When I arrived at the hotel I was told my room was on the mountain side of the resort, as opposed to the sea side and I had to pay a supplement to be on the latter. I ended up in one of the less nicely located parts of the hotel.
The hotel is nice on the whole. The swimming pool area is very pleasant with lots of sun beds and shade available. There were very few flies ! There is a pretty and very long jetty for access to the sea beyond the very shallow reef and this is a lovely area to swim, sunbathe and watch the fish while enjoying the cooling wind and listening to the sound of the waves. The sea is very clean and I did some snorkelling but the fish were not very plentiful - apart from a ray. Someone saw a dolphin pass close to the jetty but I missed it.
The staff are very friendly indeed and have, like most Egyptians, an excellent sense of humour.
Where the hotel fails is the food. The evening buffet is more akin to a school canteen than cordon bleu. It varies little and the same tired old dishes appear every night. One evening the most palatable item available was... shawarma sandwich ! There is a BBQ area but it offers stringy meat and very little choice. One evening I was delighted to see artichoke but it had been insufficiently cooked and was like hard rubber.
There is a very friendly guy who is in charge of the restaurant and can sort out any misunderstanding with the waiters (poor English usually). Breakfast is the best meal with lots of tender melon. It's really cool as the local birds fly into the restaurant and literally help themselves to the bread rolls ! Outside the birds come en masse and stand on your table waiting to be fed by hand !
The outside dining area is lovely in the evening. Palm trees, nice lighting... it would have been nice to have some music and perhaps a belly dancer or two... or three or four... circulating around the tables.
The air conditioning in the room was pretty hopeless and I woke up in the morning feeling more tired than when I went to bed (I'm normally and excellent sleeper).
So..., on the whole, a good place to take a family, if you don't mind eating the same thing every night !
