Отдых Rest

general information
Rested in Montenegro in the city of Budva, hotel Slonencka Plaza - 3 * from August 25 to September 5.2007 from the tour operator "VKO TRAVEL". I booked single occupancy in a standard room on an all-inclusive basis. I was only interested in a beach holiday without excursions. I can compare with Turkey and Egypt.

Territory
The territory is large. The hotel is a set of three-story buildings with 1000 rooms, roughly 3000 people. The city of Budva is located at the foot of the mountains and bordered by mountains, a really beautiful landscape: palm trees, cypresses, pine trees, mowed lawns everywhere. The city is stretched along the beaches. There are two roads between the beaches and the hotel: closer to the beaches --- walking, closer to the hotel --- the embankment itself. Everything is located close, walking is convenient, you can not use the train, which is written about in the catalogs.

The hotel itself is located far from the reception, is not fenced at all and is a courtyard through which the entire population of the city goes to the beaches. The hotel borders on the embankment, as it were, with its own park, along which the central road passes, here is also the only own hotel restaurant, that is, a dining room. Trees, fragrant shrubs, many beautiful flowering bushes are planted near the buildings. In all buildings there are markets, restaurants, cafes, boutiques, photo studios. Here, musicians perform in an open-air cafe. For example, from my room, for the first few days, I enjoyed the playing of a local guitarist, and it was not intrusive.

The streets of the hotel, one might say, were kept clean: they swept and even washed with some kind of soapy liquid.
All categories of townspeople freely move around the territory, including beggars, sellers of small goods, such as homeless people, tourists themselves, naturally numerous attendants, and stray dogs. Many works on the hotel are carried out with the help of carts: work starts early, garbage is taken out on these carts, including from the restaurant, luggage is brought up, they simply move from place to place as needed. Sewer wells are everywhere: because of them, a decent noise is created when the cart passes through them, and even worse if it starts to turn around (this is provided for by the shape of the tracks). I'm not nitpicking, it's just that when this happens every morning from 4 to 5 o'clock and is accompanied by loud communication of working boys - it's already too much. I had to drive them away.

The embankment is, on one side, restaurants and cafes that cling to each other like seats in a cinema hall, and on the other, a clothing market.
You can buy the entire beach range at the bazaar: towels about 180 cm long cost 15 euros, slates 3 ...15 euros, etc. There are several Internet points: 2 euros for half an hour, they don’t give less; no Russian keyboard.

Weather
Arrived on August 25 at 10 am local time. The air temperature is about 25 degrees. At noon it is already frankly hot and so on until sunset.

The temperature of the sea water, I believe, is about 24 degrees, maybe less. I swam the next day in the morning before sunrise: I had to get used to the water - it was cool. With sunrise, the air warms up almost instantly, and the water warmed up to 26 degrees once during my stay. In short, the water is cool in the morning, because the air at night was 14 ...20 degrees constantly, during the day about 30 maybe more. The calm was only 4 days, from August 30, a decent excitement at sea began, the wind intensified, we had to constantly cover the shutters on the windows.
From September 4, the weather deteriorated completely: a strong wind, thunderclouds, tourists walked in warm jackets, in the evening it began to rain and poured all night. According to tourists who left home later, the air temperature dropped to 10 degrees during the day, which is unnecessary at sea. They say that summer ends there at this time. How, at the same time, the swimming season can continue there until November, it remains a mystery to me personally (such information is contained in the folder from the East Kazakhstan region ...at the reception). My conclusion for myself: in Turkey at this time it is much warmer.

Beaches
The topic is big, you can talk endlessly; I'll try to be short.
Your stay in this hotel is a municipal hotel with city beaches.

The beaches occupy the entire coast of the city of Budva from the tunnel to the city of Becici and to the so-called Old Town (a local landmark in the form of a small fortress is well shown in the catalogs).
Entrance paid and free, sand / pebbles.
The vast majority of these beaches have free entry. They say that only two beaches are paid. I personally discovered only one --- Mogren Beach. This is the farthest beach on the right.

You need to go outside the old city past the Avala hotel. They say that the small beach between this hotel and the fortress wall belongs to Avala and outsiders are not allowed there. This is quite possible, although I did not go there, but I saw the guards in the immediate vicinity of the beach.

I preferred "Mogren" to all other beaches as the cleanest and least crowded. It consists of two parts, connected by an isthmus-grotto, very picturesque, but not always easily passable. Both parts are sandy and where there are sunbeds, and where the entrance to the sea. The coast is gentle. The territory is bordered by a steep mountain covered with pine trees. Here on the beach there is a picturesque three-tiered cafe.

They sell one place on the beach: two sunbeds with mattresses and an umbrella, we don’t touch the sunbeds, we set the umbrella as convenient. Pleasure costs 2.5+2.5+2.5=7.5 euros per day. You take a place in the morning and it's yours all day. They give receipts, you can leave the beach for lunch and return later, you don’t have to pay for the second time. Entrance costs 1 euro. There is a shower only on the first part, closer to the entrance-exit. You can not take an umbrella and sunbed, many were located on the sand. I personally disdain: I will have to lie practically on cigarette butts. Maybe someone does not care, but, honestly, gentlemen people --- we are like pigs --- where we ate, smoked, and left there. It's a pity, isn't it? Let others feel disgusted, the main thing is convenient for me! I don’t smoke myself and it’s unbearable to inhale the “aromas” from smoking and cigarette butts, because I came to the sea to breathe “clean” sea air. There are many like me and not only adults. Why do children have to breathe filth too?
I understand that I am now like a fish on ice, but this is my wish to all smokers, a lyrical digression, so to speak.

It seemed to me that the water on Mogren Beach is the cleanest and most transparent, maybe due to its remoteness: it was clean even during heavy waves. True, it should be noted that once I happened to see floating feces on this beach, one can only guess how it could be there, so far from civilization.
The rest of the beaches are located within the city: a narrow strip of large or small pebbles, the entrance to the sea can be sandy in several places, which is very convenient. On some beaches, sunbeds are arranged in six rows, there is definitely nowhere for an apple to fall on all beaches, even if you buy a sunbed --- they are located very close to each other. People are located everywhere: under trees, on pedestals, benches, on pebbles, wherever there is a free patch. A lot of space is given over to a cafe.
An unmeasured amount of trash cans, they are quickly replenished, cleaned often, but this is still not enough, the smell is decent.

The path to Becici is not cleaned at all, it is covered with cigarette butts to a greater extent, it was sickening to look at paper, bottles, other rubbish, one walk along this path was enough for me (this was the first time I was looking for a decent beach). The first impression of the beaches and the sea was terrible. As I found out later, a storm passed the day before. Imagine: the entire water area of ​ ​ the beaches was a wide strip "littered" with household garbage, all along. When I went into the sea for the first time, I freed up a place to swim with my hands, and did not swim. All desire to swim away was gone, it would take a long time to swim with garbage. Such mud lasted for about two days, then the sea began to clear, but still the water there was muddy and although there was less household garbage, the turbidity did not disappear, some kind of woody suspension continued to remain.

Therefore, it made sense to swim in clean clear water only in the morning. Why these beaches were awarded blue flags is not clear, do not believe the crystal clear water in the sea and beaches. Cigarette butts and other rubbish on the beaches are the norm.

They say that the beach "Slavic Beach" is being cleaned. I can state that there is less garbage than on other beaches. Sunbeds mostly without mattresses, umbrellas large and small. On average, one sunbed costs 2 euros, an umbrella 2 or 3 euros. There are cool sunbeds: with and without mattresses, a stationary umbrella, a table with an ashtray --- 10 euros. You will recognize this beach by a large statue of a sitting woman (or a mermaid, I don’t remember), it is close enough to the hotel, there is a shower. To the right there is a beach with a concrete platform, sun loungers for 20, descending into the water along a steep staircase with handrails. When there is a strong wave, it is unsafe to enter the water, but in general you can live.
Further on, the land strip narrows, rocks hang, the sun goes down faster here --- this continues the footpath to Becici. By the way, cars do not go here, for them the highway is higher. After walking a few meters, you will find a descent to the Tropicana beach. It looks like he's paid. When I looked at its territory from above, I realized that there was nothing for me to do there - the water seemed to be swamped, however, I could be wrong, but there was a lot of garbage then and there, although the beach is located, as it were, in a bay separated from the rest of the coast by rocks. You can't go down to the beach. We go further and run into a tunnel.

To the right of it is a passage to two beaches "TANGA" and some other one, I don't remember the name. The one without a name is entirely a pretty cafe on the rocks, as if on terraces, where I didn’t find it to go into the water, but it’s not a fact that there is no descent into the water; I didn't see any swimmers. To go to the second beach, you need to climb up from the tunnel, then go down through the pine forest for a long time.

The place is amazing, the pines are awesome, the smell of pines --- no comments, one pancake --- again the notorious garbage, well, you can’t break these cigarette butts. The beach itself --- see above. I realized that there is no point in spending more time on the road.

To the left of the "Slavic beach" beach "RED". Nothing special, then there is a parking of yachts and boats for rent, then the fortress of the Old City. That's all. All the beaches of the city smoothly pass into each other, there are no barriers. When choosing a location, keep in mind that the sun sets differently on the beaches due to the location of the fringing mountains and cliffs.
The tourists I met went to the beaches in NE. Stefan (toward Becici). City buses depart from a stop near the hotel at the beginning of every hour from morning to evening. It takes about 5 minutes to drive. Is it called Olympia Express. They will tell you where to get out, go down the path to the beach. My friends rated it as clean, sparsely populated, sandy.
The fare is 1 euro, the entrance is free (maybe the beach is wild), but in general not bad.
Nutrition

The hotel offers different food systems, including without meals.
The food point from the hotel is the only one-story building located away from the main buildings. All paths from the buildings lead to it. Orient yourself: the building is rectangular, two walls are verandas for all categories of tourists, the third wall is the service entrance to the handout, the fourth wall facing the buildings is a cafe for "all inclusive". Inside the building --- the actual restaurant for meals on "all inclusive". In the cafe you will take any drinks, in the all-inclusive restaurant tea, coffee, juices --- for breakfast, juices for lunch and dinner. Except for breakfast, you will not get tea and coffee in the restaurant. In the cafe from 4 to 5 pm you can take pastries for tea (I liked the taste).

I personally was pleased that the air conditioners worked in the all-inclusive restaurant, the tablecloths were always white and clean, no one smoked at the tables. There are highchairs for children. I will not evaluate the assortment of products, no one will remain hungry. For example, I liked how one shift cooked meat; the other did worse. The kitchen is close to ours. I couldn’t drink tea and coffee for breakfast, but in the cafe delicious coffee was prepared in front of a tourist, tea from bags - many varieties. Cold concentrated juices, local red and white wine, vodka. The cafe, in addition to the area inside the building, has an adjacent territory, very picturesque, surrounded by flowering shrubs.

Non-hotel food outlets are a dime a dozen. Ice cream is everywhere. Near the hotel restaurant there is an ice-cream machine with various fillings and costs from 0.6 to 2 euros. I just love this ice cream. At other points --- "not ours. "
A slice of pizza costs 1 euro. Many do not take all-inclusive to this hotel due to the fact that in cafes and restaurants you can eat inexpensively and not be tied to meals in time. Of course you can, but still the restaurant from the hotel is cleaner, and all street restaurants have everything “underwear” on the street and there are endless bins with garbage (note also that there are constant water shortages in that region).

Accommodation and service

So, we arrived at 10 am, 30 people only from our bus. At the reception, the hall is large and there are already all the sofas filled with people. While still on the bus, the guide Tatyana warned that there is one trouble: due to the fact that the checkout time starts at 12 o'clock, they will start resettling us at 12 o'clock, in addition, it turns out that we must demand that a room with an air conditioner be provided if the voucher contains the letters AC! ? . I will not describe the delights of waiting, you can guess. I was third in line.

Posting started 10 minutes late. Suddenly, the Russian girl in front began to communicate in English with the bureaucrats from the reception in a raised tone. Exactly --- a room without air conditioning was given. I had to call the administrator. Air conditioning settled down, I was given a room on the third floor with air conditioning. Hooray, they've arrived! Rejoiced early. Upon entering the room, I found that there was no cold water or hot water. There is no balcony. This is special: I specified the presence of a balcony when buying a tour. The fact is that, as I understand in hindsight, the information in the catalogs is provided incorrectly. The hotel has 3* status. The catalog from LUZHNIKI TRAVEL states that this hotel has rooms of 2* and 3* categories. 2* rooms do not have a balcony and air conditioning, 3* rooms have a balcony, shower / bath, air conditioning, TV. I have no special claims, but the balcony and the shower are sacred.
On the website from VKO TRAVEL it is stated that when buying a 3 * hotel, I will definitely have a balcony and a telephone in the room (for fun, go to their website, where the characteristics of hotels in Budva are indicated: my hotel does not provide for a shower or a bath, maybe water is not provided; by the way, I informed the tour operator in Moscow about this discovery).

Further events developed worthy of the pen of Mikhail Zadornov.
By 8 pm on the day of arrival, probably all of our people gathered to meet with the guide Tatyana. It turned out that not only I had no water, but the whole hotel, and in general, the whole of Budva was suffering, including our Tatyana. There was a scandal, as a result of which it became clear:
 Our guide cannot provide water to the rooms
 We arrived during the peak season
 Our guide cannot relocate tourists to other hotels
 Our guide will not give supporting certificates of lack of water
 Our guide will not sign a collective paper stating that she (the guide) witnessed our general indignation at the lack of water and the outright deception of tourists by the tour operator (the reduced water pressure in Budva has already taken place for at least two months)
 Our guide Tatyana, tired of explaining to us common truths about her rightness, told us: “I won’t sign anything, goodbye”, and we didn’t see her again
 The hotel administration calmly does not take any part in solving the problem, Lord, well, there is no water, why go bankrupt? . By the way, they categorically refused to give a certificate of lack of water.
As expected, I informed my guide about the absence of a balcony on the very first day, she went to the counter and told me to come the next day and the number would be changed. This is a separate article of the conversation, if anyone is interested in how and what is being changed there, write to me, I will tell you in detail.

And here it is short --- I was dragged for 4 days, the room was changed on the personal order of the hotel director. Here, to a greater extent, the hotel is not to blame, in a foreign country you can’t pump up rights. At the conclusion of the contract, this tour operator must write everything for which we pay, after this trip I was definitely convinced that we are buying no one knows what. Now I'm talking about numbers.

So about the numbers. My first standard room did not have a balcony. There was a bathtub with such an interesting shower device that there the water switched to the shower only if there was pressure in the system, while there was no mixer spout, as if the shower could only be used if there was pressure. There was also a door in the room that was always locked. It turns out that this door leads to the next room. This "device" has a place to be in all rooms.
The beauty of having this “device” is the following: the audibility is like at home and your room is a smoking hut if your neighbors decide to smoke. Important: water does not reach the third floors in principle. Already when I was leaving, and the water was turned on, at the reception, a newly arrived Russian-speaking tourist demanded that the representative of his tour operator solve the problem of the lack of water (obviously, he was also settled on the third floor).
My other room was on the second floor and met all my requirements.
They also have rooms with kitchenettes and refrigerators. It is very convenient for those who want to go without food, because you can buy food for cooking right on the territory.

Now about water. The hotel is part of the municipal tourist enterprise "Budva Riviera". In addition to this hotel, there are several more hotels, including those in Petrovac, Becici, St. Stefan.

I don’t remember the names of the hotels, but I can clarify if you wish (I have it on a disk). You understand what the post-Soviet former Yugoslav municipal service is. My hotel is old and currently undergoing renovations; not the fact that only in this hotel there are problems with water, I think that the same thing is happening in other municipal hotels. It is said that private hotels may have reserve capacities. There was no water in our hotel, perhaps not only for objective reasons. One of the tourists (by the time of my arrival he had already been here for two weeks) said that the hotel simply did not pay for the water.

Objectively, the situation is as follows: both in Montenegro (in English “Montenegro”) and in Croatia, due to their geographical location, there are always problems with fresh water. For the locals, this is normal. This year, as the representative of this enterprise, Mr. Nikolo, told us, there has been no rain since May.
Already at the beginning of July, problems with water rose to their full height. All the same, Mr. Nikolo said that supposedly all tour operators were promptly notified that water was supplied according to the schedule from 6 to 10 in the morning and in the evening.

In general, water did not reach the third floors by definition, I know about what happened on the second and first floors from the stories of our tourists: until we turned to the consul for help, water sometimes came to them in the form of a thin stream into the washbasin.

The hotel solved the problem of lack of water by feasible means: in the rooms there were plastic bottles from drinking water. If you manage to collect water there, you can at least wash yourself. Some went further: they put bottles of water on the window (few people had balconies) in order to warm it up.
Service: at the level of the middle technical staff, everyone was friendly, at the reception --- politely threw if you need to get away from the conversation, quickly switched to English and supposedly did not understand anything in Russian, not even the administrator could solve the problem --- not a question. Of course, they can be understood: they are afraid of losing their jobs, but this does not make it any easier for a tourist. Our representatives of the tour operator --- match the local reception, see above. In short, a total disgrace.


I would like to say a word about our Russian tourists. My case is not an indicator, but it took place. On a paid beach in the morning, I bought a place: 2 sunbeds and an umbrella (as they usually do, even if you are alone), leaving for lunch, I left a towel on one of the sunbeds. Returning after dinner, I saw that a local guy was sitting on one of the sunbeds. Showed the receipt, explained that the place was bought.
There was a scandal: in broad daylight, in the presence of a whole beach of people, where the Russians are dark, this ...began to swear at me. The altercation continued for about 15 minutes, naturally called the workers to calm down the hooligan. The guy and the girl who worked there could not stop the idiot. So about the Russians. Near the morning were three of our young and strong men. Do you think they at least stood up for a compatriot? Not at all. They chickened out, you see, three against one.

Upon arrival home, some tourists, including myself, filed a claim for a low-quality tourist product in accordance with our law on the basics of tourism activities in the Russian Federation. My case is the direct use of the provisions of this law on financial guarantees. Read this law carefully. The result of the consideration of my claim was a compensation of 10% of the cost of the tour, although I requested much more.
These are our rights with you, we personally paid big money for this hotel and it is completely unacceptable to raise the issue of not providing services as a norm. And further.
When we select a tour, what do we pay attention to? I personally bought into the fact that in all agencies, as one, they told me that Montenegro is a la Europe, the service pulls this measure, blue flags were hung on the beaches, the sea is crystal clear, and therefore it is expensive. Not worth it! In any case, in this hotel, I will not speak for others. The hotels themselves in Budva may be better, but the beaches are the same for everyone.

Tips for the future
Read carefully the contract for the purchase of the tour.
It is better to have information from the catalog of the tour operator who will implement your tour.
The standard form of the voucher must be valid at the time of purchase of the tour.
Have a cash receipt in addition to the paid receipt for the tour.
If you care about what will be in your room, stipulate this in the contract, because

a record of what, for example, a standard number will not tell anything to anyone. The same number can be provided for a different cost and you will not prove anything.

I won’t say about other hotels, but as for this particular hotel, if you want to go there, find out about the water, otherwise you will spoil your whole vacation.
It would be nice to learn English, it helps a lot.
Good luck!