Отдых в Сиде Holidays in Side

Travel time - mid-June 2008. Transfer from Antalya airport delivered to the hotel pretty quickly. The Anex tour guide Afti (renamed by us to Neahti and fully justified his new name) pretended to be sympathetic, but in fact did not really help with accommodation, except that he scared away the greedy Russian-speaking habalka Tanya at the reception, who set out to fuck her 20 dollars for choosing a room. In the future, communication with the guide was based solely on waving hands on the way to the elevator. They took from him only one excursion to the Turkish bath (hamam). Of course, if you had bought a tour elsewhere, it would have been cheaper by 10 bucks. In the future, we took all the excursions on the square on the way to the beach in the "Baba Tour", the service there is completely unobtrusive, smiling and good-natured guide Sasha (Elshad) on the beach gives information about all available excursions, unlike hotel guides, he never insists on a momentary Having made a decision, some excursions (for example, a yacht tour in Side) are carried out by himself. He speaks Russian very well. We went through the Baba tour in Side on a yacht and looked at the Green Canyon, we did not regret it. Very interesting. In Side, for only 10 dollars per person, they heard the history of this ancient city and saw its ruins. Then on the same yacht they stopped in the bay to see sea turtles. The trip to the Green Canyon was especially memorable, insanely beautiful places! As if you are in a fairy tale, everything is so unnaturally bright and incredibly beautiful! The only point - it is better to take drinks with you. Lunch is included in the price of the trip, but drinks are at your own expense, expensive and disgusting in taste. But these moments fade against the backdrop of everything seen!
It also makes sense to see the waterfall in Manavgat. To do this, you don’t need to take an excursion, just ask the natives where the minibus to the waterfall leaves from (again, thanks to the guide from Baba Tour Sasha, he told us about this waterfall and how to get there ourselves). The minibus costs 1.5 euros, the entrance to the park, where the waterfall itself is located, is $ 7. What you see is worth much more : ) In general, the landscapes of Turkey are impressive.
About the hotel itself:

ABSOLUTELY NOT YOUTH. In no case do I recommend it to cheerful companies. The territory is beautiful, there are no words, but there are only parents, children and couples around, the atmosphere is appropriate. No animators. I don’t know, maybe someone liked the children’s animation, we didn’t see it, but the children were reluctant to go to the mini-disco, most of all, their parents were waiting for the mini-disco to take a break from the society of their children. In relation to young people and adults, the animators do not show themselves in any way, they try not to show themselves, they are absolutely not friendly and not incendiary. Music by the pool during the day gave rise to rename the pool bar to the Green Melancholy bar. In a conversation with Pascal, previously mentioned by someone in the reviews, they asked why the music is so bad and plays so quietly, received an honest answer: "because the speakers are directed towards the neighboring hotel, where mostly Germans rest, and our music can interfere with them, therefore The management of that hotel threatened me with problems if the music in our hotel was loud and too cheerful" O_o. There was nothing to argue, except that "But we won the war from them! ".
The hotel is cleaned regularly, sometimes they forget to clean the balcony. Cleaned equally mediocre, regardless of whether we left a tip or not.
In the lobby bar, the waiters, apparently, belong to the highest waiter caste, which is why they work slowly and demonstrate frank contempt for tourists. Until you put it in place. But then like silk. By the way, there is a wireless Internet in the lobby bar, so it makes sense to take a PDA. The hotel has a health club - the same Turkish bath can be ordered there, only more expensive, of course. Although, perhaps, it is worth it, because. here all the action takes longer, and the approach is individual.
On the territory of the hotel there are two large swimming pools, one of them with slides, and two paddling pools, one of which is with children's tiny slides. This is a big plus. Children and adults almost do not intersect with each other : ).
By the way, about the contingent of the hotel: 80% - Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, 20% - Akhtungs. They went to restaurants only at the end of the meal, so as not to hear from all sides "Waaaaas, did you take the forks? Did you take a seat? ", "Maaaaash, the child ran away for beer and still hasn't brought it, grab me a couple of glasses! " etc.

Food: normal, they didn’t die of hunger, but somehow we didn’t concentrate on the food itself. The only thing I remember is that you should not go to La Carte restaurants at all. If only in the fish for $ 4 per person, and then only in order to take pictures against the backdrop of the entire hotel, because. the restaurant is located on its roof, and the view from it is very beautiful (see attached photos). If you are still going to the hotel's fish restaurant for dinner, I advise you to put on something warmer, in the evening there is a strong wind on the roof, it is cool. Food in a la carte is not impressive, and its expectation generally discourages any appetite. If there are absolutely no plans for the evening, then you can go to these restaurants, just kill time : ).
The road to the sea does not take much time, it passes through a square with a fountain, where there is a market where, just on the way to the sea, you can buy NORMAL drinks, which are not available in Turkish hotels in principle. At the beach bar you can have a bite to eat instead of lunch if you are lazy to return. The food is normal - something like pancakes with different fillings, in our opinion, shawarma, in general : ).
Entertainment.
Outside the perimeter of the hotel, two discos are popular - Cactus and Titanic, in principle, the same. Nothing special, but for some reason everyone goes there. Although, in my opinion, other bars have the same music, but the atmosphere is much nicer.
At the end of our vacation, a few more gangs of young people arrived, and we had to get bored only on the day of departure, because we didn’t want to leave to the point of tears...
In general, the main thing is to take a great mood with you on a trip, the rest will follow. Good, in any case, much more than unpleasant moments.