Летняя жара в Шарм-Эль-Шейхе Summer heat in Sharm El Sheikh

From August 2 to August 9.2022, Egypt was chosen as the destination for summer holidays. After a careful selection of hotels, we settled on Sierra Sharm El Sheikh.

There are quite a few tourists from Russia in this hotel, about 10% of the guests, the bulk are Italians and Arabs, and the attitude of the hotel staff towards them is somewhat better than the rest of the guests. Although, it all depends on the person, of course. We were not served drinks at bars or at meals, we had to do everything ourselves, and everything was delivered to more "own" guests.


Arriving at the hotel on the 2nd at 14 o'clock, we were offered to go for lunch, and only then were given the keys to the room. According to the voucher, the room was indicated with "Garden View", but, in fact, since the hotel is on the second line, all rooms have a "Garden View", and the view itself differs only in the location on which the windows are facing. We got a room on the 2nd floor with windows on the main building and the restaurant.
The room was clean and could be seen to have been refurbished, but the cabinets were in a very shabby condition. I was surprised by the lack of a dryer - there was no balcony on the 2nd floor, and bathing accessories had to be dried in the bathroom, throwing them over the glass enclosure of the shower cabin. The restroom itself was quite small, and the most memorable feature was that the shower door did not fully open, as it rested on the toilet. Otherwise, the room was clean enough, with air conditioning, TV, kettle, hair dryer, fresh drinking water (which is important for Egypt). No bathrobes or slippers were found.

The territory of the hotel is small, and consists of the entrance area to the hotel and the paths between the buildings and swimming pools on the residential part. There are a couple of interesting locations, like a small garden in the center of a large building or a corner with chess and swings.
Cats in Egypt have always been treated well, and this hotel is no exception. There are many feeding places for fluffy tails, and there was even a scratching post in the main building. In general, the cats felt at ease in the territory, and you could often see how, during breaks, when the restaurant was closed, they lay right on the tables that were on the street. In our opinion, this is unhygienic, I hope that these tables were well treated before the restaurant opened.

There are several pools on the territory, the main pool has a bar with the possibility of ordering drinks directly from the water. During the day, the pool was consistently filled with vacationers. There is also a pool for playing water volleyball, and small pools near the buildings.

The sea can be reached in two ways - either on foot through the adjacent Savoy Hotel (about 8 minutes), or by bus every 20 minutes departing from the hotel (about 3 minutes).

Taking into account the Egyptian heat, the bus seemed to us a more preferable option. The beach is sandy, good, the entrance to the water to the reef is carried out from the pontoon - the coastal area for entry is small and suitable only for photos in shallow water and cooling the feet. There is a separate bar on the beach, where from 13 to 17 hours they will also serve sandwiches, french fries and similar fast food. You can also take towels on the beach (you can also take them on the territory, but why bring them with you). The entrance from the pontoon is carried out immediately to the depth. At first glance, it seems that there is not much space for swimming, but in fact, it is more than enough. The biggest plus of the hotel is the reef. The reef is quite picturesque, lively - a lot of corals and colorful fish scurrying around you when swimming. The beach is a solid 8.5 out of 10.

Meals at the hotel are served in the main restaurant.
For breakfast and dinner, 3 hours are allocated, which is quite long, for lunch - 2, but from 13 to 17 you can still have a bite to eat at the beach bar and at the bar in the western part of the hotel. Unfortunately, outside of the hotel's main meals, there is no possibility of anything to eat - not even tea biscuits or late-night snacks.

The main restaurant itself is small, but there are a lot of seats, considering the tables on the street. Of course, they are less preferred in the summer, and at lunchtime, many people lacked space in an air-conditioned room. The food does not shine with variety, but the positions are average, and they are diluted with themed dishes for every evening. Pasta is prepared in a separate corner of the restaurant, where you can choose different types of additives that can diversify the dish. In general, we had enough choice of both meat dishes and side dishes.
Grilled dishes were also prepared for dinner, and if the cook diligently overdried the beef and fish, then the quail and grilled chicken turned out to be quite good. Of the fruits were melon, plums, oranges, dates, bananas and watermelons were not every day. There was also a large selection of sweets. Cleaning the tables in the restaurant is quite efficient, the waiters do their job well. There is a bar where you can order juices, beer, wine, water. I would give the restaurant 7 out of 10, since we were full after meals, they were moderately tasty, there were no poisonings.

The animators at the hotel are young guys who look more like Brazilians than Arabs (perhaps this is true). In general, they do their job - there were beach games, and water activity, and dancing. At 21.30, an evening show is held, which mainly consists of interactive with guests.

Once there was an invited belly dance, where the girl diligently unscrewed her 30 minutes of dancing, the rest of the time it was like karaoke or a talent show. It was somewhat repulsive that they walked around the territory to the evening show and called people with loud shouts for 10-15 minutes - I think that whoever needs it will come himself, and there is no need to disturb the guests with loud lures. After 6 pm this is the only activity in the hotel and the evening is quite boring. You can take table tennis rackets, there is a very good table.

After 18:00, only one lobby bar remains open in the hotel. This is inconvenient, because all the people who want to flock there, and queues form. The bartenders do their best, but they have a hard time serving a large number of people, and this can affect the quality of drinks. Basically, we drank beer, because it turned out to be quite tasty and light. We also tried cocktails, but they were not impressive.
They didn’t try pure hard alcohol, because for Sunrise Tequila, Mojito and Whiskey Cola, alcohol was poured from the same hard plastic bottle. Foreign drinks are available but are subject to a fee.

Of any interesting points, it is worth noting that there is Soho Square nearby, which is a tourist area where there are various cafes, shops and even shopping centers. After 6 pm, it starts to work actively, there is a beautiful backlight, and you can just walk along a busy street.

You can also sign up for free at the a la carte restaurant “Akuna Matata”, where we went once, although you can use Premium All-Inclusive every day. The restaurant is more like a cafe, the choice of dishes is small enough to book from the hotel, other positions are paid. We ordered seafood salad, seafood soup and fish dishes.
Everything turned out to be quite average in quality and taste, I can’t say that we were disappointed, but we still expected something of a better quality.

I would like to note the work of Guest Relations - a corner for working with guests. All employees speak Russian well, help in solving all problems. We asked to add the amount of drinking water to the room, asked for a toilet brush, since there was none in the room, asked to bring a towel - all requests were met.


In general, the hotel is not bad, but we paid a very impressive amount for the rest in it, which did not fully pay off, so there was a feeling of dissatisfaction. If you are ready for the second line, a large number of foreigners and Arabs as guests, the lack of opportunities to eat during part of the day - then you can choose Sierra. Nevertheless, the beach is good, the reef is excellent, and you have to go to Egypt first of all overseas.
The food is quite decent, there is little music on the territory at night and in the morning, it is quite possible to get enough sleep. The quality of service is not bad, but if we compare Premium All-Inclusive in Turkey and Egypt, then these are 2 fundamentally different levels of service, of course.