who have been in the morning. The rest were not too lazy to walk a few hundred meters in such an August heat and preferred the comfort of the hotel restaurants, with a much larger variety of dishes. And the concentrated work of the jaws begins to chew everything ordered.
In such heat, at all times, both before lunch, during it, and after, which is natural, a sea of liquid is poured inside from various packages and containers: from metal jars, from glasses, bottles, glasses, wine glasses with and without tubes … Indeed, for many, all this is free, that is, according to the “All inclusive” system. And at the end of this whole procedure, pink sheets of bills for lunch dishes and drinks flash everywhere, which are signed by well-fed tourists, in most cases, without looking.
After - gleam in the rays of the Sun and in the hands of the same waiters - hookahs, spreading a haze of fragrant smells along the beach - the joy of an oriental person and an integral attribute of his daily lifestyle. Our Europeans also joined him. One should not be surprised here: tradition is tradition, especially for many centuries, if not millennia.
In a short period of time I visited several different hotels in Egypt, ranging from 3 * to luxurious 5 *. And I had to see, meet and communicate with many different people in these hotels. Thanks to this, I have the opinion that the “star” of a hotel is like a sieve that sifts people from all over the world in order to single out a certain category of them and place them in a particular hotel. Speaking figuratively, I would say that the "star" of the hotel is a criterion of caste, that is, the belonging of a vacationer in this hotel to one or another caste of our world community, like castes in India. Naturally, the main criterion for sifting is the price of the tour, and the "star" of the hotel in which a person is resting can indicate his social level.
Yes, because 70% of all vacationers at 3 * and 4 * resorts in Egypt are Ukrainians, and in the conditions of the war in Ukraine, a sharp rise in the price of everything, only those working in the field of trade and similar areas, as well as thieves and bribe-takers, can afford expensive foreign resort…
In abbreviation. Full text: "Holidays in Egypt" https://www. facebook. com/sashasim. Egypt/
And in the book: Sasha Sim. Red Sea: Corner of the earthly Paradise. Travel notes from Egypt. - Kyiv: SIM & HAM Publishing House, - 2017. - 535 p. , illus. ISBN 966-8802-17-9
© Sasha Sim (Alexander Golovko), 2017
Translated automatically from Russian. View original
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OTHER REVIEWS ABOUT THE HOTEL
- Difficult area, reception unfriendly
- The hotel is not VIP
- Disappointed!
- Great place, everything you need is there
- Great hotel for watching the reef
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