Where has Stephen gone?
This is not a blog in the traditional sense but my account of foreign holidays that I have taken. My regular blog can be found at natural yogurt . stephenofwestfieldpark@yahoo.co.ukSaturday, December 19, 2009
Port El Kantaoui, Tunisia. December 2009
Gail and I paid £364 each for a 14 day all-inclusive holiday with Thomson to Port El Kantaoui in Tunisia. The price for this holiday was an amazing £337 plus another £12 to sit together and £15 for the in-flight meals. We flew out with Thomsonfly from Birmingham at 07.00 on Sunday 29th November 2009 and back from Monastir at 12.05 on Sunday 12th December 2009. We booked our parking with APH for a brilliant price of £44.85 which used the NCP long term car park no1, on the airport itself. We stayed at the Riu Green Park in Port El Kantaoui , which is a purpose made tourist resort that was first opened in 1979. This was our 4th holiday in Tunisia and we were last in Port El Kantaoui, at another hotel, in December 2006. Nothing appears to have changed in the 3 years since our last visit and December is a nice month to come to Tunisia. The weather was around 20C, what I call shirt sleeve weather, pleasant without the tourist breaking into a sweat.
The Riu Green Park is a four star hotel with 298 bedrooms and is set in a 30-acre estate, with a superb beachfront location. It has 2 adult outdoor swimming pools and a 100 sq metre indoor swimming pool. I went into the free-form outdoor pool on our first day for a swim. The water was cold and a bit of a challenge, I was the only person in the whole pool and Gail would not venture in! We then went into the indoor pool where the water is luke warm and Gail and I had a decent swimming session. We used the indoor pool 3 times on this holiday. I went into the rectangular outdoor pool just the once, had the water half way up my chest. I walked from one side of the pool to the other, thought better of it and walked back again before climbing out. The water was simply to cold to enjoy swimming although the air and sunshine around the pool was okay for sunbathing in trunks. So, December is not a suitable month in Tunisia to enjoy swimming in outdoor pools but this is reflected in the very low price of our holiday. At those prices you can forgo swimming and the rest of your holiday experience is identical to the hotter months. It was lovely sitting outside around the pools and the 50,000 sq metres of gardens enjoying a gossip and reading books. This makes for a glorious relaxing and refreshing holiday, far away from our normal daily lives. The area is quiet, all you hear is footsteps because there is no traffic. You can walk along the beach and there is no hassle from anyone. The harbour is maybe 10 minutes walk south along the beach and you can walk for miles and miles north along the beach. I prefer the northerly walk because you have the contrast of all the hotels followed by some private housing and then just farmland. We were so happy spending our time within the hotel estate, that I only walked off-site on 4 days and Gail did not hobble off with her walking stick once!
The beauty of an all-inclusive hotel is the convenience and value of having everything you want included, with as much food and drink as you wish to consume. You do not have to search around looking for food and drink with the consideration of cost, simply have as much as like for this all-in deal. The buffet style food is gorgeous and there is something for everybody. There were no peas available but plenty of other hot and cold vegetables to choose from. The Celtia beer in the bars is okay and you can drink it until the cows come home. The entertainment is the usual animation team saga, lots of mime and dance with introductions made in English, French and German. There was a duo from outside on Sunday nights playing live music and although they were extremely middle-of-the-road, they played a good set. On our second Saturday night there were some entertainers brought in from outside for a folklore show. This was a great laugh, two old guys with a drum each, one guy with a type of flute/trumpet and three women dancers wearing sensible flat shoes! After a few drinks this was great and far, far better than the regular in-house animation team.
Our room was okay and there was a good shower above the bath. The television showed nothing of interest and the only channels with spoken English were BBC World, CNN and an film channel with Arabic sub-titles! Our balcony looked over the gardens at the front of the hotel, road side and had two chairs and a small table. The whole hotel looked safe and clean, with nothing for us to complain about.
We went to the usual welcome meeting but there were no trips on offer that interested us or that we had not been on before. The excursions appeared to be exactly the same as on our previous 3 visits to Tunisia. The exchange rate had dropped slightly to 2 Dinars to the Pound. There was a bookshelf in reception where people could borrow and donate books for other guests. This is a great idea and people were also leaving books and magazines they had finished with on the table by the lifts and stairs. This works really well and it gives people the chance to read things that they are reluctant to buy. Put a book or magazine on the table in front of the lifts and see how fast it disappears! My holiday books this time were Codex by Lev Grossman, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup and The Night of the Miraj by Zoe Ferraris. I left these books on the table for other guests to enjoy and picked up somebody's copy of The Associate by John Grisham.
We had a lovely refreshing holiday staying at the Riu Green Park hotel. It is a great hotel to relax and potter about in, with plenty of areas and rooms to sit in. The front reception bar, the table games room and the restaurant were no smoking areas which is a great move forward. We are so used to the pleasure of smoking in enclosed public spaces being banned here in the UK, that we always get a nasty shock when we go abroad and the smokers are given free reign to impose their addiction on everybody else. Guests are allowed to smoke in the reception hall, the rear bar and the night club. This holiday gave us just what we wanted, we have no complaints and we shall be back to Tunisia in June 2010.
Gail and I paid £364 each for a 14 day all-inclusive holiday with Thomson to Port El Kantaoui in Tunisia. The price for this holiday was an amazing £337 plus another £12 to sit together and £15 for the in-flight meals. We flew out with Thomsonfly from Birmingham at 07.00 on Sunday 29th November 2009 and back from Monastir at 12.05 on Sunday 12th December 2009. We booked our parking with APH for a brilliant price of £44.85 which used the NCP long term car park no1, on the airport itself. We stayed at the Riu Green Park in Port El Kantaoui , which is a purpose made tourist resort that was first opened in 1979. This was our 4th holiday in Tunisia and we were last in Port El Kantaoui, at another hotel, in December 2006. Nothing appears to have changed in the 3 years since our last visit and December is a nice month to come to Tunisia. The weather was around 20C, what I call shirt sleeve weather, pleasant without the tourist breaking into a sweat.
The Riu Green Park is a four star hotel with 298 bedrooms and is set in a 30-acre estate, with a superb beachfront location. It has 2 adult outdoor swimming pools and a 100 sq metre indoor swimming pool. I went into the free-form outdoor pool on our first day for a swim. The water was cold and a bit of a challenge, I was the only person in the whole pool and Gail would not venture in! We then went into the indoor pool where the water is luke warm and Gail and I had a decent swimming session. We used the indoor pool 3 times on this holiday. I went into the rectangular outdoor pool just the once, had the water half way up my chest. I walked from one side of the pool to the other, thought better of it and walked back again before climbing out. The water was simply to cold to enjoy swimming although the air and sunshine around the pool was okay for sunbathing in trunks. So, December is not a suitable month in Tunisia to enjoy swimming in outdoor pools but this is reflected in the very low price of our holiday. At those prices you can forgo swimming and the rest of your holiday experience is identical to the hotter months. It was lovely sitting outside around the pools and the 50,000 sq metres of gardens enjoying a gossip and reading books. This makes for a glorious relaxing and refreshing holiday, far away from our normal daily lives. The area is quiet, all you hear is footsteps because there is no traffic. You can walk along the beach and there is no hassle from anyone. The harbour is maybe 10 minutes walk south along the beach and you can walk for miles and miles north along the beach. I prefer the northerly walk because you have the contrast of all the hotels followed by some private housing and then just farmland. We were so happy spending our time within the hotel estate, that I only walked off-site on 4 days and Gail did not hobble off with her walking stick once!
The beauty of an all-inclusive hotel is the convenience and value of having everything you want included, with as much food and drink as you wish to consume. You do not have to search around looking for food and drink with the consideration of cost, simply have as much as like for this all-in deal. The buffet style food is gorgeous and there is something for everybody. There were no peas available but plenty of other hot and cold vegetables to choose from. The Celtia beer in the bars is okay and you can drink it until the cows come home. The entertainment is the usual animation team saga, lots of mime and dance with introductions made in English, French and German. There was a duo from outside on Sunday nights playing live music and although they were extremely middle-of-the-road, they played a good set. On our second Saturday night there were some entertainers brought in from outside for a folklore show. This was a great laugh, two old guys with a drum each, one guy with a type of flute/trumpet and three women dancers wearing sensible flat shoes! After a few drinks this was great and far, far better than the regular in-house animation team.
Our room was okay and there was a good shower above the bath. The television showed nothing of interest and the only channels with spoken English were BBC World, CNN and an film channel with Arabic sub-titles! Our balcony looked over the gardens at the front of the hotel, road side and had two chairs and a small table. The whole hotel looked safe and clean, with nothing for us to complain about.
We went to the usual welcome meeting but there were no trips on offer that interested us or that we had not been on before. The excursions appeared to be exactly the same as on our previous 3 visits to Tunisia. The exchange rate had dropped slightly to 2 Dinars to the Pound. There was a bookshelf in reception where people could borrow and donate books for other guests. This is a great idea and people were also leaving books and magazines they had finished with on the table by the lifts and stairs. This works really well and it gives people the chance to read things that they are reluctant to buy. Put a book or magazine on the table in front of the lifts and see how fast it disappears! My holiday books this time were Codex by Lev Grossman, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup and The Night of the Miraj by Zoe Ferraris. I left these books on the table for other guests to enjoy and picked up somebody's copy of The Associate by John Grisham.
We had a lovely refreshing holiday staying at the Riu Green Park hotel. It is a great hotel to relax and potter about in, with plenty of areas and rooms to sit in. The front reception bar, the table games room and the restaurant were no smoking areas which is a great move forward. We are so used to the pleasure of smoking in enclosed public spaces being banned here in the UK, that we always get a nasty shock when we go abroad and the smokers are given free reign to impose their addiction on everybody else. Guests are allowed to smoke in the reception hall, the rear bar and the night club. This holiday gave us just what we wanted, we have no complaints and we shall be back to Tunisia in June 2010.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Agadir, Morocco, May 2009.
Gail and I went back to the Riu Tikeda Beach hotel at Agadir in Morocco. We went there in June 2007 and this time we paid Portland Holidays (part of Thomson) £704 each which included the £12 per person to sit together. An increase of £59 per person seemed reasonable considering how the pound has fared against other currencies. We flew out from London Gatwick Airport at 17.40 on Monday 4th May 2009 and flew back from Agadir at 21.35 on Monday 18th May 2009. The flight is around three and a half hours. We took our car up to Gatwick and parked with APH at their site at Copthorne, where they do a 15 minute drive shuttle coach service to the airport. We only paid £44.88 for the parking which is very good value for 16 days.
Okay, so what did we have to look forward to for this return visit to the same hotel? The Foreign Office website warned that "There is a high threat from terrorism in Morocco. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places frequented by expatriates and foreign travellers. On 13 August 2007 a man attempted to explode a small device near a tourist coach in the city of Meknes. No-one apart from the bomber was injured." Well, that did not bother me, there was a similar warning when we went to Morocco two years ago and there has been no other terrorist incident since August 2007. I am more at risk from terrorism in my day job by travelling to London 3 times a week!
The hotel is a short 40 minute coach transfer from the airport and even in the dark memories began flooding back. Going back to the same hotel means that familiarization is very quick, it is like going back to stay with an Auntie for a summer school holiday. The Riu Tikeda Beach hotel has not changed much since we were there 2 years ago. Many of the same staff are still working there, which is a good sign. There have been some new sunbeds arranged around the pool, large traditional chunky wooden frame beds more designed for bedroom sleeping rather than sunbathing! The rooms are large and spotlessly clean, we even had a sea view from our balcony and we did not pay extra for the view! We had a sofa and a chair in our room and on the television we could watch BBC Northern Ireland. We had a laugh at the weather forecast for the UK, wind and rain with the risk of overnight frost! The weather we enjoyed throughout our holiday was glorious, temperatures over 30C every day, loads of sunshine and not a drop of rain.
The Riu Tikeda Beach is an all-inclusive hotel where you can eat and drink as little or as much as you like. The food is glorious and I cannot fault it. You have to make a conscious effort not to overeat because the food is so good and weight gain is so easy. One night we had a John Dory fish tagine and the taste sensations were out of this world. In 50 years I have never tasted food like it before, this dinner dish was something very new and exciting to me. To eat a meal that you have never had before with tastes that are a real surprise, is a wonderful experience. After 14 days of wonderful, tasty and quality Moroccan food, I was not looking forward to coming back to dull British food! The drink was okay with plenty of choice. The lager beer was easy to drink and it was not fizzy.
The entertainment, as always in this type of hotel, was naff. People were not bothered about the poor entertainment because they have other things to occupy their time in the bar, like gossip and more drink. There is free wi-fi in this hotel and I noticed a lot of people had brought a laptop or netbook with them. I found it quite a break to be away from a computer but maybe in future years I might buy a netbook for use away from home. I did however have my trusty personal radio with me and once again enjoyed listening to Radio Sawa on 101.0 FM. Radio Sawa seeks to effectively communicate with the youthful population of Arabic-speakers in the Middle East by providing up-to-date news, information and entertainment on FM and medium wave radio stations throughout the region. The network is a service of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Inc. and is publicly funded by the Broadcasting Board of Governors and the U.S. Congress. So, I will not go into the politics behind this broadcasting but the music for the British holiday maker is good with a 50/50 mix of Arabic and Western music. My book reading on this holiday was Shock and Awe by David Isaak, Beneath the Bleeding by Val McDermid and Ritual by Mo Hayder.
I went to the ritual welcome meeting and listened to the presentation from the holiday representative. The exchange rate for Moroccan Dirhams was a shade under 12 to the pound and I thought the trips on offer were a little expensive and not worth the money. Marrakech 720, Essaouira 450, Agadir City Tour 150, Taroudant half day 280, 2 hour guided walk in the Atlas Mountains 380. I had fancied going to Marrakech but I did not consider it was worth £60 as it would involve the usual tourist fodder of shops, souks, factories and a mosque. To wander around Marrakech would not be any different for me, as wandering around Agadir. I did not need a guided walk as I am quite capable of walking anywhere on my own! Some friends we made around the hotel had gone on the Fantasia Dinner Show at 400 dirhams a person. They told us they thought the trip was a rip-off with a small quantity of food to be shared among guests, pricey drinks at the bar and patchy, long-winded entertainment.
Walking from our hotel into the resort the first thing I noticed was the promenade. This promenade did not exsist 2 years ago, you had to walk along the beach or go the other way along the road. This new promenade is lovely and runs the full length of this 6km long beach. Our representative told us that they had a few problems with this promenade. First they forgot to install drainage and when the rains came the surface broke up, so they dug it up and laid drains. Then they decided it was dark at night so they dug it up again and installed electricity and lighting! Third time lucky and it looks rather nice with all the block paving.
The marina at Agadir has now been completed and it is impressive, a real credit to the resort and similar to Cardiff Bay. There is plenty to walk around and see in Agadir, something for everyone. The town is busy with plenty of shops and locals going about their business. The beach is very clean and sandy. Because it is 6km long, it is never crowded. There is a small free zoo that is open every day from 11.00 to 18.00 - it is called the Vallee des Oiseaux (Valley of the Birds) and it is a nice stroll that runs from the beach towards the town. I did not go on any buses whilst I was in Agadir as my Arabic is not very good. A glance as the buses drove past revealed them to be absolute sheds and a walk around the bus station and main road terminal points confirmed my suspicions. I did not spot one bus that I would have considered driving out of the depot and that was from just walking casually past. If I had done a routine 30 plus point first use vehicle check, I would probably have been reduced to a fit of giggles and suffering from writer's cramp over the defect book.
When you look north down the beach your eyes are always drawn to the Kasbah up on the hill that overlooks the whole of Agadir. Arabic script is carved into the hillside and it seems to be calling you. It is a bit of the trek but it is well worth the effort and there is a man-made path that zig-zags it's way to the top. The views from the top of the Kasbah are marvelous, the lazy can take a taxi or a tourist coach. Walking your way up feels just like going up Sugar Loaf mountain near Abergavenny, a pleasant uphill stroll. You feel so refreshed when you get to the top of the Kasbah and this really sums up my opinion of the holiday. Refreshed.
Refreshed by fresh air, sunshine, walks, swimming, good books, lazing around, gossiping, a few beers and lots of glorious, wonderful, tasty, quality Moroccan food.
Gail and I went back to the Riu Tikeda Beach hotel at Agadir in Morocco. We went there in June 2007 and this time we paid Portland Holidays (part of Thomson) £704 each which included the £12 per person to sit together. An increase of £59 per person seemed reasonable considering how the pound has fared against other currencies. We flew out from London Gatwick Airport at 17.40 on Monday 4th May 2009 and flew back from Agadir at 21.35 on Monday 18th May 2009. The flight is around three and a half hours. We took our car up to Gatwick and parked with APH at their site at Copthorne, where they do a 15 minute drive shuttle coach service to the airport. We only paid £44.88 for the parking which is very good value for 16 days.
Okay, so what did we have to look forward to for this return visit to the same hotel? The Foreign Office website warned that "There is a high threat from terrorism in Morocco. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places frequented by expatriates and foreign travellers. On 13 August 2007 a man attempted to explode a small device near a tourist coach in the city of Meknes. No-one apart from the bomber was injured." Well, that did not bother me, there was a similar warning when we went to Morocco two years ago and there has been no other terrorist incident since August 2007. I am more at risk from terrorism in my day job by travelling to London 3 times a week!
The hotel is a short 40 minute coach transfer from the airport and even in the dark memories began flooding back. Going back to the same hotel means that familiarization is very quick, it is like going back to stay with an Auntie for a summer school holiday. The Riu Tikeda Beach hotel has not changed much since we were there 2 years ago. Many of the same staff are still working there, which is a good sign. There have been some new sunbeds arranged around the pool, large traditional chunky wooden frame beds more designed for bedroom sleeping rather than sunbathing! The rooms are large and spotlessly clean, we even had a sea view from our balcony and we did not pay extra for the view! We had a sofa and a chair in our room and on the television we could watch BBC Northern Ireland. We had a laugh at the weather forecast for the UK, wind and rain with the risk of overnight frost! The weather we enjoyed throughout our holiday was glorious, temperatures over 30C every day, loads of sunshine and not a drop of rain.
The Riu Tikeda Beach is an all-inclusive hotel where you can eat and drink as little or as much as you like. The food is glorious and I cannot fault it. You have to make a conscious effort not to overeat because the food is so good and weight gain is so easy. One night we had a John Dory fish tagine and the taste sensations were out of this world. In 50 years I have never tasted food like it before, this dinner dish was something very new and exciting to me. To eat a meal that you have never had before with tastes that are a real surprise, is a wonderful experience. After 14 days of wonderful, tasty and quality Moroccan food, I was not looking forward to coming back to dull British food! The drink was okay with plenty of choice. The lager beer was easy to drink and it was not fizzy.
The entertainment, as always in this type of hotel, was naff. People were not bothered about the poor entertainment because they have other things to occupy their time in the bar, like gossip and more drink. There is free wi-fi in this hotel and I noticed a lot of people had brought a laptop or netbook with them. I found it quite a break to be away from a computer but maybe in future years I might buy a netbook for use away from home. I did however have my trusty personal radio with me and once again enjoyed listening to Radio Sawa on 101.0 FM. Radio Sawa seeks to effectively communicate with the youthful population of Arabic-speakers in the Middle East by providing up-to-date news, information and entertainment on FM and medium wave radio stations throughout the region. The network is a service of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Inc. and is publicly funded by the Broadcasting Board of Governors and the U.S. Congress. So, I will not go into the politics behind this broadcasting but the music for the British holiday maker is good with a 50/50 mix of Arabic and Western music. My book reading on this holiday was Shock and Awe by David Isaak, Beneath the Bleeding by Val McDermid and Ritual by Mo Hayder.
I went to the ritual welcome meeting and listened to the presentation from the holiday representative. The exchange rate for Moroccan Dirhams was a shade under 12 to the pound and I thought the trips on offer were a little expensive and not worth the money. Marrakech 720, Essaouira 450, Agadir City Tour 150, Taroudant half day 280, 2 hour guided walk in the Atlas Mountains 380. I had fancied going to Marrakech but I did not consider it was worth £60 as it would involve the usual tourist fodder of shops, souks, factories and a mosque. To wander around Marrakech would not be any different for me, as wandering around Agadir. I did not need a guided walk as I am quite capable of walking anywhere on my own! Some friends we made around the hotel had gone on the Fantasia Dinner Show at 400 dirhams a person. They told us they thought the trip was a rip-off with a small quantity of food to be shared among guests, pricey drinks at the bar and patchy, long-winded entertainment.
Walking from our hotel into the resort the first thing I noticed was the promenade. This promenade did not exsist 2 years ago, you had to walk along the beach or go the other way along the road. This new promenade is lovely and runs the full length of this 6km long beach. Our representative told us that they had a few problems with this promenade. First they forgot to install drainage and when the rains came the surface broke up, so they dug it up and laid drains. Then they decided it was dark at night so they dug it up again and installed electricity and lighting! Third time lucky and it looks rather nice with all the block paving.
The marina at Agadir has now been completed and it is impressive, a real credit to the resort and similar to Cardiff Bay. There is plenty to walk around and see in Agadir, something for everyone. The town is busy with plenty of shops and locals going about their business. The beach is very clean and sandy. Because it is 6km long, it is never crowded. There is a small free zoo that is open every day from 11.00 to 18.00 - it is called the Vallee des Oiseaux (Valley of the Birds) and it is a nice stroll that runs from the beach towards the town. I did not go on any buses whilst I was in Agadir as my Arabic is not very good. A glance as the buses drove past revealed them to be absolute sheds and a walk around the bus station and main road terminal points confirmed my suspicions. I did not spot one bus that I would have considered driving out of the depot and that was from just walking casually past. If I had done a routine 30 plus point first use vehicle check, I would probably have been reduced to a fit of giggles and suffering from writer's cramp over the defect book.
When you look north down the beach your eyes are always drawn to the Kasbah up on the hill that overlooks the whole of Agadir. Arabic script is carved into the hillside and it seems to be calling you. It is a bit of the trek but it is well worth the effort and there is a man-made path that zig-zags it's way to the top. The views from the top of the Kasbah are marvelous, the lazy can take a taxi or a tourist coach. Walking your way up feels just like going up Sugar Loaf mountain near Abergavenny, a pleasant uphill stroll. You feel so refreshed when you get to the top of the Kasbah and this really sums up my opinion of the holiday. Refreshed.
Refreshed by fresh air, sunshine, walks, swimming, good books, lazing around, gossiping, a few beers and lots of glorious, wonderful, tasty, quality Moroccan food.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Varadero, Cuba, October 2008.
Gail and I paid First Choice £745 each to go to the Playa Costa Verde, in Guardalavaca, Cuba. We then paid another £90 pound each to upgrade to Premier Seats which gives you more legroom, the guarantee to sit together, a greater food choice, extra television and some drinks. We were all set to go, flying out from Gatwick Airport at 10.10 hrs on Monday 29th September 2008 to Holguin and flying back at 16.50 hrs on Monday 13th October, due into Gatwick at 06.55 hrs on the Tuesday morning. Cuba is 5 hours behind British Summer Time and the flight takes 10 hours. We had booked our car parking at APH Gatwick North - Long Term Car Park for £62.50 - there is a transfer bus every 7 to 10 minutes.
However, Hurricane Ike struck Cuba on 7 and 8 September and caused considerable damage in many parts of the country but particularly in the Provinces of Holguin (including the resort of Guardalavaca). First Choice telephoned us on Tuesday 23rd September and told us that our hotel was closed due to the damage caused by Hurricane Ike. They offered us a full refund or a replacement holiday that would use the same flight but arriving into Varadero Airport rather than Holguin Airport. The deal was to stay at the Iberostar Playa Alameda hotel in the resort of Varadero. This hotel is described as having 391 spacious, elegant rooms in eleven 3-storey buildings surrounded by beautiful gardens. The brochure price for this hotel is around another £100 per person more than we were paying for the Playa Costa Verde. I think we had been offered a good deal, a deal which is as good as or better than what we have paid for. If anything we had been given a slight upgrade on our holiday.
The change of hotel and resort does not bother me. I am glad that we still went to Cuba as a country rather than somewhere else in the Caribbean. I think that with this type of holiday experience you will have a good holiday wherever your holiday company sends you to. I do not think that there is much to choose between all the hotels on offer, they are all much of the same. I have not stayed in a hotel belonging to the Iberostar chain before but because they are one of the big players in the hotel business, I expect them to mirror their competitors.
The flight from Gatwick was uneventful, it was a Boeing 767 with a 2-3-2 seating configuration. First Choice had sent us some Tourist Visa cards to complete and immigration was efficient. Our transfer coach only took tourists to our hotel which was a 40 minute drive from the hotel. Varadero is a tourist resort with a difference. All the hotels are located along a peninsula which is only 1.2 km wide at its widest point and is separated from the island of Cuba by the Kawama Channel. This spit of land however extends more than 20 kilometers from the mainland in a northeasterly direction and its tip, Punta Hicacos, is the northernmost point of the island of Cuba. Our hotel was the 3rd from the northeasterly end of this beautiful peninsula, rather remote, tropical and very quiet. You drive past a Police checkpoint and begin to wonder if you may be wearing orange detainee jumpsuits later.
Like all the hotels at Varadero, the Iberostar Playa Alameda is a beachfront hotel. First impressions were that it looked far better than the others we had passed on the way. The layout of the Playa Alameda is good, a broad avenue contains all the goodies surrounded by a circle of 391 rooms in three storey buildings that the hotel claims are bungalows! Our room was okay although there was a shortage of storage space. Each room has an umbrella for guests to take out to protect them from the tropical showers which can be frequent but brief. The air conditioning was good and the weather was around 30C during the day. There is a fridge in each room with bottled water, lemonade and Cristal lager at 4.9% ABV. Nothing much on the television in English language, CNN news and one movie channel. I could not find a radio channel worth listening to either. The drinks in the various bars are okay, the Cristal lager is okay but nothing to get excited about. The entertainment and animation team are the same the world over, no surprises there! There is a small shop but it is rubbish, you cannot even buy a newspaper! There is a room with pool tables and computers where you can access the internet costing 3 peso's for 30 minutes. The exchange rate we were getting was 1.50 peso's to the British pound. On a table in this room people would leave books for other guests to read when they were finished with them. I took 4 books on holiday with me, Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar and The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. I left these books on the table and they went like hot cakes!
I do not think that you can ever beat the value and convenience of an all-inclusive hotel. You do not have to search places whilst placing your bets and watching the pennies. I thought the food was okay but not exciting like North African or Turkish cuisine. There were no tomatoes available to eat and maybe this was because of crop damage from Hurricane Ike. There is a self service buffet plus 3 a la carte restaurants that you can book for once a week giving 6 maximum visits over 14 days. In the buffet restaurant I liked the papaya smoothie milkshakes at breakfast, the quality of the cooked beef and the ice cream was to die for. The a la carte restaurants were themed as Italian, Mediterranean and romantic/Cuban. This food was okay but the portions were rather small.
The swimming pool was a big disappointment. There was a lot of wasted space and very little water deep enough to swim in. The deepest water was 1.20 metres so you were never out of your depth. These shallow waters however were ideal for women to float about and gossip.
The sandy beach is good and clean. The water is easy to get into but being natural can be uneven and with the odd rock. One day a wave came along and swept Gail off her feet. Because of her bad knees the poor lass was unable to stand up again so I had to pull her into deeper water so that she could float upright again. This incident put Gail off the sea and the rest of our holiday was spent around the hotel pool. You can walk north along the beach for about 40 minutes before the beach ends. This part of the beach is very quiet with just two hotels before the end of the peninsula. There is no beach on the other side of the peninsula. Walking south from our hotel you could walk continuously for 20 kilometres! The sandy beach just rolls for miles, easy walking and many hotels along the shoreline.
Walking around the hotel gardens we were surprised at how many lizards there were running around. They can be hard to spot because of how well they blend into the background. So everyone used to play spot-the-lizard whenever they walked anywhere. These lizards were very welcome because they eat mosquitoes, there were loads of mosquitoes and everyone was getting bitten by them regardless of their precautions. Everyday the gardener would come with his pick-up mounted ghostbuster style mosquito repellent machine, sending smoke throughout the gardens but everyone still got loads of bites. There are well tendered gardens all over the Playa Alameda, it is like living in a garden centre.
The whole hotel was clean enough and staffing levels were good. It was not the same high standard that you get in a Riu hotel. Things did not sparkle in the Playa Alameda like they do in Morocco and Tunisia. All 4 dedicated female disabled toilets were closed because they were broken. All staff could speak passable English and they seemed reasonably content with their lives. It is a lovely hotel to relax and lounge about in but sometimes you hear a sound that gets you off your backside. At 10 o'clock each morning around the pool I would hear a song start...
"Let me sail let me sail let the Orinoco Flow
Let me reach let me beach on the shores of Tripoli
Let me sail let me sail let me crash upon your shore
Let me reach, let me beach far beyond the Yellow Sea"
... and this was the song Orinoco Flow which was a hit for Enya in 1988. This song marks the call to Stretch, a session of stretch exercises led by a member of the animation team alongside the pool. I thoroughly enjoyed doing these exercises even though it is difficult to hold a straight face at times.
Then at 12 o'clock you hear the familiar song of ...
"Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone
I hear you call my name
And it feels like home"
...and it is the call to Water Aerobics, in the pool, dance with Madge and sing along to Like a Prayer the 1989 hit from Madonna. This was fun, splashing, singing, dancing and moving about in the water. Oh what simple holiday fun can be had by a 50 year old coach driver.
And what does a coach driver do on holiday? Yes, he goes on a bus or a coach. The standard trips available from the holiday reps are much the same the world over. You are a source of valuable income and tourists can be easily led to spend time and money on rubbish. The guides can fill your day and empty your wallet with whatever mundane rubbish they can offer. So I ignored the chance to pay £47 for a day trip to Havana or £49 for a day trip to Trinidad. Instead for 5 peso's - around £3.50 you can buy a day ticket, on the bus, for the Varadero Beach Tour. This is a 25 minute frequency bus service that runs the whole length of the Varadero peninsula. The company uses Yutong 12 metre open top double decker buses. These buses look under 3 years old, are made in China with MAN running gear. These are well made service buses fitted with CCTV and lap seats belts, although they are not fitted to the back row for some strange reason. The conductor will call out the name of all 47 bus stops on the microphone.
This service runs the full length of the peninsula, through the town of Varadero and past a big lake at the southernmost end of the resort. The bus takes 60 minutes to get from one end to the other, you can get on and off as often as you like. I noticed that our hotel looked better than most of the others and that the further towards the town centre you travelled the less inviting the hotels looked. David and I walked around the main town centre, there was nothing of particular interest. There are many small markets but the stalls are all the same, offering the same souvenirs for tourists to take home. The shops are very small and the range of goods is very limited. There was only one big shop and that had loads of up to date electrical items including the latest in home laundry, a twin tub washing machine! The whole area was clean and non-threatening with lots of small cafes and restaurants. We had a look at the beach which was maybe 300 metres from the main street. This beach was clean and totally uncommercial. It is worth visiting the town centre but there is not a lot there. I really enjoyed the bus trip and after lunch back at our hotel I went along for another trip round! I think everyone should try this trip for once as it puts the whole resort and your holiday into perspective.
Leaving Cuba we were all given 25 peso's each by First Choice so that we could pay the departure tax that is payable by all tourists at the airport. The flight back was uneventful and you are just left with your feelings. I have had a lovely, refreshing holiday in a wonderful tropical setting. I am glad I went to Cuba, it is different and life for the locals is very different to what we can take for granted here in the UK. It was nice to have been to Cuba once in my lifetime but I do not need to go again, once is enough. It is a long haul flight but your holiday experience is no better than that of a short haul destination.
Gail and I paid First Choice £745 each to go to the Playa Costa Verde, in Guardalavaca, Cuba. We then paid another £90 pound each to upgrade to Premier Seats which gives you more legroom, the guarantee to sit together, a greater food choice, extra television and some drinks. We were all set to go, flying out from Gatwick Airport at 10.10 hrs on Monday 29th September 2008 to Holguin and flying back at 16.50 hrs on Monday 13th October, due into Gatwick at 06.55 hrs on the Tuesday morning. Cuba is 5 hours behind British Summer Time and the flight takes 10 hours. We had booked our car parking at APH Gatwick North - Long Term Car Park for £62.50 - there is a transfer bus every 7 to 10 minutes.
However, Hurricane Ike struck Cuba on 7 and 8 September and caused considerable damage in many parts of the country but particularly in the Provinces of Holguin (including the resort of Guardalavaca). First Choice telephoned us on Tuesday 23rd September and told us that our hotel was closed due to the damage caused by Hurricane Ike. They offered us a full refund or a replacement holiday that would use the same flight but arriving into Varadero Airport rather than Holguin Airport. The deal was to stay at the Iberostar Playa Alameda hotel in the resort of Varadero. This hotel is described as having 391 spacious, elegant rooms in eleven 3-storey buildings surrounded by beautiful gardens. The brochure price for this hotel is around another £100 per person more than we were paying for the Playa Costa Verde. I think we had been offered a good deal, a deal which is as good as or better than what we have paid for. If anything we had been given a slight upgrade on our holiday.
The change of hotel and resort does not bother me. I am glad that we still went to Cuba as a country rather than somewhere else in the Caribbean. I think that with this type of holiday experience you will have a good holiday wherever your holiday company sends you to. I do not think that there is much to choose between all the hotels on offer, they are all much of the same. I have not stayed in a hotel belonging to the Iberostar chain before but because they are one of the big players in the hotel business, I expect them to mirror their competitors.
The flight from Gatwick was uneventful, it was a Boeing 767 with a 2-3-2 seating configuration. First Choice had sent us some Tourist Visa cards to complete and immigration was efficient. Our transfer coach only took tourists to our hotel which was a 40 minute drive from the hotel. Varadero is a tourist resort with a difference. All the hotels are located along a peninsula which is only 1.2 km wide at its widest point and is separated from the island of Cuba by the Kawama Channel. This spit of land however extends more than 20 kilometers from the mainland in a northeasterly direction and its tip, Punta Hicacos, is the northernmost point of the island of Cuba. Our hotel was the 3rd from the northeasterly end of this beautiful peninsula, rather remote, tropical and very quiet. You drive past a Police checkpoint and begin to wonder if you may be wearing orange detainee jumpsuits later.
Like all the hotels at Varadero, the Iberostar Playa Alameda is a beachfront hotel. First impressions were that it looked far better than the others we had passed on the way. The layout of the Playa Alameda is good, a broad avenue contains all the goodies surrounded by a circle of 391 rooms in three storey buildings that the hotel claims are bungalows! Our room was okay although there was a shortage of storage space. Each room has an umbrella for guests to take out to protect them from the tropical showers which can be frequent but brief. The air conditioning was good and the weather was around 30C during the day. There is a fridge in each room with bottled water, lemonade and Cristal lager at 4.9% ABV. Nothing much on the television in English language, CNN news and one movie channel. I could not find a radio channel worth listening to either. The drinks in the various bars are okay, the Cristal lager is okay but nothing to get excited about. The entertainment and animation team are the same the world over, no surprises there! There is a small shop but it is rubbish, you cannot even buy a newspaper! There is a room with pool tables and computers where you can access the internet costing 3 peso's for 30 minutes. The exchange rate we were getting was 1.50 peso's to the British pound. On a table in this room people would leave books for other guests to read when they were finished with them. I took 4 books on holiday with me, Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar and The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai. I left these books on the table and they went like hot cakes!
I do not think that you can ever beat the value and convenience of an all-inclusive hotel. You do not have to search places whilst placing your bets and watching the pennies. I thought the food was okay but not exciting like North African or Turkish cuisine. There were no tomatoes available to eat and maybe this was because of crop damage from Hurricane Ike. There is a self service buffet plus 3 a la carte restaurants that you can book for once a week giving 6 maximum visits over 14 days. In the buffet restaurant I liked the papaya smoothie milkshakes at breakfast, the quality of the cooked beef and the ice cream was to die for. The a la carte restaurants were themed as Italian, Mediterranean and romantic/Cuban. This food was okay but the portions were rather small.
The swimming pool was a big disappointment. There was a lot of wasted space and very little water deep enough to swim in. The deepest water was 1.20 metres so you were never out of your depth. These shallow waters however were ideal for women to float about and gossip.
The sandy beach is good and clean. The water is easy to get into but being natural can be uneven and with the odd rock. One day a wave came along and swept Gail off her feet. Because of her bad knees the poor lass was unable to stand up again so I had to pull her into deeper water so that she could float upright again. This incident put Gail off the sea and the rest of our holiday was spent around the hotel pool. You can walk north along the beach for about 40 minutes before the beach ends. This part of the beach is very quiet with just two hotels before the end of the peninsula. There is no beach on the other side of the peninsula. Walking south from our hotel you could walk continuously for 20 kilometres! The sandy beach just rolls for miles, easy walking and many hotels along the shoreline.
Walking around the hotel gardens we were surprised at how many lizards there were running around. They can be hard to spot because of how well they blend into the background. So everyone used to play spot-the-lizard whenever they walked anywhere. These lizards were very welcome because they eat mosquitoes, there were loads of mosquitoes and everyone was getting bitten by them regardless of their precautions. Everyday the gardener would come with his pick-up mounted ghostbuster style mosquito repellent machine, sending smoke throughout the gardens but everyone still got loads of bites. There are well tendered gardens all over the Playa Alameda, it is like living in a garden centre.
The whole hotel was clean enough and staffing levels were good. It was not the same high standard that you get in a Riu hotel. Things did not sparkle in the Playa Alameda like they do in Morocco and Tunisia. All 4 dedicated female disabled toilets were closed because they were broken. All staff could speak passable English and they seemed reasonably content with their lives. It is a lovely hotel to relax and lounge about in but sometimes you hear a sound that gets you off your backside. At 10 o'clock each morning around the pool I would hear a song start...
"Let me sail let me sail let the Orinoco Flow
Let me reach let me beach on the shores of Tripoli
Let me sail let me sail let me crash upon your shore
Let me reach, let me beach far beyond the Yellow Sea"
... and this was the song Orinoco Flow which was a hit for Enya in 1988. This song marks the call to Stretch, a session of stretch exercises led by a member of the animation team alongside the pool. I thoroughly enjoyed doing these exercises even though it is difficult to hold a straight face at times.
Then at 12 o'clock you hear the familiar song of ...
"Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone
I hear you call my name
And it feels like home"
...and it is the call to Water Aerobics, in the pool, dance with Madge and sing along to Like a Prayer the 1989 hit from Madonna. This was fun, splashing, singing, dancing and moving about in the water. Oh what simple holiday fun can be had by a 50 year old coach driver.
And what does a coach driver do on holiday? Yes, he goes on a bus or a coach. The standard trips available from the holiday reps are much the same the world over. You are a source of valuable income and tourists can be easily led to spend time and money on rubbish. The guides can fill your day and empty your wallet with whatever mundane rubbish they can offer. So I ignored the chance to pay £47 for a day trip to Havana or £49 for a day trip to Trinidad. Instead for 5 peso's - around £3.50 you can buy a day ticket, on the bus, for the Varadero Beach Tour. This is a 25 minute frequency bus service that runs the whole length of the Varadero peninsula. The company uses Yutong 12 metre open top double decker buses. These buses look under 3 years old, are made in China with MAN running gear. These are well made service buses fitted with CCTV and lap seats belts, although they are not fitted to the back row for some strange reason. The conductor will call out the name of all 47 bus stops on the microphone.
This service runs the full length of the peninsula, through the town of Varadero and past a big lake at the southernmost end of the resort. The bus takes 60 minutes to get from one end to the other, you can get on and off as often as you like. I noticed that our hotel looked better than most of the others and that the further towards the town centre you travelled the less inviting the hotels looked. David and I walked around the main town centre, there was nothing of particular interest. There are many small markets but the stalls are all the same, offering the same souvenirs for tourists to take home. The shops are very small and the range of goods is very limited. There was only one big shop and that had loads of up to date electrical items including the latest in home laundry, a twin tub washing machine! The whole area was clean and non-threatening with lots of small cafes and restaurants. We had a look at the beach which was maybe 300 metres from the main street. This beach was clean and totally uncommercial. It is worth visiting the town centre but there is not a lot there. I really enjoyed the bus trip and after lunch back at our hotel I went along for another trip round! I think everyone should try this trip for once as it puts the whole resort and your holiday into perspective.
Leaving Cuba we were all given 25 peso's each by First Choice so that we could pay the departure tax that is payable by all tourists at the airport. The flight back was uneventful and you are just left with your feelings. I have had a lovely, refreshing holiday in a wonderful tropical setting. I am glad I went to Cuba, it is different and life for the locals is very different to what we can take for granted here in the UK. It was nice to have been to Cuba once in my lifetime but I do not need to go again, once is enough. It is a long haul flight but your holiday experience is no better than that of a short haul destination.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Hammamet, Tunisia, December 2007.
Gail and I paid £253 each for a 7 night all-inclusive holiday at Hammamet in Tunisia. We booked this holiday with Thomson and the price we paid included the extra to sit together and have the in flight meals. Without these extras the cost would have been an unbeatable £229 each! We flew from Birmingham International Airport at 15.15 on Sunday 2nd December 2007 because this season Thomson were not flying from Bristol or Cardiff. A lot of holiday makers in Tunisia were moaning about the reduced number of flights from the UK. We parked our car at APH Hams Hall, Faraday Avenue, Birmingham B46 1AL which is near junction 9 of the M42 for an incredible £19.92 - they provide a transfer bus to the airport. Our return flight from Monastir was at 20.20 on Sunday 9th December 2007 and the flying time is 3 hours and 15 minutes. The coach transfer to our hotel was 90 minutes from Monastir as we were the first drop off and 2 hours on the return as we were the first pick up.
We stayed at the Riu Park El Kebir in Hammamet. This hotel has 274 rooms on 3 floors and is situated on the beach 2km north of the centre of Hammamet. We have stayed in many all-inclusive hotels and 3 other Riu hotels so we know what to expect. The Riu Park El Kebir is similar to the other hotels we have used and I am very pleased with what you get for your money. The holiday experience is similar to the other holidays featured in this blog, which is the type of holiday I am in the market for. This hotel is big and set in lovely grounds. Your initial impression is one of cleanliness and space. The rooms are the usual high standard with an private balcony that has walls on both sides. The reception lounge and bar is huge. The is another bar where some entertainment takes place and a theatre. The open air swimming pool is too cold at this time of year, I went in as far a my waist before I legged it back out. The indoor pool is nice though. The food is an excellent buffet style - take as little or as much as you like of the food and drink. The tomatoes are gorgeous, the salad counter first class, some lovely cheeses and deserts to die for. The beer is OK and the red wine is lovely. The barmen do a cocktail called a sunset which is lovely and I am not a spirit drinker.
The weather during the day ranged from about 16C to 23C depending on the level of sunshine. We sat around the outdoor pool talking and reading. This was very pleasant and there were plenty of sunbeds around the pool and on the beach. There were also plenty of tables and chairs between the pool and the bistro bar - very French in style. My holiday reading this time was A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. In places this book made me cry, the reader gets really drawn into the characters. The story although set in Afghanistan is very easy to relate to and appeals to both men and women.
I went to the usual welcome meeting and the trips on offer were the same as on our previous holidays to Tunisia, so I did not book anything. I walked maybe 40 minutes from the holiday to the Medina at the centre of Hammamet. It is an easy walk past many small shops and businesses - nobody bothers you, it is like walking in an average town back home in the UK. I also walked both ways along the beach in front of our hotel. I wondered why the beach was so quiet, almost a private beach. This was because if you walked maybe 15 minutes each way there were rocks blocking your path along the sand so there was no through traffic. This beach was only used and accessed by the hotels built along it.
What we got from this holiday was refreshment. 7 days on a wonderful site strolling around, sitting here, sitting there. Enjoying the time together, the food and drink. Everything we wanted was there within walking distance, no transport was needed. There is no hassle, it is like being at home but everything is done for you. You are not cooped up in a little hotel but have the freedom of a rambling estate. Back home you go to a pub for a meal and you get the impression they want you to pay, eat and drink up, then go away. At the Riu Park El Kebir you feel at home, you eat, drink and then maybe sit somewhere else as though you own the place. Fancy another beer? Fine, just go to the bar and get one. Just want to sit there and read your book? Fine just sit there, nobody will bother you - not like in a cafe or bar in the UK where they want sales. You are not in a tourist trap, you have paid your money and they leave you alone. It feels like home, a very large comfortable spotlessly clean home with willing servants.
The entertainment is typical of all-inclusive hotels the world over and the only English language television is BBC World. But this is a holiday and it is good to take yourself out of the loop. It is great for me, no work, no driving and no shops. 7 days of leisure without a care in the world and not having to go anywhere.
Would I wish to return to this holiday palace again? Yes please, at prices like this it makes me wonder why people pay more.
Gail and I paid £253 each for a 7 night all-inclusive holiday at Hammamet in Tunisia. We booked this holiday with Thomson and the price we paid included the extra to sit together and have the in flight meals. Without these extras the cost would have been an unbeatable £229 each! We flew from Birmingham International Airport at 15.15 on Sunday 2nd December 2007 because this season Thomson were not flying from Bristol or Cardiff. A lot of holiday makers in Tunisia were moaning about the reduced number of flights from the UK. We parked our car at APH Hams Hall, Faraday Avenue, Birmingham B46 1AL which is near junction 9 of the M42 for an incredible £19.92 - they provide a transfer bus to the airport. Our return flight from Monastir was at 20.20 on Sunday 9th December 2007 and the flying time is 3 hours and 15 minutes. The coach transfer to our hotel was 90 minutes from Monastir as we were the first drop off and 2 hours on the return as we were the first pick up.
We stayed at the Riu Park El Kebir in Hammamet. This hotel has 274 rooms on 3 floors and is situated on the beach 2km north of the centre of Hammamet. We have stayed in many all-inclusive hotels and 3 other Riu hotels so we know what to expect. The Riu Park El Kebir is similar to the other hotels we have used and I am very pleased with what you get for your money. The holiday experience is similar to the other holidays featured in this blog, which is the type of holiday I am in the market for. This hotel is big and set in lovely grounds. Your initial impression is one of cleanliness and space. The rooms are the usual high standard with an private balcony that has walls on both sides. The reception lounge and bar is huge. The is another bar where some entertainment takes place and a theatre. The open air swimming pool is too cold at this time of year, I went in as far a my waist before I legged it back out. The indoor pool is nice though. The food is an excellent buffet style - take as little or as much as you like of the food and drink. The tomatoes are gorgeous, the salad counter first class, some lovely cheeses and deserts to die for. The beer is OK and the red wine is lovely. The barmen do a cocktail called a sunset which is lovely and I am not a spirit drinker.
The weather during the day ranged from about 16C to 23C depending on the level of sunshine. We sat around the outdoor pool talking and reading. This was very pleasant and there were plenty of sunbeds around the pool and on the beach. There were also plenty of tables and chairs between the pool and the bistro bar - very French in style. My holiday reading this time was A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. In places this book made me cry, the reader gets really drawn into the characters. The story although set in Afghanistan is very easy to relate to and appeals to both men and women.
I went to the usual welcome meeting and the trips on offer were the same as on our previous holidays to Tunisia, so I did not book anything. I walked maybe 40 minutes from the holiday to the Medina at the centre of Hammamet. It is an easy walk past many small shops and businesses - nobody bothers you, it is like walking in an average town back home in the UK. I also walked both ways along the beach in front of our hotel. I wondered why the beach was so quiet, almost a private beach. This was because if you walked maybe 15 minutes each way there were rocks blocking your path along the sand so there was no through traffic. This beach was only used and accessed by the hotels built along it.
What we got from this holiday was refreshment. 7 days on a wonderful site strolling around, sitting here, sitting there. Enjoying the time together, the food and drink. Everything we wanted was there within walking distance, no transport was needed. There is no hassle, it is like being at home but everything is done for you. You are not cooped up in a little hotel but have the freedom of a rambling estate. Back home you go to a pub for a meal and you get the impression they want you to pay, eat and drink up, then go away. At the Riu Park El Kebir you feel at home, you eat, drink and then maybe sit somewhere else as though you own the place. Fancy another beer? Fine, just go to the bar and get one. Just want to sit there and read your book? Fine just sit there, nobody will bother you - not like in a cafe or bar in the UK where they want sales. You are not in a tourist trap, you have paid your money and they leave you alone. It feels like home, a very large comfortable spotlessly clean home with willing servants.
The entertainment is typical of all-inclusive hotels the world over and the only English language television is BBC World. But this is a holiday and it is good to take yourself out of the loop. It is great for me, no work, no driving and no shops. 7 days of leisure without a care in the world and not having to go anywhere.
Would I wish to return to this holiday palace again? Yes please, at prices like this it makes me wonder why people pay more.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Agadir, Morocco, June 2007.
Gail and I paid £645 each for a 14 day all-inclusive holiday to Agadir in Morocco. We booked our holiday with First Choice and flew from Bristol Airport on Friday 1st June 2007 at 12.30 - returning from Agadir Airport on Friday 15th June 2007 at 16.00 local
time. We parked our friends car in the APH car park at Bristol Airport for £44.10 which is fair for secure parking. All cars are monitored by CCTV with number plate recognition to raise the security barriers.
Our flight was uneventful on a Boeing 757 and immigration was easy, with the completion of a simple visa card recording your passport details. The coach transfer to our hotel was about 40 minutes with our first impressions being the same as arriving in Tunisia.
There was an earthquake in Agadir on the 29th February 1960 so most of the buildings are relatively new. There is a lot of construction going on everywhere with many new hotels being built. A lot of cranes scatter the skyline and a new hotel is being built opposite our chosen hotel The Riu Tikida Beach. This is a 4 star hotel with 232 bedrooms and has the beach on one side and a main road on the other. First Choice did warn us before we went that there was building work going on at this hotel. We were allocated Room 253 which is at the front of the hotel facing the road. It was a regular room up to the usual standards of Riu hotels. The television had 2 English language channels, BBC World and CNN. The nightclub below the hotel was undergoing refurbishment and there was a lot of noise. Sound insulation was poor even without the builders. The constant noise of passing traffic and the entertainment from the bar downstairs made this our noisiest holiday experience ever. It was not a problem but we were aware of the intrusion.
The food and drink is what you expect from an all-inclusive holiday. The buffet food was OK with a good choice for most tastes. There was a lot of fish available as the main Moroccan food export is sardines and other fish. Gail preferred the food to me but I did not go hungry. I liked the tomatoes, potatoes, cauliflower and pizza. I was disappointed that they did not offer the traditional hot Arabic flatbreads at breakfast but I did enjoy the fruit salad when I poured natural yogurt on the top. Waiters provided the drinks in the restaurant leaving the diner to raid the buffet.
Drinks from the bars had the usual all-inclusive problem, weak measures and small beer glasses. The beer is OK and not fizzy, like the French beer you can buy cheaply in a British supermarket. The difference at this hotel was that guests were discouraged from ordering drinks at the bar, instead waiters would serve you once you had chosen where to sit. The was a bad and inefficient use of labour. It also made me feel like a child waiting to see if the adults would allow me to have a grown up drink with them if I was good.
This hotel is built in an L shape encompassing the swimming pool and some lovely gardens. The major impression you get is one of privacy and security, you could be anywhere in the world. I felt detached from Morocco and the resort as I lay on a sunbed listening to my personal radio or reading a book. Radio Sawa broadcasts from Agadir in Arabic on 101.0 FM and alternate records are sung in English which gives the listener a good mixture of familiar and fresh tunes. My books for this holiday were Margrave of the Marshes by John and Sheila Ravenscroft (John Peel) and The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. It was good to be able to relax fully in this hotel because our Foreign and Commonwealth Office had warned ...
"There is a high threat from terrorism in Morocco. On 14 April two suicide bombers killed themselves and slightly injured one passer-by near to an American Language Centre and the US Consulate in Casablanca. It is suspected that the bombers were targeting US interests. On 10 April 2007 three others blew themselves up, killing one policeman and injuring another, during police raids in Casablanca and another suspected terrorist was shot and killed during one of the raids. On 11 March a suicide bomber killed himself and injured four others at an internet cafe in Casablanca. Moroccan police have greatly enhanced security and made a number of arrests but continue to hunt for further suspected terrorists."
There was a security guard at the roadside and traffic barriers on the entrance. I saw a lot of security guards patrolling, particularly at the front of our hotel. There were a lot of Police Officers around the resort of Agadir to protect the tourists and the Royal Palace further down the beach from our hotel. As the situation in the Middle East was hotting up yet again, I did not venture into the English Pub in the resort, just to be on the safe side.
I guess the hotel swimming pool measures about 25m by 20m and goes to 2.25m deep. There are ladders and steps to enter the pool with the water temperature claiming to be 25C. The pool towels are free and rather than being issued poolside are delivered to your room. The gardens are well kept and green because they use a lot of water on them. The weather at this time of year is very good. We had no rain, loads of sun and daytime temperatures were over 30C.
Gail was challenged by the number of steps within the confines of the hotel. Wherever you wanted to go within the hotel or it's grounds you would have to climb up or down stairs. There was no getting away from the many steps which were no problem to her mountain goat of a husband.
Daytime activities at the hotel are limited and the evening entertainment is poor, best to ignore and chat to complete strangers.
The hotel staff were OK with a reasonable command of English. Their service was consistent and did not favour any one group of guests or nationality. You can change money at the hotel reception as the Moroccan Dirham is a closed currency. There is a free safe deposit box in your bedroom.
The hotel has the beach on one side and a main road on the other. It takes around 30 minutes to walk into the centre of Agadir resort, it makes no difference whether you walk along the beach or the road. It is a typical tourist resort with a McDonalds, a Pizza Hut, an English Pub, loads of restaurants including an Indian and plenty of shops. There is a lot of building work going on and it will be very nice when it is eventually finished. More hotels are being built with one on the beach very close to the McDonalds. The marina is still under construction as is closed to the public. The local buses look very rough and are not suitable for tourists unless you can speak
fluent Arabic. The town centre is very busy with locals who travel in from the suburbs. The nearest shops and restaurants from the hotel are only 5 minutes walk away and are only used by the tourists. The Moroccan men by tradition wear mustard yellow slip on shoes and the women red shoes of the same type. I bought a pair of these extremely comfy shoes for 100 Dirhams but Gail hates them because of the colour.
Walking the other way along the beach away from the resort it looks nice. You can walk for maybe 30 minutes but you will be turned back by the Police because of the Royal Palace of King Muhammed the 6th which borders the beach. This is a shame as it looks like a nature reserve.
We went out one night for a meal at the local La Scala restaurant. Prices are similar to what you would pay back home but the portions are more generous. Because we had become used to buffet food we thought the service was very slow as you have to wait for your dinner to be cooked. Service was probably good but it is so easy to get into the flow of a self service buffet where everything is available to eat in a instant.
Our First Choice representative did the usual welcome meeting and the following trips were available, a British pound is worth about 15.66 Moroccan Dirhams.
Agadir half day excursion 110
Full day Jeep Safari 650
Essaouira seaside resort 390
Marrakech full day 690
Berber night out 335
Marrakech 2 day tour 1500
Anti-Atlas mountains and Tafraout 490
Moroccan evening 450
Taroudant half day 250
Paradise Valley half day 280
Gail was not interested in going out on a guided trip and the only trip that really appealed to me was the Anti-Atlas mountains and Tafraout. When I tried to book this trip the First Choice representative told me it was not running but I could go on the same trip with Thomson Holidays for 435 Dirhams but this did not include the lunch which was extra.
The coach arrived at 07.00 and was a 16 seater Mercedes Sprinter minibus. The coach picked up at 2 other hotels bringing it's passenger compliment up to 9, plus a driver and an English speaking tour guide. The outskirts of Agadir are very different from the tourist resort and central areas of Agadir. Mile after mile of suburbs consisting of square buildings, building sites and scrub/waste land. Then the road rises into a rural landscape which is quite barren with the odd tree and goats being herded by farmers. The coach climbs into the Anti-Atlas mountains and we stop every now and then to take photographs. Goats climb trees to eat the fruit and considering what little else there is to eat in this barren landscape I would do the very same. We stopped at a cafe in a small village miles from anywhere. Then we drove further uphill into the mountains along a very twisty road with big drops to one side. We passed the odd hamlet of isolated rural communities that have changed over the years as people have left to go and work in the cities. There are huge drainage channels for when the rain eventually comes in February and March. It is the dry season now and you do not see much grass due to the lack of rain. Some villages have been flooded to create reservoirs by building dams. We stopped at a layby miles from anywhere, a lovely view across the mountains and not a house in sight. The were 2 local women, I do not know where they had come from as they had no transport but they were sat on the ground waiting for tourists to stop by so that they could hopefully
sell almonds to them as a souveneir. It looks quite sad and I spotted quite a few lonely soles walking on their own through the mountain range far from any signs of habitation.
Further along this mountain road we stopped at a roadside cafe before continuing to the town of Tafraout. We went beyond the town into the hills to look at rock formations with tourist friendly names like Napoleon's Hat. The coach was met by school boys selling paper camels to gullible tourists. The coach returned to the centre of Tafraout. The locals wear many different clothes, some wear traditional Berber robes which have not altered for centuries and others wear Western clothes. I guess it is a fifty fifty mix among the whole population. It is not just the old who wear the Berber robes and the young the Western clothes, is a complete lottery as they walk side by side. Our guide walked us through the market place describing the local scene, a man making and selling shoes, a fruit and spice stall before entering a carpet shop for a demonstration. This is par for the course of most tourist trips in most countries, you will do a carpet shop, a leather shop, a china shop or a jewelry shop. You will be taken to at least one or maybe the whole four! Nobody bought a carpet but we all drank the customary mint tea and listened to the salesman politely. Then it was back on the coach to go for our lunch at the Hotel Les Amandiers which overlooks the town of Tafraout from a nearby hill. I had a lovely tomato salad as a starter followed by a nice beef steak with rice and chips. I washed this down with a bottle of the local Stag beer. The charge for this meal was 120 Dirhams which was very fair. As the coach pulled away from the hotel I am sure I spotted the salesman from the carpet shop, small world!
The coach continued through the mountains stopping to take photographs along the way. It is very beautiful driving through these mountains and I was very pleased to have visited them. The road drops down from the mountains and the road becomes flat and
relatively fast. The coach stops at a roadside cafe for a break, nothing special but rather remote. I am sat outside watching the world go by, old lorries and the odd car when Mohammed our coach driver walks inside the cafe and comes straight back out again carrying a mat. He lays down this mat, takes off his shoes and socks, kneels down and prays to Allah. I cannot imagine that happening in the UK.
After prayer time we continue to Tiznit. The coach stops outside the cemetary in the centre of the town. About a dozen women are sat outside the gateway to this cemetary and our guide informs us that these women are widows begging. We walk through this busy town which is very different to the tourist atmosphere of Agadir. The town is very old with plenty of history as a silver jewelry producer.
Surprise, surprise our guide takes us into what is claimed to be a factory making silver jewelry for a demonstration before looking around the shop. I do not believe it was a factory just a shop catering for tourists who may think they are witnessing the real history of Tiznit. Then we walk through some other back streets back to our coach. I notice just how different life is for the locals compared to what we have back in the UK. You would not find in our town centres small shops doing a roaring business as games cafes where visitors can play Sony Playstation video games. What young children in the UK consider to be standard bedroom fayre is a big trip out for children in Tiznit.
The coach takes the main road back to Agadir. The land is flat and barren. There are some small hamlets all looking the same. People are strolling across wastelands in this emptiness. Every now and again you will see groups of young men playing football on waste ground. My lasting impression from this trip is just how popular playing football is in Morocco. Not like here in the UK where guys wear the replica football strips, drink beer in pubs and go to watch professional football games. In Morocco they play informal football amongst friends on any strip of waste ground that is not in use. I have not seen so many people playing football anywhere before, there are no spectators just players.
I got back to my hotel at 17.30 which made the trip good value for money.
The whole holiday was a good one and we got what we expected. Comparisons must be made with Tunisia which is quite similar for the tourist. I think that Tunisia has the edge as a holiday experience and that it is not worth paying a premium to visit Morocco.
Gail and I paid £645 each for a 14 day all-inclusive holiday to Agadir in Morocco. We booked our holiday with First Choice and flew from Bristol Airport on Friday 1st June 2007 at 12.30 - returning from Agadir Airport on Friday 15th June 2007 at 16.00 local
time. We parked our friends car in the APH car park at Bristol Airport for £44.10 which is fair for secure parking. All cars are monitored by CCTV with number plate recognition to raise the security barriers.
Our flight was uneventful on a Boeing 757 and immigration was easy, with the completion of a simple visa card recording your passport details. The coach transfer to our hotel was about 40 minutes with our first impressions being the same as arriving in Tunisia.
There was an earthquake in Agadir on the 29th February 1960 so most of the buildings are relatively new. There is a lot of construction going on everywhere with many new hotels being built. A lot of cranes scatter the skyline and a new hotel is being built opposite our chosen hotel The Riu Tikida Beach. This is a 4 star hotel with 232 bedrooms and has the beach on one side and a main road on the other. First Choice did warn us before we went that there was building work going on at this hotel. We were allocated Room 253 which is at the front of the hotel facing the road. It was a regular room up to the usual standards of Riu hotels. The television had 2 English language channels, BBC World and CNN. The nightclub below the hotel was undergoing refurbishment and there was a lot of noise. Sound insulation was poor even without the builders. The constant noise of passing traffic and the entertainment from the bar downstairs made this our noisiest holiday experience ever. It was not a problem but we were aware of the intrusion.
The food and drink is what you expect from an all-inclusive holiday. The buffet food was OK with a good choice for most tastes. There was a lot of fish available as the main Moroccan food export is sardines and other fish. Gail preferred the food to me but I did not go hungry. I liked the tomatoes, potatoes, cauliflower and pizza. I was disappointed that they did not offer the traditional hot Arabic flatbreads at breakfast but I did enjoy the fruit salad when I poured natural yogurt on the top. Waiters provided the drinks in the restaurant leaving the diner to raid the buffet.
Drinks from the bars had the usual all-inclusive problem, weak measures and small beer glasses. The beer is OK and not fizzy, like the French beer you can buy cheaply in a British supermarket. The difference at this hotel was that guests were discouraged from ordering drinks at the bar, instead waiters would serve you once you had chosen where to sit. The was a bad and inefficient use of labour. It also made me feel like a child waiting to see if the adults would allow me to have a grown up drink with them if I was good.
This hotel is built in an L shape encompassing the swimming pool and some lovely gardens. The major impression you get is one of privacy and security, you could be anywhere in the world. I felt detached from Morocco and the resort as I lay on a sunbed listening to my personal radio or reading a book. Radio Sawa broadcasts from Agadir in Arabic on 101.0 FM and alternate records are sung in English which gives the listener a good mixture of familiar and fresh tunes. My books for this holiday were Margrave of the Marshes by John and Sheila Ravenscroft (John Peel) and The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. It was good to be able to relax fully in this hotel because our Foreign and Commonwealth Office had warned ...
"There is a high threat from terrorism in Morocco. On 14 April two suicide bombers killed themselves and slightly injured one passer-by near to an American Language Centre and the US Consulate in Casablanca. It is suspected that the bombers were targeting US interests. On 10 April 2007 three others blew themselves up, killing one policeman and injuring another, during police raids in Casablanca and another suspected terrorist was shot and killed during one of the raids. On 11 March a suicide bomber killed himself and injured four others at an internet cafe in Casablanca. Moroccan police have greatly enhanced security and made a number of arrests but continue to hunt for further suspected terrorists."
There was a security guard at the roadside and traffic barriers on the entrance. I saw a lot of security guards patrolling, particularly at the front of our hotel. There were a lot of Police Officers around the resort of Agadir to protect the tourists and the Royal Palace further down the beach from our hotel. As the situation in the Middle East was hotting up yet again, I did not venture into the English Pub in the resort, just to be on the safe side.
I guess the hotel swimming pool measures about 25m by 20m and goes to 2.25m deep. There are ladders and steps to enter the pool with the water temperature claiming to be 25C. The pool towels are free and rather than being issued poolside are delivered to your room. The gardens are well kept and green because they use a lot of water on them. The weather at this time of year is very good. We had no rain, loads of sun and daytime temperatures were over 30C.
Gail was challenged by the number of steps within the confines of the hotel. Wherever you wanted to go within the hotel or it's grounds you would have to climb up or down stairs. There was no getting away from the many steps which were no problem to her mountain goat of a husband.
Daytime activities at the hotel are limited and the evening entertainment is poor, best to ignore and chat to complete strangers.
The hotel staff were OK with a reasonable command of English. Their service was consistent and did not favour any one group of guests or nationality. You can change money at the hotel reception as the Moroccan Dirham is a closed currency. There is a free safe deposit box in your bedroom.
The hotel has the beach on one side and a main road on the other. It takes around 30 minutes to walk into the centre of Agadir resort, it makes no difference whether you walk along the beach or the road. It is a typical tourist resort with a McDonalds, a Pizza Hut, an English Pub, loads of restaurants including an Indian and plenty of shops. There is a lot of building work going on and it will be very nice when it is eventually finished. More hotels are being built with one on the beach very close to the McDonalds. The marina is still under construction as is closed to the public. The local buses look very rough and are not suitable for tourists unless you can speak
fluent Arabic. The town centre is very busy with locals who travel in from the suburbs. The nearest shops and restaurants from the hotel are only 5 minutes walk away and are only used by the tourists. The Moroccan men by tradition wear mustard yellow slip on shoes and the women red shoes of the same type. I bought a pair of these extremely comfy shoes for 100 Dirhams but Gail hates them because of the colour.
Walking the other way along the beach away from the resort it looks nice. You can walk for maybe 30 minutes but you will be turned back by the Police because of the Royal Palace of King Muhammed the 6th which borders the beach. This is a shame as it looks like a nature reserve.
We went out one night for a meal at the local La Scala restaurant. Prices are similar to what you would pay back home but the portions are more generous. Because we had become used to buffet food we thought the service was very slow as you have to wait for your dinner to be cooked. Service was probably good but it is so easy to get into the flow of a self service buffet where everything is available to eat in a instant.
Our First Choice representative did the usual welcome meeting and the following trips were available, a British pound is worth about 15.66 Moroccan Dirhams.
Agadir half day excursion 110
Full day Jeep Safari 650
Essaouira seaside resort 390
Marrakech full day 690
Berber night out 335
Marrakech 2 day tour 1500
Anti-Atlas mountains and Tafraout 490
Moroccan evening 450
Taroudant half day 250
Paradise Valley half day 280
Gail was not interested in going out on a guided trip and the only trip that really appealed to me was the Anti-Atlas mountains and Tafraout. When I tried to book this trip the First Choice representative told me it was not running but I could go on the same trip with Thomson Holidays for 435 Dirhams but this did not include the lunch which was extra.
The coach arrived at 07.00 and was a 16 seater Mercedes Sprinter minibus. The coach picked up at 2 other hotels bringing it's passenger compliment up to 9, plus a driver and an English speaking tour guide. The outskirts of Agadir are very different from the tourist resort and central areas of Agadir. Mile after mile of suburbs consisting of square buildings, building sites and scrub/waste land. Then the road rises into a rural landscape which is quite barren with the odd tree and goats being herded by farmers. The coach climbs into the Anti-Atlas mountains and we stop every now and then to take photographs. Goats climb trees to eat the fruit and considering what little else there is to eat in this barren landscape I would do the very same. We stopped at a cafe in a small village miles from anywhere. Then we drove further uphill into the mountains along a very twisty road with big drops to one side. We passed the odd hamlet of isolated rural communities that have changed over the years as people have left to go and work in the cities. There are huge drainage channels for when the rain eventually comes in February and March. It is the dry season now and you do not see much grass due to the lack of rain. Some villages have been flooded to create reservoirs by building dams. We stopped at a layby miles from anywhere, a lovely view across the mountains and not a house in sight. The were 2 local women, I do not know where they had come from as they had no transport but they were sat on the ground waiting for tourists to stop by so that they could hopefully
sell almonds to them as a souveneir. It looks quite sad and I spotted quite a few lonely soles walking on their own through the mountain range far from any signs of habitation.
Further along this mountain road we stopped at a roadside cafe before continuing to the town of Tafraout. We went beyond the town into the hills to look at rock formations with tourist friendly names like Napoleon's Hat. The coach was met by school boys selling paper camels to gullible tourists. The coach returned to the centre of Tafraout. The locals wear many different clothes, some wear traditional Berber robes which have not altered for centuries and others wear Western clothes. I guess it is a fifty fifty mix among the whole population. It is not just the old who wear the Berber robes and the young the Western clothes, is a complete lottery as they walk side by side. Our guide walked us through the market place describing the local scene, a man making and selling shoes, a fruit and spice stall before entering a carpet shop for a demonstration. This is par for the course of most tourist trips in most countries, you will do a carpet shop, a leather shop, a china shop or a jewelry shop. You will be taken to at least one or maybe the whole four! Nobody bought a carpet but we all drank the customary mint tea and listened to the salesman politely. Then it was back on the coach to go for our lunch at the Hotel Les Amandiers which overlooks the town of Tafraout from a nearby hill. I had a lovely tomato salad as a starter followed by a nice beef steak with rice and chips. I washed this down with a bottle of the local Stag beer. The charge for this meal was 120 Dirhams which was very fair. As the coach pulled away from the hotel I am sure I spotted the salesman from the carpet shop, small world!
The coach continued through the mountains stopping to take photographs along the way. It is very beautiful driving through these mountains and I was very pleased to have visited them. The road drops down from the mountains and the road becomes flat and
relatively fast. The coach stops at a roadside cafe for a break, nothing special but rather remote. I am sat outside watching the world go by, old lorries and the odd car when Mohammed our coach driver walks inside the cafe and comes straight back out again carrying a mat. He lays down this mat, takes off his shoes and socks, kneels down and prays to Allah. I cannot imagine that happening in the UK.
After prayer time we continue to Tiznit. The coach stops outside the cemetary in the centre of the town. About a dozen women are sat outside the gateway to this cemetary and our guide informs us that these women are widows begging. We walk through this busy town which is very different to the tourist atmosphere of Agadir. The town is very old with plenty of history as a silver jewelry producer.
Surprise, surprise our guide takes us into what is claimed to be a factory making silver jewelry for a demonstration before looking around the shop. I do not believe it was a factory just a shop catering for tourists who may think they are witnessing the real history of Tiznit. Then we walk through some other back streets back to our coach. I notice just how different life is for the locals compared to what we have back in the UK. You would not find in our town centres small shops doing a roaring business as games cafes where visitors can play Sony Playstation video games. What young children in the UK consider to be standard bedroom fayre is a big trip out for children in Tiznit.
The coach takes the main road back to Agadir. The land is flat and barren. There are some small hamlets all looking the same. People are strolling across wastelands in this emptiness. Every now and again you will see groups of young men playing football on waste ground. My lasting impression from this trip is just how popular playing football is in Morocco. Not like here in the UK where guys wear the replica football strips, drink beer in pubs and go to watch professional football games. In Morocco they play informal football amongst friends on any strip of waste ground that is not in use. I have not seen so many people playing football anywhere before, there are no spectators just players.
I got back to my hotel at 17.30 which made the trip good value for money.
The whole holiday was a good one and we got what we expected. Comparisons must be made with Tunisia which is quite similar for the tourist. I think that Tunisia has the edge as a holiday experience and that it is not worth paying a premium to visit Morocco.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Port El Kantaoui, Tunisia. December 2006.
Gail and I paid £418 each for a 14 day all-inclusive holiday with Thomson to Port El Kantaoui in Tunisia . We flew out with Thomsonfly from Cardiff Wales Airport at 07.20 on Sunday 26th November 2006 and flew back from Monastir airport in Tunisia on Sunday 10th December 2006 at 12.30 - this was on a Boeing 737 where I found the seating OK, the meal tasty and with no distractions from any televisions. It has been 18 months since we were last in Tunisia and we remembered Monastir airport where you have to fill in an entry visa visitor card to pass through immigration and onto baggage reclaim. We were waiting for our luggage to roll onto the carousel when I heard an English voice with a Yorkshire accent say "Hello there" behind me. I turned around to find our friend Neil who had decided with his girlfriend Caroline to surprise us and join us on our holiday. We made friends with Neil and Caroline when we were in Tunisia in May 2005 and they decided to get the Manchester flight which arrived maybe 10 minutes before our Cardiff flight.
All the coaches were lined up to take the holiday makers to their hotels. Thomson do not put a representative on the coach for the transfer but simply marshal the passengers onto each coach, make a simple announcement and then dispatch the coach on its way. The transfer takes about 45 minutes and it is nice to see just how much we remembered from our last visit.
We stayed at the Riu Bellevue Park hotel which is simply the last hotel going North along the main road from the resort centre of Port El Kantaoui. This hotel used to be owned by Iberotel but it was sold to Riu and refurbished. The first impression you get is just how posh, grand, clean and spacious it looks. This is a 4 star hotel and the lounge/reception area is huge and looks very classy. The ceilings are very high, there is lots of marble and the place looks spotless. This hotel has 387 rooms and is built on 4 storeys which form a U shape facing the beach and overlooking the outdoor swimming pool. Our room looked the other way, North towards the houses and we could see the sea from our balcony. Some people do not like Port El Kantaoui because they claim it is a tourist ghetto, I disagree with them and I think the resort is gorgeous. From our room we had the best of both worlds, the affluence of the hotel and the real life of local people housed on the edge of the resort. Our room had twin beds which were firm, there was plenty of storage space, a free safe deposit box and the bath had a shower fitted above it. The floor was tiled and the room was very clean. There are only 2 English speaking channels on the television, CNN and BBC World .
You might think this was a strange time of year to go on holiday to Tunisia but the weather was good with daytime temperatures reaching 20 to 22C. This is not to everyone's liking and I guess that the hotel was two thirds full. It means that you can stroll around in shirt sleeves and not break out into a sweat. Swimming in the outdoor pool or the sea is a challenge - you swim rather than bathe to cool off! The sea is clean and the beach is sandy. The outdoor pool was I guess 25m by 12m and went from ankle deep to 1.8m which is a little over my head. I went in twice and it was cold but OK, you had to want to swim to go into the pool. Caroline complained of goose pimples and refused to go in. The sea was no better although Neil claimed it was warmer! Pool towels were free and easily obtained from the pool guy who was very attentive. This saves on your luggage as we were restricted to 20kg per person, which is a problem for women. The indoor pool was heated and maybe 5m by 5m in size and I could put both feet down anywhere.
Being an all-inclusive hotel the food is a self service buffet affair, choose a table and help yourself to whatever you want to eat and drink. In the evening there is 2 sittings and your table is allocated for the length of your stay. The breakfast was good and I particularly liked the hot Tunisian/Arab flatbread. There was even bacon available for the infidels. At lunch there was always hot and cold food, salads, pizza and pasta. At evening meal there was hot and cold food plus a Tunisian speciality hot food counter. For drinks you helped yourself to fruit juice, pop, Celtia beer or wine. I thoroughly enjoyed all my meals and it was to my taste, all you would expect from a Middle Eastern menu.
I was surprised at just how clean and spotless all the public toilets within the hotel complex were. They were first class and make UK pubs and restaurant toilets look like those of a third world country.
The entertainment is provided mainly by the animation team in a large indoor hall with it's own bar. This is not like the outdoor aircraft hanger that we used at our last hotel in Port El Kantaoui. The animation team worked very well together and were funny. All the entertainment was done in 3 languages, German, French and English. They kept us all entertained and tried their level best. There was variety and the content was family safe. The music was very middle of the road and European/American which Neil enjoyed but was a minor disappointment to me as I had hoped for local/Arab popular and contemporary disco beats.
The internet is available for hotel guests either in the lounge or by using your wi-fi laptop. The sting is the 10 dinar - £4 an hour charge. The Tunisian Dinar is a closed currency and you can exchange your money at the hotel reception. We exchanged our Sterling for 2.444 Tunisian Dinars.
The walk into the heart of Port El Kantaoui is maybe 45 minutes. The whole area is relaxed and people do not check their watches or appear to be in any rush. You can walk along the beach or the road, it does not make a lot of difference. Walking North along the beach there are no other hotels only 3 restaurants and lots of houses. I walked maybe 90 minutes along the beach until I came to the only other hotel I saw along this coastline. It was called the Hotel Tennis Mediterran and there was nothing expect the odd house past it as the coastline continued as if forever. I then walked to the main road and back through Chott Meriem to our hotel. This 75 minute walk back was nice strolling past rural life in it's peaceful setting, not commercial and not tourist orientated. You get a feeling of freedom, totally away from the packaged holiday model.
Thomson invited us to a welcome meeting on our first afternoon at the hotel. This gives them the chance to sell tourists their trips. This is the only time the rep is scheduled to be at the hotel, if you want anything after this welcome meeting you have to telephone their call centre in Sousse. This is simply a cost cutting measure and I do not believe the spin that customers want a "resort based service". However, speaking to the call centre staff is easy, fast and efficient although you are paying for the call.
The trips on offer were...
Sahara Explorer - 2 days 170 TD
Tunis 42TD
Nabeul market and wine tasting 49TD
Dougga 69TD
Kairouan, El Jem and Monastir 69TD
Sidi Bou Said and Carthage 75TD
Friguia Animal Park 60TD
Show Stoppers entertainment night 45TD
Zulu evening 54TD
We went on the Friguia Animal Park trip for 60TD each. The first part of this trip we have done before, calling at a pottery shop in Hammamet before going to the market at Nabeul where we had 90 minutes to walk around the stalls. You look at about a dozen stalls and then discover that the rest of the market is really just duplicates of the first dozen. We then went to have a 3 course lunch at a hotel in Yasmine Hammamet which was included in the price of our trip. Yasmine Hammamet looked nice, breezy and clean, a bit like Brighton but relatively new. Then it was onto the highlight of the trip to Friguia Animal Park. We had just over 2 hours at this wonderful wildlife park which has around 360 animals and more than 53 species. It was nice to stroll around this beautiful park and to see that the animals were well kept and had plenty of room to roam around. If you have not been to the market and the animal park before, then this trip was well worth the money.
I went on the Tunis trip for 42TD on my own as Gail did not fancy walking around a strange city. Tunis is the capital of Tunisia and is 140km north of Port El Kantaoui. It is a 1 hour and 40 minute drive by coach along a toll charged motorway. The coach stopped outside of the Hotel International which is located along Avenue Habib Bourguiba. This dual carriageway was named after Habib Ben Ali Bourguiba who was born August 3, 1903 in Monastir, Tunisia – and died April 6, 2000. He was a Tunisian statesman and the first President of the Republic of Tunisia from July 25, 1957 to November 7, 1987. He is often compared to Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk because of the pro-Western reforms enacted during his presidency. During the time Bourguiba was president, education was a high priority. Bourguiba also made an innovative difference within the Arab and Islamic world concerning women rights. He prohibited polygamy and he legalized divorce. He also raised the age at which girls could marry to 17 years of age.
I was given 3 hours 15 minutes to explore this exciting city. The guide lead the coach party on foot to one of the preserved archways that enclosed the old medina where he made a quick speech and told us that we were now on our own. I looked around the old medina and unlike the medina in Hammamet that I walked through 18 months earlier, I was not hassled by any of the shopkeepers. That is the difference between a tourist resort and a working, living city. Not once in Tunis was I hassled, approached or encouraged to "come into my shop". I felt as anonymous in Tunis as I do in London, that is nice for a tourist rather than to feel that you are just another potential sales target. I walked all around the old medina and then around the modern city shopping area. What a difference in these 2 areas that are directly next to each other. They are a culture yet a stone throw apart living happily next to each other satisfying their own communities. The modern part of Tunis is very much like Liverpool, hustle and bustle with crowded streets. There are many buses which look a little shabby that are full of passengers and a tram system sharing the same streets. I found a tourist sign with a street map on it that I studied and confidently marched off towards Parc Zoologique Belvédère . This is like one of the many parks in London, except it has wild animals in it. There is an admission charge of 600 milums - a staggering 25p to you and me! This is a lovely urban park, it is used by locals and at a glance I was the only pale faced person there. There was a big range of animals to view but their accommodation was very cramped compared to Friguia Animal Park and I felt sorry for the animals thinking how limited their lives were - not mistreated, just confined. I spent an hour in this park and then it was time to make my way back to the Avenue Habib Bourguiba. I was OK with this because of my day job back in the UK but other visitors may become distressed at the possibility of getting lost in a strange city or missing their return coach. My navigation was spot on as usual but had Gail been with me she would not have been happy as the time ticked away and only when you get to the Place de l'Independence do you see where you really are. The streets between the Parc Zoologique Belvédère and Avenue Habib Bourguiba are just like any other modern busy city - more of the same although transport enthusiasts can get the feel of the city with relative ease!
You notice on the trip back to Port El Kantaoui that the landscape gets better and better the further away from Tunis you travel, just the same as it does back in the UK when you travel away from London. Your lasting impression is one of a vast contrast between life for the 2 million residents of Tunis and the rural dwellers who have such beauty and space around them. To experience such contrast makes for an excellent holiday.
Putting our time at the hotel, walking around the resort and 2 day trips into perspective has given me a wonderful refreshing holiday. Tunisia is a nice country and a great holiday destination. This is a good time of year to visit as it can get very hot in the summer. The price and value for money is extremely good. It is safe to walk anywhere and unlike the UK with our obsession with CCTV cameras, Tunisia has a very active Police force. I have never seem so many Police Officers anywhere stopping and searching so many motorists and pedestrians. These were not dodgy looking locals but just apparently random stop and searches. I was not stopped once. All holiday destinations can become tourist traps but on this type of holiday you can avoid and ignore these traps. There is more to life than shops and more shops, we have more than enough retail parks in the UK that you do not need to travel to North Africa to go shopping. Bring a good book, a pair of trainers and stretch your mind as well as your legs. My holiday read this time was The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins . You read the tourist literature about Tunisia being a Muslim country and when you read Richard's book you realise just how little this definition actually means. Yes, a tourist guide can tell you about Islam and show you a mosque. You will hear the call to prayer from the minarets and see a number of people walking towards a mosque especially on Fridays but this is not representative of the country as a whole. The people are law abiding, working and living normal everyday lives like people everywhere on this planet. We are just a speck within our universe and as individuals are of very little consequence especially when you consider the length of time our planet and solar system have been going! When you abandon UK news and newspapers on holiday everything looks so fresh because you no longer live with these running news stories and feel like a satellite orbiting our world. In a word this holiday was - refreshing. Would I go back to Tunisia and this hotel again at this time of year? Yes, I certainly would - no doubts - although you do get a shock when you arrive back to the UK with it's winter weather, Christmas decorations and the retail industry annual sales push.
Gail and I paid £418 each for a 14 day all-inclusive holiday with Thomson to Port El Kantaoui in Tunisia . We flew out with Thomsonfly from Cardiff Wales Airport at 07.20 on Sunday 26th November 2006 and flew back from Monastir airport in Tunisia on Sunday 10th December 2006 at 12.30 - this was on a Boeing 737 where I found the seating OK, the meal tasty and with no distractions from any televisions. It has been 18 months since we were last in Tunisia and we remembered Monastir airport where you have to fill in an entry visa visitor card to pass through immigration and onto baggage reclaim. We were waiting for our luggage to roll onto the carousel when I heard an English voice with a Yorkshire accent say "Hello there" behind me. I turned around to find our friend Neil who had decided with his girlfriend Caroline to surprise us and join us on our holiday. We made friends with Neil and Caroline when we were in Tunisia in May 2005 and they decided to get the Manchester flight which arrived maybe 10 minutes before our Cardiff flight.
All the coaches were lined up to take the holiday makers to their hotels. Thomson do not put a representative on the coach for the transfer but simply marshal the passengers onto each coach, make a simple announcement and then dispatch the coach on its way. The transfer takes about 45 minutes and it is nice to see just how much we remembered from our last visit.
We stayed at the Riu Bellevue Park hotel which is simply the last hotel going North along the main road from the resort centre of Port El Kantaoui. This hotel used to be owned by Iberotel but it was sold to Riu and refurbished. The first impression you get is just how posh, grand, clean and spacious it looks. This is a 4 star hotel and the lounge/reception area is huge and looks very classy. The ceilings are very high, there is lots of marble and the place looks spotless. This hotel has 387 rooms and is built on 4 storeys which form a U shape facing the beach and overlooking the outdoor swimming pool. Our room looked the other way, North towards the houses and we could see the sea from our balcony. Some people do not like Port El Kantaoui because they claim it is a tourist ghetto, I disagree with them and I think the resort is gorgeous. From our room we had the best of both worlds, the affluence of the hotel and the real life of local people housed on the edge of the resort. Our room had twin beds which were firm, there was plenty of storage space, a free safe deposit box and the bath had a shower fitted above it. The floor was tiled and the room was very clean. There are only 2 English speaking channels on the television, CNN and BBC World .
You might think this was a strange time of year to go on holiday to Tunisia but the weather was good with daytime temperatures reaching 20 to 22C. This is not to everyone's liking and I guess that the hotel was two thirds full. It means that you can stroll around in shirt sleeves and not break out into a sweat. Swimming in the outdoor pool or the sea is a challenge - you swim rather than bathe to cool off! The sea is clean and the beach is sandy. The outdoor pool was I guess 25m by 12m and went from ankle deep to 1.8m which is a little over my head. I went in twice and it was cold but OK, you had to want to swim to go into the pool. Caroline complained of goose pimples and refused to go in. The sea was no better although Neil claimed it was warmer! Pool towels were free and easily obtained from the pool guy who was very attentive. This saves on your luggage as we were restricted to 20kg per person, which is a problem for women. The indoor pool was heated and maybe 5m by 5m in size and I could put both feet down anywhere.
Being an all-inclusive hotel the food is a self service buffet affair, choose a table and help yourself to whatever you want to eat and drink. In the evening there is 2 sittings and your table is allocated for the length of your stay. The breakfast was good and I particularly liked the hot Tunisian/Arab flatbread. There was even bacon available for the infidels. At lunch there was always hot and cold food, salads, pizza and pasta. At evening meal there was hot and cold food plus a Tunisian speciality hot food counter. For drinks you helped yourself to fruit juice, pop, Celtia beer or wine. I thoroughly enjoyed all my meals and it was to my taste, all you would expect from a Middle Eastern menu.
I was surprised at just how clean and spotless all the public toilets within the hotel complex were. They were first class and make UK pubs and restaurant toilets look like those of a third world country.
The entertainment is provided mainly by the animation team in a large indoor hall with it's own bar. This is not like the outdoor aircraft hanger that we used at our last hotel in Port El Kantaoui. The animation team worked very well together and were funny. All the entertainment was done in 3 languages, German, French and English. They kept us all entertained and tried their level best. There was variety and the content was family safe. The music was very middle of the road and European/American which Neil enjoyed but was a minor disappointment to me as I had hoped for local/Arab popular and contemporary disco beats.
The internet is available for hotel guests either in the lounge or by using your wi-fi laptop. The sting is the 10 dinar - £4 an hour charge. The Tunisian Dinar is a closed currency and you can exchange your money at the hotel reception. We exchanged our Sterling for 2.444 Tunisian Dinars.
The walk into the heart of Port El Kantaoui is maybe 45 minutes. The whole area is relaxed and people do not check their watches or appear to be in any rush. You can walk along the beach or the road, it does not make a lot of difference. Walking North along the beach there are no other hotels only 3 restaurants and lots of houses. I walked maybe 90 minutes along the beach until I came to the only other hotel I saw along this coastline. It was called the Hotel Tennis Mediterran and there was nothing expect the odd house past it as the coastline continued as if forever. I then walked to the main road and back through Chott Meriem to our hotel. This 75 minute walk back was nice strolling past rural life in it's peaceful setting, not commercial and not tourist orientated. You get a feeling of freedom, totally away from the packaged holiday model.
Thomson invited us to a welcome meeting on our first afternoon at the hotel. This gives them the chance to sell tourists their trips. This is the only time the rep is scheduled to be at the hotel, if you want anything after this welcome meeting you have to telephone their call centre in Sousse. This is simply a cost cutting measure and I do not believe the spin that customers want a "resort based service". However, speaking to the call centre staff is easy, fast and efficient although you are paying for the call.
The trips on offer were...
Sahara Explorer - 2 days 170 TD
Tunis 42TD
Nabeul market and wine tasting 49TD
Dougga 69TD
Kairouan, El Jem and Monastir 69TD
Sidi Bou Said and Carthage 75TD
Friguia Animal Park 60TD
Show Stoppers entertainment night 45TD
Zulu evening 54TD
We went on the Friguia Animal Park trip for 60TD each. The first part of this trip we have done before, calling at a pottery shop in Hammamet before going to the market at Nabeul where we had 90 minutes to walk around the stalls. You look at about a dozen stalls and then discover that the rest of the market is really just duplicates of the first dozen. We then went to have a 3 course lunch at a hotel in Yasmine Hammamet which was included in the price of our trip. Yasmine Hammamet looked nice, breezy and clean, a bit like Brighton but relatively new. Then it was onto the highlight of the trip to Friguia Animal Park. We had just over 2 hours at this wonderful wildlife park which has around 360 animals and more than 53 species. It was nice to stroll around this beautiful park and to see that the animals were well kept and had plenty of room to roam around. If you have not been to the market and the animal park before, then this trip was well worth the money.
I went on the Tunis trip for 42TD on my own as Gail did not fancy walking around a strange city. Tunis is the capital of Tunisia and is 140km north of Port El Kantaoui. It is a 1 hour and 40 minute drive by coach along a toll charged motorway. The coach stopped outside of the Hotel International which is located along Avenue Habib Bourguiba. This dual carriageway was named after Habib Ben Ali Bourguiba who was born August 3, 1903 in Monastir, Tunisia – and died April 6, 2000. He was a Tunisian statesman and the first President of the Republic of Tunisia from July 25, 1957 to November 7, 1987. He is often compared to Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk because of the pro-Western reforms enacted during his presidency. During the time Bourguiba was president, education was a high priority. Bourguiba also made an innovative difference within the Arab and Islamic world concerning women rights. He prohibited polygamy and he legalized divorce. He also raised the age at which girls could marry to 17 years of age.
I was given 3 hours 15 minutes to explore this exciting city. The guide lead the coach party on foot to one of the preserved archways that enclosed the old medina where he made a quick speech and told us that we were now on our own. I looked around the old medina and unlike the medina in Hammamet that I walked through 18 months earlier, I was not hassled by any of the shopkeepers. That is the difference between a tourist resort and a working, living city. Not once in Tunis was I hassled, approached or encouraged to "come into my shop". I felt as anonymous in Tunis as I do in London, that is nice for a tourist rather than to feel that you are just another potential sales target. I walked all around the old medina and then around the modern city shopping area. What a difference in these 2 areas that are directly next to each other. They are a culture yet a stone throw apart living happily next to each other satisfying their own communities. The modern part of Tunis is very much like Liverpool, hustle and bustle with crowded streets. There are many buses which look a little shabby that are full of passengers and a tram system sharing the same streets. I found a tourist sign with a street map on it that I studied and confidently marched off towards Parc Zoologique Belvédère . This is like one of the many parks in London, except it has wild animals in it. There is an admission charge of 600 milums - a staggering 25p to you and me! This is a lovely urban park, it is used by locals and at a glance I was the only pale faced person there. There was a big range of animals to view but their accommodation was very cramped compared to Friguia Animal Park and I felt sorry for the animals thinking how limited their lives were - not mistreated, just confined. I spent an hour in this park and then it was time to make my way back to the Avenue Habib Bourguiba. I was OK with this because of my day job back in the UK but other visitors may become distressed at the possibility of getting lost in a strange city or missing their return coach. My navigation was spot on as usual but had Gail been with me she would not have been happy as the time ticked away and only when you get to the Place de l'Independence do you see where you really are. The streets between the Parc Zoologique Belvédère and Avenue Habib Bourguiba are just like any other modern busy city - more of the same although transport enthusiasts can get the feel of the city with relative ease!
You notice on the trip back to Port El Kantaoui that the landscape gets better and better the further away from Tunis you travel, just the same as it does back in the UK when you travel away from London. Your lasting impression is one of a vast contrast between life for the 2 million residents of Tunis and the rural dwellers who have such beauty and space around them. To experience such contrast makes for an excellent holiday.
Putting our time at the hotel, walking around the resort and 2 day trips into perspective has given me a wonderful refreshing holiday. Tunisia is a nice country and a great holiday destination. This is a good time of year to visit as it can get very hot in the summer. The price and value for money is extremely good. It is safe to walk anywhere and unlike the UK with our obsession with CCTV cameras, Tunisia has a very active Police force. I have never seem so many Police Officers anywhere stopping and searching so many motorists and pedestrians. These were not dodgy looking locals but just apparently random stop and searches. I was not stopped once. All holiday destinations can become tourist traps but on this type of holiday you can avoid and ignore these traps. There is more to life than shops and more shops, we have more than enough retail parks in the UK that you do not need to travel to North Africa to go shopping. Bring a good book, a pair of trainers and stretch your mind as well as your legs. My holiday read this time was The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins . You read the tourist literature about Tunisia being a Muslim country and when you read Richard's book you realise just how little this definition actually means. Yes, a tourist guide can tell you about Islam and show you a mosque. You will hear the call to prayer from the minarets and see a number of people walking towards a mosque especially on Fridays but this is not representative of the country as a whole. The people are law abiding, working and living normal everyday lives like people everywhere on this planet. We are just a speck within our universe and as individuals are of very little consequence especially when you consider the length of time our planet and solar system have been going! When you abandon UK news and newspapers on holiday everything looks so fresh because you no longer live with these running news stories and feel like a satellite orbiting our world. In a word this holiday was - refreshing. Would I go back to Tunisia and this hotel again at this time of year? Yes, I certainly would - no doubts - although you do get a shock when you arrive back to the UK with it's winter weather, Christmas decorations and the retail industry annual sales push.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, May 2006.
My wife and I went to the Riu Merengue hotel at Bahia Maimon which is near Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic . We booked our holiday through First Choice and paid £850 each which included and extra £165 for the upgrade to Premium Seats which gives you more legroom, free drinks and an additional 10kg each of luggage allowance. We booked car parking at Gatwick over the internet with APH and paid £56.70 on their Flightpath North Supersaver Offer. The only condition is that you cannot make any alterations to this booking once you have paid your money. We flew from London Gatwick Airport at 09.30 on Sunday 30th April 2006 and returned from Puerto Plata at 18.35 on Sunday 14th May 2006. Flight check-in times are 3 hours before departure time on this route rather than the usual 2 hours. I wonder how they can justify this extra hour as everything about the flight appears to be the same as on other routes. This is a 9 hour flight on a Boeing 767 which has a seating configuration of 2-3-2. I was comfortable throughout the flight and did not get bored once. There is television in front of your seat with a choice of 12 movies and light entertainment programs plus some music CD compilations to listen to. I did not bother with the movies or television but enjoyed listening to the mixture of music on offer whilst doing a puzzle book. The in-flight food is good with a hot breakfast and good wine, followed later by an afternoon tea. On arrival in the Dominican Republic all visitors have to fill in a tourist card and pay US$10 to the immigration officer. Local time is 5 hours behind British Summer Time.
The coach transfer to the hotel takes around 45 minutes. Your first impressions as you drive through the centre of Puerto Plata is just how rough it looks. Poverty and run down shacks greet you along with loads of people standing around on street corners. My wife gasped at the sights of homes that looked no better than neglected garden sheds. The coach drives out of Puerto Plata through countryside along a main road to the hotel which is 9km away. The hotel site is surrounded by a high fence with barbed wire on the top and the coach pulls up at a gate house with a barrier which is manned by a guard armed with a pistol. This is going to be our new home for the next 14 days and you think you are entering a prison miles away from anywhere. There is nothing else apart from farmland on either side of this main road.
The Riu Merengue is part of the Riu Puerto Plata Resort and guests can use facilities in all 3 of the hotels. The sister hotels of the Bachata and the Mambo are the same as the Merengue. I do not feel it matters which of the 3 hotels you have chosen to book and sleep in. All the hotels rooms are in 2 storey blocks with a few rooms at the Bachata being 3 storey. The Merengue has 544 rooms and have air conditioning plus a ceiling fan. Our room had two 4ft double beds pushed together and an en-suite bathroom. There was ample storage space and a free safety deposit box. The mini bar is restocked every 2 days and contained beer, pepsi, diet pepsi, soda, tonic water, drinking water, gin, vodka, brandy and rum. The patio had 2 plastic chairs and a small table.
Although you will see people using mobile phones, you will not be able to get a Vodafone signal at this hotel. There is internet access available but I did not bother and do not know the cost.
This is an all-inclusive resort and the food is a self service buffet affair. Take as little or as much as you want. Food is available from 07.00 until 02.00 from various locations. There is food to suit everyone but it did not excite me like the food does in Tunisia and Turkey. I thought the bread was poor quality with very little choice. I did not like the baked beans, tomatoes and the wine was foul. The beer, cocktails and rum was OK. The potatoes, fresh fruit, milk shakes and coffee were gorgeous.
The entertainment was poor with lots of mime and dance. It was very happy clappy, all "come on, come on, yep, yep." with long winded silly games. It would have been better if they had booked amateur talent on a free appearance basis where the artists could put on their show and sell their product to the tourists afterwards. What is the point of watching dancers mime to the big names of entertainment?
The hotels are set in lovely gardens, there is no traffic. The paths are good with adequate lighting. There are plenty of fire hoses and water points. The gardens are well maintained and all the buildings are in good order. I have no health and safety concerns at this resort. There are some shops within the resort selling anything you could want. There is their own little high street named Caribbean Street but prices are high. We forgot to pack some shower gel and paid a staggering £6 for a bottle! At either end of the beach there are some huts selling tourist gifts but the goods are not priced. The traders are locals and are not employed by the hotels. Products are available by engaging in barter but I considered them to be greedy and bought nothing. The feel of the resort is one of enclosure, you could be anywhere. The resort looks out onto the Atlantic Ocean and all you can see is water, no signs of civilisation. There are no houses or locals, just holidaymakers and staff in this unreal world of it's own. This does not feel as though you have gone to a foreign country, more a huge coporate leisure factory, the land of Riu. The weather is hot with top temperatures around 30C which only drops to 25C at night.
On the Monday morning we had a welcome meeting with Thonny, the First Choice representative. The excurisions on offer were priced in US dollars...
Outback Safari 74
Punta Rusia sandbank coral reef 81
Water Rafting 81
Dolphins 100 with swimming 145
Deep sea fishing 159
Fly to Saona Island 239
Catamaran trip 71 and 84
Coastal ride and Puerto Plata 36
Comedy night 25
Helicopter 69 and 194
Santo Domingo 69
We exchanged our money in the UK before we left and got a rate of 1.7220 US dollars to the Pound. Most people recommend that you take US dollars with you to the Dominican Republic and exchange what little you need into Dominican Peso's when you are there. The hotel reception will exchange money for you and we got a rate of 35.51 Peso's to the US dollar. Ball park figures worked out at 1 dollar equals 60p and 50 peso's for a UK pound.
The only trip we were interested in as a couple was the trip to Santo Domingo , which is the capital of the Dominican Republic. This trip only operates on a Wednesday, so we booked it for the first Wednesday of our holiday. We enjoyed the rest of Monday and Tuesday morning and afternoon in our new prison camp. Common advice is not to walk out of the complex on your own, which I had agreed with my wife to abide by. I had Wednesday to look forward to when I would be allowed out of this luxury prison for a supervised day release under escort on a three and a half hour coach ride to the capital. I was gutted when we went back to our room at about 18.30 to find a card pushed under the door telling me that the trip had been cancelled but would run the following Wednesday. I now had to contend with life in this luxury prison. I could walk along the beach which takes 25 minutes from end to end and stroll through the gardens past the cell blocks giving an hour circular walk.
Most of our time was spent by the swimming pool of the Bachata on a sunbed. Pool and beach towels are provided free of charge and all the swimming pools are 1.4m deep. We had 13 days of sunbathing, swimming and a lot of reading. What was this strange world I was living in, with no sense of normality or everyday human life, just inmates and wardens? The whole atmosphere was one of just holidaymakers living under a corporate umbrella being serviced by very pleasant and well disciplined staff. My one link to reality was an excellent book I was reading, Pity the Nation - Lebanon at War by Robert Fisk 2001. This covers the conflicts in Lebanon between 1970 and 1996 where Robert Fisk lives as the Middle East correspondent for The Independent. His life as a reporter living and working out of Beirut makes an exciting and adventurous read. Life is fast and dangerous on the front line as he reports on the people, their politics, fears, lives and deaths as the history of the nation unfolds. Life around the Bachata swimming pool is a world away, sterile and relaxed, safe in the land of Riu.
Wednesday 10th May comes and I am well ready for the trip to Santo Domingo. The coach is a 25 seater Toyota midibus with air conditioning. It arrives at our hotel promptly at the advertised time of 06.30 - there are already some tourists onboard from hotels further along the coast to the east. It is wonderful to be out of our luxury prison and back into the real world. A main road busy with traffic, locals crowding onto buses going to work, people walking. Driving through the countryside with many hovels lining the road, not luxury apartments but ramshackle homes like garden sheds. Our guide issues everyone with a brown paper bag. This is breakfast, a small sandwich, an apple, a fruit juice and a bottle of water. The morning peak period arrives as we go through Santiago, a busy city with all the hustle and bustle you would expect from any modern city. Traffic lights and stop start, people going about with a purpose. We drive out of the city of Santiago and along the main dual carriageway towards Santo Domingo. We stop at a roadside services for 20 minutes and watch the world go by.
It is a three and a half hour drive across the backbone of the country and you feel you are going somewhere, not just around the corner. We arrive at Santo Domingo with our coach dropping us off near the Cathedral. Santo Domingo is the oldest city in the New World, where the settlement of all the Americas began.
We browsed in a large gift store where we bought 2 bottles of rum for £6 before our tour of Cathedral Basilica Santa Maria la Menor, pronounced the first cathedral in the New World by Pope Paul III in 1542.
After this we looked through the archway of the Ozama Fortress, the oldest fortress in the Americas. Then it was a walk into the French Panteón Nacional which is a mausoleum. From there we continued in the midday heat which was too much for my wife, so she sat on some steps whilst I had a tour around the Museo de las Casas Reales (Museum of the Royal Houses), the restored 16th century palace of the Spanish Court, which features a wonderful glimpse of the past. We then got back onto our coach and drove to the Columbus Lighthouse, an impressive structure in the shape of a cross which was constructed to mark the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas in 1492. It cost an awful lot of money to construct and our guide thought the money was wasted and should have been spent elsewhere. From there we went along to Los Tres Ojos where our guide warned my wife she would have to climb down 59 steps - she decided to pass on this attraction and stayed on the coach. Yes, there were 59 steps going down but that was only the beginning before you went down more steps and along pathways to see an impressive 50-foot deep cave with three lagoons surrounded by stalagmites and lush vegetation.
We then went in the coach around the city to a restaurant where we had a self service buffet lunch that was included in our ticket price. The atmosphere was jolly and very Dominican with dances, costumes and kitchen smells. The decor was basic, like a builders yard with tables and chairs.
The trip back to our hotel was the reverse of the forward journey. Santo Domingo was very busy, with gridlock in places. At traffic lights street sellers were hawking Orange mobile phone top up cards, not like raffle tickets but from a posh perspex dispenser, like that used for National Lottery tickets in the UK. There were also lots of fruit stalls on the kerbsides. Santiago was also busy and gridlocked in places, not helped by a flyover being closed and a torrential downpour. This rain caused a bit of flash flooding and I could see why the top of the air intake on our Toyota midibus was level with the nearside mirror! I have never seen so many small, lightweight Japanese motorcycles, some of them used as taxis. Also I have never seen so many fat bottomed women wobbling along. The population is 71% mixed race and our guide was proud of the mixture of ethnic backgrounds in his country.
There is a contrast on this three and a half hour drive. Driving standards are poor with bad lane discipline and many drivers crossing the double unbroken centre carriageway lines. Some areas look relatively wealthy and urban but others look very poor, run down, rather backward and rural. My wife noticed how in the poorer rural areas where people lived in tatty shacks, all the washing that was hung out to dry looked fresh, new and sparkling clean.
We arrived back at our hotel at 18.30 after a 12 hour excursion into the real world. The hotel now appeared very tame, sterile as though we had left the Dominican Republic.
The rest of our holiday was spent on the hotel complex and was much of the same. Hours spent on a sunbed although I did enjoy the water aerobics session which took place each day a noon. This was a silly time to do it with the heat of the day and the sun bearing right down on you. Very hot and sweaty but worth doing all the same. There are plenty of activities put on around the pools and along the beach but the games are rather long winded. I bought a Miami Herald for 50 peso's which was worth a read rather than pay big money for an English newspaper.
I cannot fault this hotel or First Choice. The hotel is well run, professional, with good staff. You do not have to speak any Spanish as all the staff speak English and all signage is bi-lingual. Whenever you come out of a toilet there is a woman who squirts a liquid anti-bacterial hand wash onto your palm. This routine also takes place at the entrance to the buffet restaurants. I do not know how much this has added to their wage bill but the management obviously does not want a repeat of past food hygiene problems. I did not suffer from any holiday tummy.
Our coach was due to pick us up at 14.30 and you had to check out of your room by 13.00 - a nice time. We exchanged our last peso's with the First Choice representative at the rate of 34.78 to the US dollar which was good. We had our final buffet meal and a drink before our coach arrived on time. Looking out of the window we saw the outside world that we had not lived in, passing the poverty we had been shielded from. It did not feel as though we had been to a foreign country, more a visit to a theme park. We had a good holiday but if all you want is a sunbed, a pool and lots of sun then there are cheaper countries and resorts to go to. Friends claim that once you have been to the Caribbean that you will not want to holiday anywhere else. They also claim that all the little extras mean a lot and are worth the extra cost. I did not think that the little extras are worth the extra and I can do without them. I am not impressed by a room maid folding towels into shapes or the restaurant staff making sculptures out of fruit.
The airport is efficient with the usual facilities. Again the flight check-in time is 3 hours before departure. You have to pay a departure tax to an official of US$20 per person. The flight home was OK and a good dinner was provided, followed by a light breakfast before landing.
I enjoyed the holiday, it was different but I will not ask to go again.
Gracias.
My wife and I went to the Riu Merengue hotel at Bahia Maimon which is near Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic . We booked our holiday through First Choice and paid £850 each which included and extra £165 for the upgrade to Premium Seats which gives you more legroom, free drinks and an additional 10kg each of luggage allowance. We booked car parking at Gatwick over the internet with APH and paid £56.70 on their Flightpath North Supersaver Offer. The only condition is that you cannot make any alterations to this booking once you have paid your money. We flew from London Gatwick Airport at 09.30 on Sunday 30th April 2006 and returned from Puerto Plata at 18.35 on Sunday 14th May 2006. Flight check-in times are 3 hours before departure time on this route rather than the usual 2 hours. I wonder how they can justify this extra hour as everything about the flight appears to be the same as on other routes. This is a 9 hour flight on a Boeing 767 which has a seating configuration of 2-3-2. I was comfortable throughout the flight and did not get bored once. There is television in front of your seat with a choice of 12 movies and light entertainment programs plus some music CD compilations to listen to. I did not bother with the movies or television but enjoyed listening to the mixture of music on offer whilst doing a puzzle book. The in-flight food is good with a hot breakfast and good wine, followed later by an afternoon tea. On arrival in the Dominican Republic all visitors have to fill in a tourist card and pay US$10 to the immigration officer. Local time is 5 hours behind British Summer Time.
The coach transfer to the hotel takes around 45 minutes. Your first impressions as you drive through the centre of Puerto Plata is just how rough it looks. Poverty and run down shacks greet you along with loads of people standing around on street corners. My wife gasped at the sights of homes that looked no better than neglected garden sheds. The coach drives out of Puerto Plata through countryside along a main road to the hotel which is 9km away. The hotel site is surrounded by a high fence with barbed wire on the top and the coach pulls up at a gate house with a barrier which is manned by a guard armed with a pistol. This is going to be our new home for the next 14 days and you think you are entering a prison miles away from anywhere. There is nothing else apart from farmland on either side of this main road.
The Riu Merengue is part of the Riu Puerto Plata Resort and guests can use facilities in all 3 of the hotels. The sister hotels of the Bachata and the Mambo are the same as the Merengue. I do not feel it matters which of the 3 hotels you have chosen to book and sleep in. All the hotels rooms are in 2 storey blocks with a few rooms at the Bachata being 3 storey. The Merengue has 544 rooms and have air conditioning plus a ceiling fan. Our room had two 4ft double beds pushed together and an en-suite bathroom. There was ample storage space and a free safety deposit box. The mini bar is restocked every 2 days and contained beer, pepsi, diet pepsi, soda, tonic water, drinking water, gin, vodka, brandy and rum. The patio had 2 plastic chairs and a small table.
Although you will see people using mobile phones, you will not be able to get a Vodafone signal at this hotel. There is internet access available but I did not bother and do not know the cost.
This is an all-inclusive resort and the food is a self service buffet affair. Take as little or as much as you want. Food is available from 07.00 until 02.00 from various locations. There is food to suit everyone but it did not excite me like the food does in Tunisia and Turkey. I thought the bread was poor quality with very little choice. I did not like the baked beans, tomatoes and the wine was foul. The beer, cocktails and rum was OK. The potatoes, fresh fruit, milk shakes and coffee were gorgeous.
The entertainment was poor with lots of mime and dance. It was very happy clappy, all "come on, come on, yep, yep." with long winded silly games. It would have been better if they had booked amateur talent on a free appearance basis where the artists could put on their show and sell their product to the tourists afterwards. What is the point of watching dancers mime to the big names of entertainment?
The hotels are set in lovely gardens, there is no traffic. The paths are good with adequate lighting. There are plenty of fire hoses and water points. The gardens are well maintained and all the buildings are in good order. I have no health and safety concerns at this resort. There are some shops within the resort selling anything you could want. There is their own little high street named Caribbean Street but prices are high. We forgot to pack some shower gel and paid a staggering £6 for a bottle! At either end of the beach there are some huts selling tourist gifts but the goods are not priced. The traders are locals and are not employed by the hotels. Products are available by engaging in barter but I considered them to be greedy and bought nothing. The feel of the resort is one of enclosure, you could be anywhere. The resort looks out onto the Atlantic Ocean and all you can see is water, no signs of civilisation. There are no houses or locals, just holidaymakers and staff in this unreal world of it's own. This does not feel as though you have gone to a foreign country, more a huge coporate leisure factory, the land of Riu. The weather is hot with top temperatures around 30C which only drops to 25C at night.
On the Monday morning we had a welcome meeting with Thonny, the First Choice representative. The excurisions on offer were priced in US dollars...
Outback Safari 74
Punta Rusia sandbank coral reef 81
Water Rafting 81
Dolphins 100 with swimming 145
Deep sea fishing 159
Fly to Saona Island 239
Catamaran trip 71 and 84
Coastal ride and Puerto Plata 36
Comedy night 25
Helicopter 69 and 194
Santo Domingo 69
We exchanged our money in the UK before we left and got a rate of 1.7220 US dollars to the Pound. Most people recommend that you take US dollars with you to the Dominican Republic and exchange what little you need into Dominican Peso's when you are there. The hotel reception will exchange money for you and we got a rate of 35.51 Peso's to the US dollar. Ball park figures worked out at 1 dollar equals 60p and 50 peso's for a UK pound.
The only trip we were interested in as a couple was the trip to Santo Domingo , which is the capital of the Dominican Republic. This trip only operates on a Wednesday, so we booked it for the first Wednesday of our holiday. We enjoyed the rest of Monday and Tuesday morning and afternoon in our new prison camp. Common advice is not to walk out of the complex on your own, which I had agreed with my wife to abide by. I had Wednesday to look forward to when I would be allowed out of this luxury prison for a supervised day release under escort on a three and a half hour coach ride to the capital. I was gutted when we went back to our room at about 18.30 to find a card pushed under the door telling me that the trip had been cancelled but would run the following Wednesday. I now had to contend with life in this luxury prison. I could walk along the beach which takes 25 minutes from end to end and stroll through the gardens past the cell blocks giving an hour circular walk.
Most of our time was spent by the swimming pool of the Bachata on a sunbed. Pool and beach towels are provided free of charge and all the swimming pools are 1.4m deep. We had 13 days of sunbathing, swimming and a lot of reading. What was this strange world I was living in, with no sense of normality or everyday human life, just inmates and wardens? The whole atmosphere was one of just holidaymakers living under a corporate umbrella being serviced by very pleasant and well disciplined staff. My one link to reality was an excellent book I was reading, Pity the Nation - Lebanon at War by Robert Fisk 2001. This covers the conflicts in Lebanon between 1970 and 1996 where Robert Fisk lives as the Middle East correspondent for The Independent. His life as a reporter living and working out of Beirut makes an exciting and adventurous read. Life is fast and dangerous on the front line as he reports on the people, their politics, fears, lives and deaths as the history of the nation unfolds. Life around the Bachata swimming pool is a world away, sterile and relaxed, safe in the land of Riu.
Wednesday 10th May comes and I am well ready for the trip to Santo Domingo. The coach is a 25 seater Toyota midibus with air conditioning. It arrives at our hotel promptly at the advertised time of 06.30 - there are already some tourists onboard from hotels further along the coast to the east. It is wonderful to be out of our luxury prison and back into the real world. A main road busy with traffic, locals crowding onto buses going to work, people walking. Driving through the countryside with many hovels lining the road, not luxury apartments but ramshackle homes like garden sheds. Our guide issues everyone with a brown paper bag. This is breakfast, a small sandwich, an apple, a fruit juice and a bottle of water. The morning peak period arrives as we go through Santiago, a busy city with all the hustle and bustle you would expect from any modern city. Traffic lights and stop start, people going about with a purpose. We drive out of the city of Santiago and along the main dual carriageway towards Santo Domingo. We stop at a roadside services for 20 minutes and watch the world go by.
It is a three and a half hour drive across the backbone of the country and you feel you are going somewhere, not just around the corner. We arrive at Santo Domingo with our coach dropping us off near the Cathedral. Santo Domingo is the oldest city in the New World, where the settlement of all the Americas began.
We browsed in a large gift store where we bought 2 bottles of rum for £6 before our tour of Cathedral Basilica Santa Maria la Menor, pronounced the first cathedral in the New World by Pope Paul III in 1542.
After this we looked through the archway of the Ozama Fortress, the oldest fortress in the Americas. Then it was a walk into the French Panteón Nacional which is a mausoleum. From there we continued in the midday heat which was too much for my wife, so she sat on some steps whilst I had a tour around the Museo de las Casas Reales (Museum of the Royal Houses), the restored 16th century palace of the Spanish Court, which features a wonderful glimpse of the past. We then got back onto our coach and drove to the Columbus Lighthouse, an impressive structure in the shape of a cross which was constructed to mark the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas in 1492. It cost an awful lot of money to construct and our guide thought the money was wasted and should have been spent elsewhere. From there we went along to Los Tres Ojos where our guide warned my wife she would have to climb down 59 steps - she decided to pass on this attraction and stayed on the coach. Yes, there were 59 steps going down but that was only the beginning before you went down more steps and along pathways to see an impressive 50-foot deep cave with three lagoons surrounded by stalagmites and lush vegetation.
We then went in the coach around the city to a restaurant where we had a self service buffet lunch that was included in our ticket price. The atmosphere was jolly and very Dominican with dances, costumes and kitchen smells. The decor was basic, like a builders yard with tables and chairs.
The trip back to our hotel was the reverse of the forward journey. Santo Domingo was very busy, with gridlock in places. At traffic lights street sellers were hawking Orange mobile phone top up cards, not like raffle tickets but from a posh perspex dispenser, like that used for National Lottery tickets in the UK. There were also lots of fruit stalls on the kerbsides. Santiago was also busy and gridlocked in places, not helped by a flyover being closed and a torrential downpour. This rain caused a bit of flash flooding and I could see why the top of the air intake on our Toyota midibus was level with the nearside mirror! I have never seen so many small, lightweight Japanese motorcycles, some of them used as taxis. Also I have never seen so many fat bottomed women wobbling along. The population is 71% mixed race and our guide was proud of the mixture of ethnic backgrounds in his country.
There is a contrast on this three and a half hour drive. Driving standards are poor with bad lane discipline and many drivers crossing the double unbroken centre carriageway lines. Some areas look relatively wealthy and urban but others look very poor, run down, rather backward and rural. My wife noticed how in the poorer rural areas where people lived in tatty shacks, all the washing that was hung out to dry looked fresh, new and sparkling clean.
We arrived back at our hotel at 18.30 after a 12 hour excursion into the real world. The hotel now appeared very tame, sterile as though we had left the Dominican Republic.
The rest of our holiday was spent on the hotel complex and was much of the same. Hours spent on a sunbed although I did enjoy the water aerobics session which took place each day a noon. This was a silly time to do it with the heat of the day and the sun bearing right down on you. Very hot and sweaty but worth doing all the same. There are plenty of activities put on around the pools and along the beach but the games are rather long winded. I bought a Miami Herald for 50 peso's which was worth a read rather than pay big money for an English newspaper.
I cannot fault this hotel or First Choice. The hotel is well run, professional, with good staff. You do not have to speak any Spanish as all the staff speak English and all signage is bi-lingual. Whenever you come out of a toilet there is a woman who squirts a liquid anti-bacterial hand wash onto your palm. This routine also takes place at the entrance to the buffet restaurants. I do not know how much this has added to their wage bill but the management obviously does not want a repeat of past food hygiene problems. I did not suffer from any holiday tummy.
Our coach was due to pick us up at 14.30 and you had to check out of your room by 13.00 - a nice time. We exchanged our last peso's with the First Choice representative at the rate of 34.78 to the US dollar which was good. We had our final buffet meal and a drink before our coach arrived on time. Looking out of the window we saw the outside world that we had not lived in, passing the poverty we had been shielded from. It did not feel as though we had been to a foreign country, more a visit to a theme park. We had a good holiday but if all you want is a sunbed, a pool and lots of sun then there are cheaper countries and resorts to go to. Friends claim that once you have been to the Caribbean that you will not want to holiday anywhere else. They also claim that all the little extras mean a lot and are worth the extra cost. I did not think that the little extras are worth the extra and I can do without them. I am not impressed by a room maid folding towels into shapes or the restaurant staff making sculptures out of fruit.
The airport is efficient with the usual facilities. Again the flight check-in time is 3 hours before departure. You have to pay a departure tax to an official of US$20 per person. The flight home was OK and a good dinner was provided, followed by a light breakfast before landing.
I enjoyed the holiday, it was different but I will not ask to go again.
Gracias.
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Bodrum, Turkey, October 2005.
My wife and I went to the TMT Aegean Holiday Village in Bodrum, Turkey from the 10th October to the 24th October 2005. We booked our holiday through Thomas Cook and paid £488 each for this All Inclusive holiday. We flew from Cardiff Wales Airport were we had booked parking in advance over the internet for £44.25 which was a saving of £24.75 on the turn up at the gate price of £69.00. The chartered airline was Pegasus , which is a Turkish airline. I had no problem with the plane , a Boeing 737, seat room was OK and the staff were pleasant. It was nice to be going on holiday with a foreign crew as you felt you were on your way as soon as you boarded the aircraft. There is no inflight television which I feel is a bonus - you are going on holiday and are not a hen in a battery farm - yes, you can think for yourself and enjoy your reading matter. The airline food was above average and you had free soft drinks, a true cost saving bonus. Our flight left Cardiff at 10.30 and takes 4 hours to Bodrum. All passengers entering Turkey have to buy a visa at £10 per person at passport control, valid for 3 months.
The transfer to our hotel took about an hour, dropping off at other hotels, whilst we were reacquainting ourselves with the local geography. Our hotel is situated 1.5 miles to the east of Bodrum town centre on the way to the district of Icmeler, not to be confused with the resort of Icmeler which is near Marmaris. The TMT Aegean Holiday Village is a site consisting of 175 rooms plus 34 villas done in a 2 storey garden centre style. The hotel is clean enough by most peoples' standards. Our room was basic, twin beds, an en suite bathroom with a shower over the bath, small wardrobe, couple of cupboards, safety deposit box, television and a small patio with 2 plastic garden chairs. You pay for the safety deposit box at reception at the rate of £1.50 a day. The television service is disappointing if you cannot speak foreign languages as the only English language channel is BBC World - which is tame and only useful if you want to know world news.
First impressions of the hotel is the sheer size of the swimming pool. At a guess I would think it is some 50 metres long and about 25 metres at it's widest. There is a narrow section to swim through but you do not suffer from the usual boredom encountered with hotel swimming pools. There were free beach/pool towels available which is a convenient bonus not available at all hotels. At the front of the hotel across the road is a large hill and at the back beyond the pool is the beach down a few steps.
There is a self service restaurant with half the seating indoors and the other half outdoors on a sheltered terrace. Breakfast is served from 07.30 to 10.00, lunch from 12.30 to 14.30 and evening meal from 19.00 to 21.30. I liked the food, it was to my taste although my wife, with more traditional British tastes, was not so keen. Breakfast was the usual continental experience, plenty of salads, breads, cereals and yogurts. There was always boiled eggs plus a chef outside on the terrace who would do something eggy each day. One day it would be fried eggs but another it would be an omelette - always a daily variation. Lunch and the evening meals were always the same, 1 soup to choose from - take it or leave it, salad counter, hot food counter with 2 different meats, always some chips plus another potato option, vegetables and outside on the terrace the chefs would do a barbeque and/or stir fry. There was a big range of puddings but no cream or custard. Fresh fruit was always available and a waiter would fetch drinks to your table. Over 14 days most guests would become bored with the food, I went off the soups but that is to be expected with all-inclusive buffet restaurant holidays. One niggling gripe that I shared with the other guests was the frustration with the butter. It was good, tasty butter but frozen. It was in a bowl full of ice cubes and was an nuisance to try and spread without your bread breaking into crumbs.
Ice cream cornets were served 3 times every day on the terrace, 11.00 to 12.00, 15.00 to 16.00 and 21.30 to 22.30 - and cakes with biscuits every day 17.00 to 18.00 The snack bar up the steps from the beach served pizza and chips from 10.00 to 18.30 and for the late munchers you could fall back on soup on the terrace from 23.00 to 23.30
Alcohol was available from 10.00 to 23.59 serving locally produced beer, wine and spirits. The beer was Tuborg which is OK, drinkable but no where near as good as the other Turkish beer Efes. Beer was served with a large head into 330ml glasses, so you were effectively drinking half pints - plenty of walking to and from the bar.
The staff were jolly but were not provided with uniforms. They were encouraged to wear black trousers and a white shirt but on an evening the temperature would drop and they would wear a selection of pullovers that made them appear to be a bunch of refugees. Corporate image no, charity shop yes. It was hot during the day, you needed to use sun cream but you needed a fleece on a evening as the main seating area was outdoors.
In most Muslim countries holiday makers are very often awoken at dawn by the call to prayer from the local mosque. Not here but at 07.30 plus or minus 5 minutes every morning I was awoken by a refuse lorry with the roar of it's compactor droning into our room. Sound insulation in our accommodation block was poor. We always knew when our friends in the next room put on their wall mounted air conditioner/heater - buzz! You were also aware of people walking upstairs and in the corridor.
There was an animation team responsible for entertainment. They spoke in English, Dutch and German but the shows they put on each night at 21.45 were poor. It was best to simply ignore the entertainment and gossip with other holiday guests. The disk jockey was OK which added nicely to the atmosphere. Do not bother buying any raffle tickets from the Animation Team as the prizes are not worth the gamble. Any guests buying them on their first week did not repeat their mistake on the second week.
The hotel reception is manned 24 hours and speak good English. We exchanged some money at reception and were given a rate of 2.28 YTL for the pound which is fair. We were given 2.30 YTL for the pound back in the UK before we left and exchange shops in Bodrum were advertising from 2.27 to 2.33 as the rate changes daily. There is a taxi rank at the end of hotel drive on the main road along which a high frequency - maybe every 10 minutes - dolmus local bus service runs into the centre of Bodrum. To walk into the centre of Bodrum from the hotel takes about 30 minutes whether you walk along the road or the beach.
I went for a walk one day by turning right out of the hotel onto the road and walking east towards the district of Icmeler. After about 40 minutes I walked past a big hotel called Club Ersan and after about another 10 minutes the road ended at a boat yard and the shoreline. There is nothing to really recommend this walk as there is just boat yards, engineering sheds and 3 hotels to walk past.
Walking left and west out of the hotel along the road is much better. There are lots of other hotels, a closed out of season water park and lots of little shops. The shops get bigger and better the closer you get to the centre of Bodrum with pubs and restaurants to choose from whose menus suggest similar prices to the UK although alcohol is cheaper.
One morning I walked along the beach from our hotel to the harbour in Bodrum which takes around 30 minutes. I continued west past the posh marina and after another 30 minutes was in Gumbet. Gumbet is like a small Blackpool, very British in character. It does not appear Turkish, more like a Cornish tourist trap. The beach is not very good and shallow. I continued walking west over a hill and after another 60 minutes I was in Bitez. This is a lovely beach resort, a few hotels and restaurants along the beach front. It looks a nice place to stay, relaxed, quiet and civilised not brimming with shops full of cheap holiday goods. I caught the 15 minute frequency dolmus back to Bodrum at a cost of 1.75 YTL. This dolmus takes you from the beach part of Bitez, through the nearby village of Bitez and onto Ortakent before joining the main D330 to Bodrum. Doing the trip this way means you go up and down many hills seeing a lot of variety and get a good perspective of the region.
Another day I got a dolmus from Bodrum station to Kadikalesi on the far western coast of the peninsula. The fare was 3.5 YTL which included the change of dolmus at Gumuluk onto the Turgutreis service. I walked along the beach of this quiet resort, a few hotels and beach bars/restaurants - nothing commercial, an unspoilt resort. You cannot walk all the way along the coast back to Gumusluk because of private land and cliffs. The walk along the road takes about an hour and you get the feeling of being off the usual tourist trail and getting a genuine holiday experience. Gumusluk is an established resort famous for it's fish. There are many restaurants serving fresh fish that has been caught locally and fetched into Gumusluk harbour. There is a lot of history here, it used to be called Myndos whose seafront sections fell into the sea in some long-forgotten earthquake. At low tide you can walk across the causeway onto Rabbit Island, which I did not but saw some women tourists making a right pigs ear of trying to cross without falling over. I caught the dolmus back to Bodrum at a fare of 2.5 YTL which takes about 40 minutes.
On yet another day I took a dolmus from Bodrum station to Gundogan at a fare of 2.5 YTL. Gundogan is a resort on the northern coast of the peninsula that is popular with Turkish holiday makers. Our holiday was at the end of the season and a lot of hotels and restaurants in Gundogan were closing down for winter. It is a nice traditional resort with a lot of new building work going on. From Gundogan I followed the signposts and over a leisurely 2 hour stroll along the road continued west to the resort of Yalikavak. Yalikavak seems to be twice the size of Gundogan and looks to have plenty to see and do if you wanted to spend the day there. There is an enclosed marina and a seafront along with the usual bars and restaurants. There are some shops and a weekly market every Thursday. I caught the dolmus back to Bodrum for a fare of 2.5 YTL which goes straight over the mountain to Ortakent. When you look out of the dolmus from the top of the mountain you realise just how far and high the dolmus has climbed as you look down towards Yalikavak and the bay below. This day out was a wonderful cheap circular trip.
My wife do not like dolmuses, she thinks they are cramped with not enough room for the larger bottom. She will not consider going on one ever since she went one way in 2003 before demanding a taxi for the return trip. She wanted to go on the organised trip on a conventional 12m coach from the Thomas Cook rep. Marriage is a partnership so I agreed to the trip - £9 each to go to Turgutreis for the Saturday market. If we had caught a dolmus from Bodrum station I guess the fare would have been 2.5 YTL each way, about £1.10p. Still, that is what she wanted and what we got was a 1992 bodied Mitsubishi coach. This coach had a guide and we picked up at many hotels around Gumbet before we went to Turgutreis. We were allowed 3 hours and 20 mins to do Turgutreis. There is the infamous market every Saturday which is large, much better than the small one on a Tuesday in Bodrum. The atmosphere of the market is very British, a kind of Gumbet goes to Turgutreis for the day. Traders chant things like "Asda price", "Cheaper than Asda", "Jesus, how much?", "Cheap as chips", "Good price" you get the drift. The traders are happy to take whatever money they can get to close the sale. Turkish Lira, English pounds or Euros, all appear to be accepted. Some stalls were haggle, haggle - barter your price but others simply had a sign with the price in Lira, pounds or euros. I tend to prefer the fixed price stalls and chose one displaying 5 T shirts for £10 - all genuine fakes - and as it was end of season the stall holder was throwing another T shirt in for my £10.
There are many bars and restaurants in Turgutreis to tempt you. My wife and her friend were drawn to one displaying large chunky chips on a table outside. We went in and the menu was rather British, catering for a lot of the British crowd attending the market. The whole feel of the area was orientated towards the British but not as much as it is in Gumbet. I chose a jacket potato with chilli con carne for 8.0 YTL and a large Efes beer for 3.5YTL.
From Turgutreis our coach took us to the Bodrum Gold Centre. Along the main D330 there are some traffic lights. Unlike in the UK when you are unsure when the lights will suddenly turn red or green, here some of the lights have countdown digits. Next to the traffic lights is a display of 2 digits, these are seconds and they count down to zero when the light changes to the other colour and the sequence starts again. What a brilliant idea, no more sudden braking for a red light like in the UK rather than risk a photo opportunity.
Most excursions in Turkey also take you into a carpet, gold or leather shop - no matter where you go. You are a captive audience and you can guarantee you will be taken to one of them. They tend to give you complimentary soft drinks for you time and potential purchases but are not over pushy. We were given 60 minutes at the Bodrum Gold Centre and our guide suggested to simply attend the demonstration, stroll through the showroom and enjoy a soft drink on the patio at the rear of the store. This we happily did and there was no pressure to buy. We then were transferred back to our hotels. With the hotel pick ups, drop offs and the visit to the gold shop this makes a simple trip to the market quite a lengthy one. Some of the other hotel guests simply hired a taxi there and back to save time. I do not think that by sharing a taxi between 4 of them that they paid any more than us.
The other excursions available from the Thomas Cook representative were...
Ephesus £31
Ephesus and Pamukkale £58
Dalyan £25
Village Life £9
Jeep Safari £29
Turkish Bath £9
Millionaires Cruise £20
Exclusive Gulet £30
Pirates Cruise £20
Kos with ferry £14
Kos with hydrofoil £21
Dream Girls Show £18
Turkish Night £20
These excursions you could get cheaper - about two thirds of the price - by using one of the travel shops like Bodex Travel along Ataturk Caddesi - the main road into Bodrum town centre from our hotel.
I enjoy a daily newspaper back at home and on holiday I also like to have one. However you will pay a big premium if you choose to buy your regular UK newspaper abroad so I buy a national newspaper that is written in English in my holiday destination. The New Anatolian is a Turkish newspaper written in English that has only been going since 1st February 2005. It only costs 1.25 YTL and is worth a read as you will understand global and local issues from a Turkish perspective adding to your holiday feel.
I was happy with the hotel help yourself buffet food but my wife and her friends wanted to eat out as a treat and to see if the local food was any better or worse. We had 3 meals out that proved a welcome change of scene.
We took a taxi at a cost of 10 YTL down to the harbour where you are spoilt for choice as to where to eat. We settled on one harbour front restaurant that advertised set priced menus. I had the soup, salad, Turkish Kebap, chips and a large Efes beer for 17 YTL. This was very tasty indeed, the genuine article.
Another night we went to the Marina China Hong Kong further along the harbour in Bodrum. This was in response to an advert in our hotel that offered a free taxi to this Chinese restaurant. As I do not like Chinese food I had the Turkish mixed grill for 25 YTL with a large Efes beer for 3.75 YTL. This was a very good mixed grill and made me feel quite at home.
Following this good experience with a free one way taxi to a Chinese restaurant we responded to another similar advert, this time for the Chinatown restaurant in neighbouring Gumbet. They told the receptionist in our hotel to get a local taxi and they would pay for it when we arrived. This was the same procedure as employed the other night for the Marina China Hong Kong. We pulled up outside a restaurant in Gumbet that offered Chinese food. It was not street level like in the advert but up some stairs to an attractive terrace. The name was the Aloah and the guy on the pavement happily paid for the taxi for us to go into this restaurant. I was not bothered whether this was the advertised restaurant or not. It all looked very nice to me, the atmosphere was being part of the hustle and bustle of Gumbet from this vantage point on a terrace in the middle of the main street. The menu offered a good range of food including Chinese which my wife and her friends were looking for. I chose an Istanbul kebap for 22 YTL and a large Efes beer for 3.0 YTL - this was the best meal I had on the whole holiday. It was lush and authentic, I have never had so much meat on my plate and what gorgeous flavour. When we came to settle our bill and claimed a 15% discount on production of the advert, the waiter informed us that we were not in the advertised restaurant. We all had a good laugh about this and the waiter assured us that the taxi had been paid off. I thoroughly enjoyed my meal and the atmosphere of the restaurant. I do not think it was a scam by the taxi driver, the advert was in English and there are many restaurants advertising Chinese food in the heart of Gumbet. I think it was a genuine mistake by the taxi driver and good business sense by the restaurant worker to grab 4 diners, who otherwise would have not chosen that restaurant, for the price of a taxi fare. We caught another taxi from the local rank back to our hotel for a fare of 17 YTL. In the UK if you want a taxi from a rank then you must take the one at the front of the queue. Due to the larger bottoms of our group we wanted the second taxi on the rank, a Fiat Doblo, as this offered a lot more room. We asked the driver if we could take this Fiat rather than the other, smaller taxi. He did not even raise an eyebrow and simply said "Yes, come", which I doubt would ever happen in the UK.
On our last night at the hotel there was a solo guitarist entertaining on the terrace rather than the Animation Team on the stage. He played a good set of cover numbers, so good that my wife thought it was a CD playing rather than a live artist. His session rounded off our holiday well, I was sat dressed in a fleece jacket outside in the chilling night air. It was time to pack up and be ready to go. I thanked the guitarist for playing a good set knowing that we all would probably not return. The hotel only had another week to run after we left and all the staff knew this. It would be not just the end of the season but the hotel was being sold to another operator and the staff were not being kept on.
We were advised to wait along the main road at 03.15 for our transfer back to the airport. The return transfer and flight that left at 07.00 was similar to the forward journey with the inflight breakfast proving more generous than I expected.
I enjoyed my holiday, it was good value for money. Things change and people move on. Bodrum is a lovely resort to have a holiday and there are many good hotels to choose from. I saw surveyors going around the hotel and know that the new owners will commission some building work. How it will turn out I do not know but I will always have good memories of this hotel, Bodrum and Turkey.
Tesekkur ederim.
My wife and I went to the TMT Aegean Holiday Village in Bodrum, Turkey from the 10th October to the 24th October 2005. We booked our holiday through Thomas Cook and paid £488 each for this All Inclusive holiday. We flew from Cardiff Wales Airport were we had booked parking in advance over the internet for £44.25 which was a saving of £24.75 on the turn up at the gate price of £69.00. The chartered airline was Pegasus , which is a Turkish airline. I had no problem with the plane , a Boeing 737, seat room was OK and the staff were pleasant. It was nice to be going on holiday with a foreign crew as you felt you were on your way as soon as you boarded the aircraft. There is no inflight television which I feel is a bonus - you are going on holiday and are not a hen in a battery farm - yes, you can think for yourself and enjoy your reading matter. The airline food was above average and you had free soft drinks, a true cost saving bonus. Our flight left Cardiff at 10.30 and takes 4 hours to Bodrum. All passengers entering Turkey have to buy a visa at £10 per person at passport control, valid for 3 months.
The transfer to our hotel took about an hour, dropping off at other hotels, whilst we were reacquainting ourselves with the local geography. Our hotel is situated 1.5 miles to the east of Bodrum town centre on the way to the district of Icmeler, not to be confused with the resort of Icmeler which is near Marmaris. The TMT Aegean Holiday Village is a site consisting of 175 rooms plus 34 villas done in a 2 storey garden centre style. The hotel is clean enough by most peoples' standards. Our room was basic, twin beds, an en suite bathroom with a shower over the bath, small wardrobe, couple of cupboards, safety deposit box, television and a small patio with 2 plastic garden chairs. You pay for the safety deposit box at reception at the rate of £1.50 a day. The television service is disappointing if you cannot speak foreign languages as the only English language channel is BBC World - which is tame and only useful if you want to know world news.
First impressions of the hotel is the sheer size of the swimming pool. At a guess I would think it is some 50 metres long and about 25 metres at it's widest. There is a narrow section to swim through but you do not suffer from the usual boredom encountered with hotel swimming pools. There were free beach/pool towels available which is a convenient bonus not available at all hotels. At the front of the hotel across the road is a large hill and at the back beyond the pool is the beach down a few steps.
There is a self service restaurant with half the seating indoors and the other half outdoors on a sheltered terrace. Breakfast is served from 07.30 to 10.00, lunch from 12.30 to 14.30 and evening meal from 19.00 to 21.30. I liked the food, it was to my taste although my wife, with more traditional British tastes, was not so keen. Breakfast was the usual continental experience, plenty of salads, breads, cereals and yogurts. There was always boiled eggs plus a chef outside on the terrace who would do something eggy each day. One day it would be fried eggs but another it would be an omelette - always a daily variation. Lunch and the evening meals were always the same, 1 soup to choose from - take it or leave it, salad counter, hot food counter with 2 different meats, always some chips plus another potato option, vegetables and outside on the terrace the chefs would do a barbeque and/or stir fry. There was a big range of puddings but no cream or custard. Fresh fruit was always available and a waiter would fetch drinks to your table. Over 14 days most guests would become bored with the food, I went off the soups but that is to be expected with all-inclusive buffet restaurant holidays. One niggling gripe that I shared with the other guests was the frustration with the butter. It was good, tasty butter but frozen. It was in a bowl full of ice cubes and was an nuisance to try and spread without your bread breaking into crumbs.
Ice cream cornets were served 3 times every day on the terrace, 11.00 to 12.00, 15.00 to 16.00 and 21.30 to 22.30 - and cakes with biscuits every day 17.00 to 18.00 The snack bar up the steps from the beach served pizza and chips from 10.00 to 18.30 and for the late munchers you could fall back on soup on the terrace from 23.00 to 23.30
Alcohol was available from 10.00 to 23.59 serving locally produced beer, wine and spirits. The beer was Tuborg which is OK, drinkable but no where near as good as the other Turkish beer Efes. Beer was served with a large head into 330ml glasses, so you were effectively drinking half pints - plenty of walking to and from the bar.
The staff were jolly but were not provided with uniforms. They were encouraged to wear black trousers and a white shirt but on an evening the temperature would drop and they would wear a selection of pullovers that made them appear to be a bunch of refugees. Corporate image no, charity shop yes. It was hot during the day, you needed to use sun cream but you needed a fleece on a evening as the main seating area was outdoors.
In most Muslim countries holiday makers are very often awoken at dawn by the call to prayer from the local mosque. Not here but at 07.30 plus or minus 5 minutes every morning I was awoken by a refuse lorry with the roar of it's compactor droning into our room. Sound insulation in our accommodation block was poor. We always knew when our friends in the next room put on their wall mounted air conditioner/heater - buzz! You were also aware of people walking upstairs and in the corridor.
There was an animation team responsible for entertainment. They spoke in English, Dutch and German but the shows they put on each night at 21.45 were poor. It was best to simply ignore the entertainment and gossip with other holiday guests. The disk jockey was OK which added nicely to the atmosphere. Do not bother buying any raffle tickets from the Animation Team as the prizes are not worth the gamble. Any guests buying them on their first week did not repeat their mistake on the second week.
The hotel reception is manned 24 hours and speak good English. We exchanged some money at reception and were given a rate of 2.28 YTL for the pound which is fair. We were given 2.30 YTL for the pound back in the UK before we left and exchange shops in Bodrum were advertising from 2.27 to 2.33 as the rate changes daily. There is a taxi rank at the end of hotel drive on the main road along which a high frequency - maybe every 10 minutes - dolmus local bus service runs into the centre of Bodrum. To walk into the centre of Bodrum from the hotel takes about 30 minutes whether you walk along the road or the beach.
I went for a walk one day by turning right out of the hotel onto the road and walking east towards the district of Icmeler. After about 40 minutes I walked past a big hotel called Club Ersan and after about another 10 minutes the road ended at a boat yard and the shoreline. There is nothing to really recommend this walk as there is just boat yards, engineering sheds and 3 hotels to walk past.
Walking left and west out of the hotel along the road is much better. There are lots of other hotels, a closed out of season water park and lots of little shops. The shops get bigger and better the closer you get to the centre of Bodrum with pubs and restaurants to choose from whose menus suggest similar prices to the UK although alcohol is cheaper.
One morning I walked along the beach from our hotel to the harbour in Bodrum which takes around 30 minutes. I continued west past the posh marina and after another 30 minutes was in Gumbet. Gumbet is like a small Blackpool, very British in character. It does not appear Turkish, more like a Cornish tourist trap. The beach is not very good and shallow. I continued walking west over a hill and after another 60 minutes I was in Bitez. This is a lovely beach resort, a few hotels and restaurants along the beach front. It looks a nice place to stay, relaxed, quiet and civilised not brimming with shops full of cheap holiday goods. I caught the 15 minute frequency dolmus back to Bodrum at a cost of 1.75 YTL. This dolmus takes you from the beach part of Bitez, through the nearby village of Bitez and onto Ortakent before joining the main D330 to Bodrum. Doing the trip this way means you go up and down many hills seeing a lot of variety and get a good perspective of the region.
Another day I got a dolmus from Bodrum station to Kadikalesi on the far western coast of the peninsula. The fare was 3.5 YTL which included the change of dolmus at Gumuluk onto the Turgutreis service. I walked along the beach of this quiet resort, a few hotels and beach bars/restaurants - nothing commercial, an unspoilt resort. You cannot walk all the way along the coast back to Gumusluk because of private land and cliffs. The walk along the road takes about an hour and you get the feeling of being off the usual tourist trail and getting a genuine holiday experience. Gumusluk is an established resort famous for it's fish. There are many restaurants serving fresh fish that has been caught locally and fetched into Gumusluk harbour. There is a lot of history here, it used to be called Myndos whose seafront sections fell into the sea in some long-forgotten earthquake. At low tide you can walk across the causeway onto Rabbit Island, which I did not but saw some women tourists making a right pigs ear of trying to cross without falling over. I caught the dolmus back to Bodrum at a fare of 2.5 YTL which takes about 40 minutes.
On yet another day I took a dolmus from Bodrum station to Gundogan at a fare of 2.5 YTL. Gundogan is a resort on the northern coast of the peninsula that is popular with Turkish holiday makers. Our holiday was at the end of the season and a lot of hotels and restaurants in Gundogan were closing down for winter. It is a nice traditional resort with a lot of new building work going on. From Gundogan I followed the signposts and over a leisurely 2 hour stroll along the road continued west to the resort of Yalikavak. Yalikavak seems to be twice the size of Gundogan and looks to have plenty to see and do if you wanted to spend the day there. There is an enclosed marina and a seafront along with the usual bars and restaurants. There are some shops and a weekly market every Thursday. I caught the dolmus back to Bodrum for a fare of 2.5 YTL which goes straight over the mountain to Ortakent. When you look out of the dolmus from the top of the mountain you realise just how far and high the dolmus has climbed as you look down towards Yalikavak and the bay below. This day out was a wonderful cheap circular trip.
My wife do not like dolmuses, she thinks they are cramped with not enough room for the larger bottom. She will not consider going on one ever since she went one way in 2003 before demanding a taxi for the return trip. She wanted to go on the organised trip on a conventional 12m coach from the Thomas Cook rep. Marriage is a partnership so I agreed to the trip - £9 each to go to Turgutreis for the Saturday market. If we had caught a dolmus from Bodrum station I guess the fare would have been 2.5 YTL each way, about £1.10p. Still, that is what she wanted and what we got was a 1992 bodied Mitsubishi coach. This coach had a guide and we picked up at many hotels around Gumbet before we went to Turgutreis. We were allowed 3 hours and 20 mins to do Turgutreis. There is the infamous market every Saturday which is large, much better than the small one on a Tuesday in Bodrum. The atmosphere of the market is very British, a kind of Gumbet goes to Turgutreis for the day. Traders chant things like "Asda price", "Cheaper than Asda", "Jesus, how much?", "Cheap as chips", "Good price" you get the drift. The traders are happy to take whatever money they can get to close the sale. Turkish Lira, English pounds or Euros, all appear to be accepted. Some stalls were haggle, haggle - barter your price but others simply had a sign with the price in Lira, pounds or euros. I tend to prefer the fixed price stalls and chose one displaying 5 T shirts for £10 - all genuine fakes - and as it was end of season the stall holder was throwing another T shirt in for my £10.
There are many bars and restaurants in Turgutreis to tempt you. My wife and her friend were drawn to one displaying large chunky chips on a table outside. We went in and the menu was rather British, catering for a lot of the British crowd attending the market. The whole feel of the area was orientated towards the British but not as much as it is in Gumbet. I chose a jacket potato with chilli con carne for 8.0 YTL and a large Efes beer for 3.5YTL.
From Turgutreis our coach took us to the Bodrum Gold Centre. Along the main D330 there are some traffic lights. Unlike in the UK when you are unsure when the lights will suddenly turn red or green, here some of the lights have countdown digits. Next to the traffic lights is a display of 2 digits, these are seconds and they count down to zero when the light changes to the other colour and the sequence starts again. What a brilliant idea, no more sudden braking for a red light like in the UK rather than risk a photo opportunity.
Most excursions in Turkey also take you into a carpet, gold or leather shop - no matter where you go. You are a captive audience and you can guarantee you will be taken to one of them. They tend to give you complimentary soft drinks for you time and potential purchases but are not over pushy. We were given 60 minutes at the Bodrum Gold Centre and our guide suggested to simply attend the demonstration, stroll through the showroom and enjoy a soft drink on the patio at the rear of the store. This we happily did and there was no pressure to buy. We then were transferred back to our hotels. With the hotel pick ups, drop offs and the visit to the gold shop this makes a simple trip to the market quite a lengthy one. Some of the other hotel guests simply hired a taxi there and back to save time. I do not think that by sharing a taxi between 4 of them that they paid any more than us.
The other excursions available from the Thomas Cook representative were...
Ephesus £31
Ephesus and Pamukkale £58
Dalyan £25
Village Life £9
Jeep Safari £29
Turkish Bath £9
Millionaires Cruise £20
Exclusive Gulet £30
Pirates Cruise £20
Kos with ferry £14
Kos with hydrofoil £21
Dream Girls Show £18
Turkish Night £20
These excursions you could get cheaper - about two thirds of the price - by using one of the travel shops like Bodex Travel along Ataturk Caddesi - the main road into Bodrum town centre from our hotel.
I enjoy a daily newspaper back at home and on holiday I also like to have one. However you will pay a big premium if you choose to buy your regular UK newspaper abroad so I buy a national newspaper that is written in English in my holiday destination. The New Anatolian is a Turkish newspaper written in English that has only been going since 1st February 2005. It only costs 1.25 YTL and is worth a read as you will understand global and local issues from a Turkish perspective adding to your holiday feel.
I was happy with the hotel help yourself buffet food but my wife and her friends wanted to eat out as a treat and to see if the local food was any better or worse. We had 3 meals out that proved a welcome change of scene.
We took a taxi at a cost of 10 YTL down to the harbour where you are spoilt for choice as to where to eat. We settled on one harbour front restaurant that advertised set priced menus. I had the soup, salad, Turkish Kebap, chips and a large Efes beer for 17 YTL. This was very tasty indeed, the genuine article.
Another night we went to the Marina China Hong Kong further along the harbour in Bodrum. This was in response to an advert in our hotel that offered a free taxi to this Chinese restaurant. As I do not like Chinese food I had the Turkish mixed grill for 25 YTL with a large Efes beer for 3.75 YTL. This was a very good mixed grill and made me feel quite at home.
Following this good experience with a free one way taxi to a Chinese restaurant we responded to another similar advert, this time for the Chinatown restaurant in neighbouring Gumbet. They told the receptionist in our hotel to get a local taxi and they would pay for it when we arrived. This was the same procedure as employed the other night for the Marina China Hong Kong. We pulled up outside a restaurant in Gumbet that offered Chinese food. It was not street level like in the advert but up some stairs to an attractive terrace. The name was the Aloah and the guy on the pavement happily paid for the taxi for us to go into this restaurant. I was not bothered whether this was the advertised restaurant or not. It all looked very nice to me, the atmosphere was being part of the hustle and bustle of Gumbet from this vantage point on a terrace in the middle of the main street. The menu offered a good range of food including Chinese which my wife and her friends were looking for. I chose an Istanbul kebap for 22 YTL and a large Efes beer for 3.0 YTL - this was the best meal I had on the whole holiday. It was lush and authentic, I have never had so much meat on my plate and what gorgeous flavour. When we came to settle our bill and claimed a 15% discount on production of the advert, the waiter informed us that we were not in the advertised restaurant. We all had a good laugh about this and the waiter assured us that the taxi had been paid off. I thoroughly enjoyed my meal and the atmosphere of the restaurant. I do not think it was a scam by the taxi driver, the advert was in English and there are many restaurants advertising Chinese food in the heart of Gumbet. I think it was a genuine mistake by the taxi driver and good business sense by the restaurant worker to grab 4 diners, who otherwise would have not chosen that restaurant, for the price of a taxi fare. We caught another taxi from the local rank back to our hotel for a fare of 17 YTL. In the UK if you want a taxi from a rank then you must take the one at the front of the queue. Due to the larger bottoms of our group we wanted the second taxi on the rank, a Fiat Doblo, as this offered a lot more room. We asked the driver if we could take this Fiat rather than the other, smaller taxi. He did not even raise an eyebrow and simply said "Yes, come", which I doubt would ever happen in the UK.
On our last night at the hotel there was a solo guitarist entertaining on the terrace rather than the Animation Team on the stage. He played a good set of cover numbers, so good that my wife thought it was a CD playing rather than a live artist. His session rounded off our holiday well, I was sat dressed in a fleece jacket outside in the chilling night air. It was time to pack up and be ready to go. I thanked the guitarist for playing a good set knowing that we all would probably not return. The hotel only had another week to run after we left and all the staff knew this. It would be not just the end of the season but the hotel was being sold to another operator and the staff were not being kept on.
We were advised to wait along the main road at 03.15 for our transfer back to the airport. The return transfer and flight that left at 07.00 was similar to the forward journey with the inflight breakfast proving more generous than I expected.
I enjoyed my holiday, it was good value for money. Things change and people move on. Bodrum is a lovely resort to have a holiday and there are many good hotels to choose from. I saw surveyors going around the hotel and know that the new owners will commission some building work. How it will turn out I do not know but I will always have good memories of this hotel, Bodrum and Turkey.
Tesekkur ederim.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Port El Kantaoui, Tunisia. May 2005.
My wife and I paid £568 each to First Choice for a 14 night All Inclusive holiday at the Abou Sofiane hotel in Port El Kantaoui, Tunisia . We paid a little bit extra to have premium seats with extra legroom on the flight which also gave us an extra 10 kg of luggage allowance each plus a free drink and ear phones on the plane. We flew out from Bristol Airport at 07.00 on Sunday 15th May 2005 after parking our car at the airport for £49, having booked in advance over the
internet.
The coach transfer from the airport to our hotel in Tunisia took around 50 minutes. You see the outsides of the other hotels that holiday makers are staying at. Your first impression is that the further north from the airport you travel, the better it looks. The buildings look more impressive and the whole environment more affluent. After driving through the busy city of Sousse you arrive at Port El Kantaoui when you start to get a good feeling about where you have come.
On arrival at the Abou Sofiane hotel you are asked to sit down in the lounge and fill in a registration form. No sooner are you putting pen to paper when a waiter appears and gives you a glass of the hotel Abou Sofiane cocktail to drink. You are given the key to your room and details of the facilites available by staff who all speak English as well as French, German and their native Arabic. This hotel has 370 rooms on 3 floors with 2 lifts for the lazy and obese. We made our way to our room on the 3rd floor, which had a balcony looking over the gardens below and had a tiled floor and plenty of storage space. Like most holiday hotels it had 2 twin beds which were comfortable and supportive that were pushed together and sheeted separately. It was then time to drop our suitcases and go straight to lunch.
The food at the hotel is glorious. The choice is amazing - and with all-inclusive you simply help
yourself to as much as you want from the self service buffet style Le Doyen restaurant. Foods were labeled in English, French and German. There was something for everyone. Tunisia has not got a frozen food supply chain like in the UK where our food travels in refridgerated lorries all around the country. This is not the pub food fayre in the UK that comes in microwaveable boxes or freezer to fryer food. This is fresh local produce that is cooked in the kitchen at the back of the restaurant. I did not hear of any upset stomachs while I was there. Food hygiene
appeared to be good and all the food counters were worked thoroughly. Nothing looked abandoned or dodgey. You sit wherever you like, first come first served. Non smoking on the left and smoking on the right. The smokers on the right did not bother the non smokers on the left or the food serving areas.
Breakfast is served from 06.30 to 10.30 and there are 4 fruit juices, 2 cheeses, salads, cereals, yogurt, fruits, hot food stuffs, bread, rolls, croissants and pancakes. For an omlette you put the ingredients on your plate and pass it to the chef on the hot plate who also does the fried eggs.
Lunch is served from 12.30 to 14.30 and there are 2 soups, meats, fish, vegetables, salads followed by 3 ice creams and various cakes and puddings. There are the usual soft drinks plus beer and wine to drink with your meal.
Dinner was served from 18.30 to 21.30 and was similar to lunch but the 2 soups were always different.
You are given two meal tickets to use in the a la carte restaurants. The Tunisian in the Abou Sofiane and the Italian in the Riviera hotel next door. Both restaurants have 2 sittings, 18.30 and 20.30
The Tunisian is nice with a guy in the corner playing a mandolin. You are shown to a table and chose from a menu. Your waiter brings you the food and drink. The food is similar to the self service restaurant but feels special and different because you are being waitered upon.
The Italian is nice, bright and airy giving a nice change to the serve yourself restaurant being served at a table.
Both restaurants reinforce the beauty of having all-inclusive rather than having to battle daily with menus in restaurants gambling on what you will get for your money.
The main bar in the reception area was called La Source and was open from 10.00 to 23.59 serving soft and alcoholic drinks. They have a range of coctails to choose from and use locally produced spirits. The red wine is very drinkable and the native Tunisian spirit called boukha, which is distilled from figs, is a refreshing change to familar spirits. There is only one beer brewed in Tunisia and it is called Celtia. It is brewed in the capital Tunis and is 4.5% ABV. It is
drinkable and a typical continental syle lager but if it was available in UK supermarkets you would not go out of your way to buy it. It is served in heavy 300ml glasses. Some holiday makers thought the beer was weak or watered down - I did not think it was either but that drinkers psychologically thought they were drinking pints - 568ml, rather than the actual 300ml which is a little over a half pint. If you are drinking halves then it will take twice as many
glasses to get drunk.
There is a bar by the swimming pool called Le Village which serves soft and alcoholic drinks from 10.00 to 16.59 and help yourself food from 12.00 to 15.59 which is great for pool lovers who do not wish to get dressed for lunch. It does seem rather naughty dressed only in a pair of swimming trunks sat at a table in the snack bar or outside under the canopy by the pool eating your dinner. This snack bar is also open forfood for the late night crowd if they get an attack of the munchies from 23.30 to 00.59 - too latefor my appetite but others enjoyed it.
There is also a beach bar called the coco-loco which is open for the same times as the pool bar and offers exactly the same - with the exception of no alcoholic spirits, only beer.
The service in all the bars is prompt, efficent, friendly and polite. All the staff switch seamlessly
from speaking English to French and German. All the staff wear a uniform with a photo ID name badge. There is a big range of uniforms for different job grades with the managers wearing grey suits. Staff discipline is strict, you will hear managers barking at their staff - you will wonder why they are making a fuss but standards are high and managers ensure there is not a slippage of quality. Every Monday at 14.15 around the pool is the managers cocktail party. All the managers are there, they each are introduced over the PA and then have to serve cocktails and food off a tray by walking around the pool to all the sunbathers. They are reduced to humble waiters before finally having to line up like school children to do the hotel dance to the pee pee song with the Animation team. Can you imagine this at your workplace back in the UK?
The swimming pool goes from 0.48m to 1.74m deep and at a guess appears to be about 25m long and 12m wide.
There are some lovely gardens within the hotel which are home to a lot of cats who are fed and looked after by the hotel. This feline presence gives the hotel a nice homely feel.
There is a range of facilities at the hotel for the guests to use including an indoor pool, gym, sauna, mini golf, volley ball, archery, tennis, a games room with arcade machines and a hairdresser.
The cashier is open from 09.00 to 12.59 and 17.00 to 20.59 and he will exchange your money into Tunisian Dinars. The government sets the exchange rate on a daily basis and it is the same rate wherever you go in the whole country, so there is no point in going anywhere else. We had an exchange rate of 2.306TD to the pound. The only place that you can change your Tunisian Dinars back into Sterling is at the airport. Try not to change any more currency than you need
because the airport exchange desk will charge you 30% commission and Tunisia is a closed economy, you cannot take any Dinars out of the country as it will be confiscated at Passport Control. The hotel cashier can also give you use to a safety deposit box in your room, which cost us 35TD plus a 20TD refundable deposit. You can also have the use of hotel beach towels rather than use your own by buying a card for 5TD for the whole of your stay.
There are also 3 little shops within the hotel to keep the women happy.
The Animation team is responsible for all the entertainment and organised activities. The
entertainment is just OK - these guys try hard and are at it all day, saying everything in 3 languages. There are a number of different set dances that they like the holidaymakers to adopt and the style is very happy clappy. They play lots of silly games around the pool and every night at 21.30 they put on a show in the aircraft hanger. The night show is for 2 hotels, the Abou Sofiane and it's sister hotel next door, the Riviera. You sit on platic garden chairs and before the entertainment starts it has the atmosphere of a car auction. You get your drinks in plastic glasses from the Riviera pool bar. The music starts and it is lots of mime and dance. The Animation team are all good dancers and take on many identities and costumes. There is a lot of humour, mostly expressed through mime due to the 3 languages constraint. The entertainment will amuse you, it is not brilliant and most people take the view that they will wander in if they are not engrossed gossiping in the main bar. It stimulates discussion later amongst the guests in the bar. Do not bother going out of the hotel at night looking for entertainment as almost all the
entertainment is within the hotels.
The hotel is clean and appears to be in good structural and decorative order. Walking around the hotel grounds you notice a lot of security guards patrolling around and you are sure that only the hotel guests are inside the hotel complex. This adds to the feeling of comfort, relaxation and security in a foreign land that is much appreciated by female guests.
Outside of the hotel there were taxis. yellow in colour and cheap, the Marina in Port El Kantaoui for 3TD and Sousse for 6TD. There is a tourist noddy train that runs from the hotels into Port El Kantaoui and onto Sousse that is a novelty. The service buses used by the local people are in fact articulated bendi-buses but as with the louages - community taxis, like 8 seater MPV's operating on fixed routes - the destinations are only displayed in Arabic script, not French. This is odd, as all other signs, road or business are in Arabic script and French. The centre of Port El Kantaoui is just a 20 minute walk from the hotel whether you walk along the beach or along the
road. If you walk along the road then the Marina is hidden through an arch, you would not know that the sea and the Marina are beyond the arch, which is confusing to newcomers including me!
The resort of Port El Kantaoui is civilised, clean and purpose built in 1979 - no local people live here. It has a French style to it, which is not that surprising as Tunisia was a French colony until independance in 1956. This is not Costa Del Blackpool or a typical European town, there are no global chains - you feel as though you have gone away. It is not Ibiza either, there are some cafes and restaurants but no nightclubs or amusement arcades. All the buildings look impressive and are low rise - this is not Birmingham by the Sea. Around the fountains the traders give a
little bit of hassle by encouraging you to come into their shop by offering best price, Asda price, cheap as chips etc. They are into the Arabic culture of haggling on price and can appear pushy. Inside the Marina it is different, more relaxed with fixed price shops where you can browse with ease.
The beach on the right of the hotel runs all the way to the marina. You will see traders walking along the shoreline offering goods for sale. If you are sat on a the beach they will not bother you, they will turn your way and simply smile. If you actually want to look at what they have, you must walk over to the shoreline to meet them. It is good that you are not hassled like a lot of tourists are in many other countries. The beach on the left of the hotel runs forever, with the hotels along the shoreline finishing and the beach being almost deserted on the day I walked in that direction. After about an hour I stopped and sat on the sand, admiring the beach and looked out to sea. I then walked past some houses onto the main road of the village which is called Chott Meriem . It is very different to the tourist resort of Port El Kantaoui and looks like a typical Arab village with all it's local life. You now feel that you have walked into normal Tunisia and it was only when I got home that I found out on the internet that in October 2004 a boat of 75 illegal migrants - 70 Moroccans and five Tunisians - broke into pieces off the town of Chott Meriem. There were at least 28 confirmed dead in this tragedy. I walked back towards my hotel along the main single carriageway road, past some small shops used by local people and from the end of the village it was just farmland. Then the road opens out into a dual carriageway and the dust stops. It is like walking into another world as this is the start of the resort of Port El Kantaoui with it's many hotels.
One day I went on a two hour quad bike ride on a Yamaha 125cc Grizzly . There are plenty of outfits offering quad bikes on the main road turning right outside the hotel. This was the first one we came to but I think they all charge about the same. This cost me 30TD and I went with a friend I made at our hotel. A leader led us over scrubland and into the countryside far away
from the resort. This is basic farming land with the odd house here and there. It does look a bit bleak and barren but the feeling is great to be out in the sticks. These quad bikes are easy to use, are remarkable tools and a joy to ride. We paused for a brief break at a cafe that was little more than a tent and a beer crate! What a lovely contrast, riding around in the dirt, not knowing where you are, no roads, no signs, just follow the leader. It was a buzz and one I would like to do again.
On our second day at 11.30 Anthony Hill, our First Choice rep, gave us a welcome meeting. This was simply not just a chance for him to pitch the excursions to us but was an excellent presentation all about Tunisia, our hotel and the local resorts. You could tell that Anthony really liked living and working in Tunisia and that it is now his home. He told us pretty much all anyone would really want to know and none of his talk was boring.
The government has tight control on tourism and every day life. The excursion prices are set by the government so there is no point in shopping around for a better offer. Before we left home we found out that Tunisa local time was the same as British Summer Time but on arrival at Monastir Airport we found that the clocks were one hour ahead of BST. Anthony explained that this had been done at short notice by President Ben Ali, he had done it before and then changed his mind three days later, maybe he was bored and fancied a change.
The excursions available were - you can only pay in Tunisian Dinars...
2 Day Desert Safari 155TD
3 Day Desert Safari 220TD
Tunis, Carthage & Sidi Bou Said 60TD
Dougga 60TD
Kiarouan, El Jem & Mahdia 50TD
Nabeul Market 24TD
Boat Cruise 32TD
Catamaran 27TD
Bedouin Feast 37TD
Ostriches & Friguia Zoo 38TD
El Jem (half day) 34TD
Pirates and Gladiators 53TD
Welcome tour of local resorts 19TD
Camel Caravan 27TD
Hammamet 27TD
Cabaret Night 30TD
We decided to go on the Kairouan, El Jem and Mahdia trip for 50TD each. We were picked up at 07.35 by an English speaking guide on an air conditioned coach. We picked up some other tourists at hotels in Sousse and Monastir getting the same impression as when we arrived that the better hotels were the ones further away from the airport.
I noticed a lot of posters of President Ben Ali everywhere. Advertising hoardings with the President waving and smiling at you wherever you go. President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali won re-election for a fourth five-year term on October 24 by 94.5 percent of the vote. Imagine posters of President Tony Blair smiling at you in the UK, not just at election time but all the time.
I was also surprised at the number of Police check points on the roads stopping drivers at random. Human rights defenders, like dissidents generally, are subject to heavy police surveillance, sporadic travel bans, dismissals from work, interruptions in phone service, and police harassment of spouses and family members. Tunisia’s press remains largely controlled by
the authorities. None of the print and broadcast media offer critical coverage of government policies, apart from a few low-circulation independent magazines that face occasional confiscation of their issues or problems at the printers. The government’s rhetoric promotes electronic communication as a vehicle of modernization, yet it blocks certain political or human rights websites. Human rights in Tunisia are limited and are quite a shock to what we enjoy in the UK. We do have an open society in the UK but we can wonder if our much trumpeted democracy is only a fragile veneer. We have just the one vote every four or five years to elect representatives whilst the real power is held by a small number of businessmen who employ the population and pay the wages. Yes, we have a free press and internet access but look at the
influence that the big boys hold. Tunisians cannot criticize their very powerful government for fear of harrassment but what can the average man in the street back home in the UK actually achieve?
Our first stop at Kairouan was at the Aghlabite water tanks. The 9th century was the golden age of Kairouan. In 800, Ibrahim bin Aghlab, an Arab from Algeria, seized the city and thereby half of North Africa. The Aghlabite dynasty constructed an extensive irrigation system that brought water from the mountains to encircle the city in a green belt of parks and gardens. Aghlabite princes built the Great Mosque in its present form and, along the coast, erected and endowed the ribats —fortresses that were also a kind of monastery and were garrisoned by men as dedicated to prayer as to battle. These water tanks are no longer used for domestic water but as a tourist attraction and by some locals for swimming as the nearest beach is a long, long way, away.
Our second stop at Kairouan was a walk into the Great Mosque where our guide explained it's long history and use. Kairouan is the 4th holiest city of Islam (after Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem). Our guide assured us that for Muslims 7 visits to the Great Mosque in Kairouan is equal in Islam to 1 visit to Mecca where every Muslim aims to make a pilgrimage to in their
lifetime. This becomes a much cheaper alternative for Muslims in North Africa. Legend tells of a warrior's horse that stumbled on a golden goblet buried in the sands. This goblet was recognized as one that had mysteriously disappeared from Mecca some years before. When the goblet was dug from the desert sand, a spring miraculously appeared and the waters of this spring were said to issue from the same source that supplies the sacred Zamzam well in Mecca. The power of these three miracles - the mysteriously lost and then found Meccan goblet, the miraculous gushing forth of the spring, and the source of that spring - exercised a magnetic effect upon the early North African Islamic people and thereby established the site of Kairouan as a pilgrimage destination for ages to come. The Great Mosque, also known as the Sidi Oqba mosque, had its
simple beginnings in 670 AD, during the time of Uqba ibn Nafi, the original founder of Kairouan. As the city expanded during the following three hundred years, the original mosque was torn down and rebuilt in 703, again in 774, and then significantly enlarged by rulers of the Aghlabid dynasty in 836 and 863. By the end of the 9th century the mosque had attained the size and proportions that it exhibits today, though numerous renovations and ornamentations were conducted during the 13th and 14th centuries by the Hafsid dynasty rulers and during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries (when the region was controlled by the Turks) by the Mouradite and Husseinite rulers.
Our fourth visit in Kairouan was into the Barbier Mausoleum, in which is the tomb of Abou Dhama, nicknamed Sidi Sahab - "Carrier of three hairs" of the prophets sublime beard. He was a contemporary companion of Mohammed. This tomb attracts a lot of visitors wishing to pray because of the religous significance.
Our fifth visit in Kairouan was to a restaurant as lunch was included in the price of this excursion. This restaurant was obviously contracted by the tour operators and we were not the only coach pulling up for lunch. The atmosphere was basic and workmanlike, like a transport cafe back in the Uk. A 3 course lunch was served, there was no choice but it was very eatable. Conversation with the other tourists at the tables was simply "What do you think this is we are
eating - do you know?". We later gathered from our guide that the meat was Turkey. You cannot complain and it simply added to the adventure of foreign travel - a culinary lucky dip.
That was it for Kairouan whose main industry is carpet manufacture and our coach then took us to El Jem.
Along the way our guide explained the way of life for the local people, their problems and why their homes appear half built. Money is tight so people buy a plot of land and then build as they can afford it, room by room. That is why you see flat roofs with steel poking upwards.
On arrival outside the Amphitheatre at El Jem you initially think so what? Is this just a boring old ruin? It does not look that impressive compared to the modern stadiums we have today. However, when you have walked all around from the coach park and gone inside through the gate you get a totally different impression . It seems at lot bigger inside than outside. It also appears to be a lot taller and then you can imagine how in the 3rd century AD it held 30,000 spectators. It is possibly the third or fourth biggest in the Empire after the Colosseum (or Coliseum) in Rome and that at Capua. Its 427m outside circumference is 100m shorter than the Colosseum. This is why it was chosen as the location for the film Gladiator. It is amazing how they built to this standard so long ago. You are free to roam about the whole site, climbing loads of stairs, playing hide and seek with your partner whilst enjoying the views from the tops over the flat terrain on all sides. You can see why this is an UNESCO World Heritage site.
We then travelled onto Mahdia which is one of the few towns on the central Tunisian coast that has managed to escape being turned into a tourist trap. It's a beautifully relaxed place, founded in 916 AD and set on a small peninsula some 200km (125mi) southeast of Tunis.
The town's main attraction is its old medina, already established by the time the famous historian Ibn Khaldoun visited in the 14th century and called Mahdia the jewel of the Barbary Coast.
Life is very different in this traditional seaside town. You get a slower pace of life with men sat in cafes gossiping over soft drinks. There are no signs of any nightlife like in binge-drinking Britain.
We did another coach trip for 24TD to Nabeul. This is on a Friday as this is Market Day. We picked up at some other hotels and then went to Hammamet where we stopped at a fixed price pottery shop for 20 minutes. This was good because you could see a guy making pottery, there was no pressure whatsoever to buy and you then had a guide price for pottery items at the market later. Our English speaking guide gave us a lovely commentary along the way before we parked up for 90 minutes in the coach park which is at the end of the long street where the market is held. It is a very busy market popular with locals and tourists. Most prices are negotiable, if something does not have a price attached then you will have to haggle, do not be hassled into paying too much as there will be busloads more tourists next Friday for the traders to latch onto. Some items and stalls are priced so you will be unable to haggle but their prices appear fair.
Obvious warnings are for pick pockets in such a busy and crowded area, we did not become a victim to this. My wife was walking in front and said that if I wanted to look at something to tap her on the shoulder. She was about half a coach length in front of me when she went into a stall and stopped. I caught her up and asked her what she wanted. She thought that I had put both my hands around her hips and guided her into this stall to look at something of interest to me. I
explained how far back I had been when she stopped and we were both at a loss to the mystery person who had guided her in. Was it someone who wanted to get passed and she was in their way? Was it the stall holder looking for a customer? Was it a chubby chaser gauging her size and weight?
After the market we went back to Hammamet and stayed by the medina for 60 minutes. This was ample time to buy a basic snack in a cafe at the side of the medina that overlooks the beach. Being used to All-Inclusive it is still a shock as to just how much you could spend on little snacks throughout the day. My impression of Hammamet from driving through on the coach and walking around the medina and it's beachfront was that it is an established busy resort. It is quite commercial and very well developed and was the first mass tourist resort in Tunisia. It looks down-market compared to Port El Kantaoui but does have history and local colour.
My wife and I paid £568 each to First Choice for a 14 night All Inclusive holiday at the Abou Sofiane hotel in Port El Kantaoui, Tunisia . We paid a little bit extra to have premium seats with extra legroom on the flight which also gave us an extra 10 kg of luggage allowance each plus a free drink and ear phones on the plane. We flew out from Bristol Airport at 07.00 on Sunday 15th May 2005 after parking our car at the airport for £49, having booked in advance over the
internet.
The coach transfer from the airport to our hotel in Tunisia took around 50 minutes. You see the outsides of the other hotels that holiday makers are staying at. Your first impression is that the further north from the airport you travel, the better it looks. The buildings look more impressive and the whole environment more affluent. After driving through the busy city of Sousse you arrive at Port El Kantaoui when you start to get a good feeling about where you have come.
On arrival at the Abou Sofiane hotel you are asked to sit down in the lounge and fill in a registration form. No sooner are you putting pen to paper when a waiter appears and gives you a glass of the hotel Abou Sofiane cocktail to drink. You are given the key to your room and details of the facilites available by staff who all speak English as well as French, German and their native Arabic. This hotel has 370 rooms on 3 floors with 2 lifts for the lazy and obese. We made our way to our room on the 3rd floor, which had a balcony looking over the gardens below and had a tiled floor and plenty of storage space. Like most holiday hotels it had 2 twin beds which were comfortable and supportive that were pushed together and sheeted separately. It was then time to drop our suitcases and go straight to lunch.
The food at the hotel is glorious. The choice is amazing - and with all-inclusive you simply help
yourself to as much as you want from the self service buffet style Le Doyen restaurant. Foods were labeled in English, French and German. There was something for everyone. Tunisia has not got a frozen food supply chain like in the UK where our food travels in refridgerated lorries all around the country. This is not the pub food fayre in the UK that comes in microwaveable boxes or freezer to fryer food. This is fresh local produce that is cooked in the kitchen at the back of the restaurant. I did not hear of any upset stomachs while I was there. Food hygiene
appeared to be good and all the food counters were worked thoroughly. Nothing looked abandoned or dodgey. You sit wherever you like, first come first served. Non smoking on the left and smoking on the right. The smokers on the right did not bother the non smokers on the left or the food serving areas.
Breakfast is served from 06.30 to 10.30 and there are 4 fruit juices, 2 cheeses, salads, cereals, yogurt, fruits, hot food stuffs, bread, rolls, croissants and pancakes. For an omlette you put the ingredients on your plate and pass it to the chef on the hot plate who also does the fried eggs.
Lunch is served from 12.30 to 14.30 and there are 2 soups, meats, fish, vegetables, salads followed by 3 ice creams and various cakes and puddings. There are the usual soft drinks plus beer and wine to drink with your meal.
Dinner was served from 18.30 to 21.30 and was similar to lunch but the 2 soups were always different.
You are given two meal tickets to use in the a la carte restaurants. The Tunisian in the Abou Sofiane and the Italian in the Riviera hotel next door. Both restaurants have 2 sittings, 18.30 and 20.30
The Tunisian is nice with a guy in the corner playing a mandolin. You are shown to a table and chose from a menu. Your waiter brings you the food and drink. The food is similar to the self service restaurant but feels special and different because you are being waitered upon.
The Italian is nice, bright and airy giving a nice change to the serve yourself restaurant being served at a table.
Both restaurants reinforce the beauty of having all-inclusive rather than having to battle daily with menus in restaurants gambling on what you will get for your money.
The main bar in the reception area was called La Source and was open from 10.00 to 23.59 serving soft and alcoholic drinks. They have a range of coctails to choose from and use locally produced spirits. The red wine is very drinkable and the native Tunisian spirit called boukha, which is distilled from figs, is a refreshing change to familar spirits. There is only one beer brewed in Tunisia and it is called Celtia. It is brewed in the capital Tunis and is 4.5% ABV. It is
drinkable and a typical continental syle lager but if it was available in UK supermarkets you would not go out of your way to buy it. It is served in heavy 300ml glasses. Some holiday makers thought the beer was weak or watered down - I did not think it was either but that drinkers psychologically thought they were drinking pints - 568ml, rather than the actual 300ml which is a little over a half pint. If you are drinking halves then it will take twice as many
glasses to get drunk.
There is a bar by the swimming pool called Le Village which serves soft and alcoholic drinks from 10.00 to 16.59 and help yourself food from 12.00 to 15.59 which is great for pool lovers who do not wish to get dressed for lunch. It does seem rather naughty dressed only in a pair of swimming trunks sat at a table in the snack bar or outside under the canopy by the pool eating your dinner. This snack bar is also open forfood for the late night crowd if they get an attack of the munchies from 23.30 to 00.59 - too latefor my appetite but others enjoyed it.
There is also a beach bar called the coco-loco which is open for the same times as the pool bar and offers exactly the same - with the exception of no alcoholic spirits, only beer.
The service in all the bars is prompt, efficent, friendly and polite. All the staff switch seamlessly
from speaking English to French and German. All the staff wear a uniform with a photo ID name badge. There is a big range of uniforms for different job grades with the managers wearing grey suits. Staff discipline is strict, you will hear managers barking at their staff - you will wonder why they are making a fuss but standards are high and managers ensure there is not a slippage of quality. Every Monday at 14.15 around the pool is the managers cocktail party. All the managers are there, they each are introduced over the PA and then have to serve cocktails and food off a tray by walking around the pool to all the sunbathers. They are reduced to humble waiters before finally having to line up like school children to do the hotel dance to the pee pee song with the Animation team. Can you imagine this at your workplace back in the UK?
The swimming pool goes from 0.48m to 1.74m deep and at a guess appears to be about 25m long and 12m wide.
There are some lovely gardens within the hotel which are home to a lot of cats who are fed and looked after by the hotel. This feline presence gives the hotel a nice homely feel.
There is a range of facilities at the hotel for the guests to use including an indoor pool, gym, sauna, mini golf, volley ball, archery, tennis, a games room with arcade machines and a hairdresser.
The cashier is open from 09.00 to 12.59 and 17.00 to 20.59 and he will exchange your money into Tunisian Dinars. The government sets the exchange rate on a daily basis and it is the same rate wherever you go in the whole country, so there is no point in going anywhere else. We had an exchange rate of 2.306TD to the pound. The only place that you can change your Tunisian Dinars back into Sterling is at the airport. Try not to change any more currency than you need
because the airport exchange desk will charge you 30% commission and Tunisia is a closed economy, you cannot take any Dinars out of the country as it will be confiscated at Passport Control. The hotel cashier can also give you use to a safety deposit box in your room, which cost us 35TD plus a 20TD refundable deposit. You can also have the use of hotel beach towels rather than use your own by buying a card for 5TD for the whole of your stay.
There are also 3 little shops within the hotel to keep the women happy.
The Animation team is responsible for all the entertainment and organised activities. The
entertainment is just OK - these guys try hard and are at it all day, saying everything in 3 languages. There are a number of different set dances that they like the holidaymakers to adopt and the style is very happy clappy. They play lots of silly games around the pool and every night at 21.30 they put on a show in the aircraft hanger. The night show is for 2 hotels, the Abou Sofiane and it's sister hotel next door, the Riviera. You sit on platic garden chairs and before the entertainment starts it has the atmosphere of a car auction. You get your drinks in plastic glasses from the Riviera pool bar. The music starts and it is lots of mime and dance. The Animation team are all good dancers and take on many identities and costumes. There is a lot of humour, mostly expressed through mime due to the 3 languages constraint. The entertainment will amuse you, it is not brilliant and most people take the view that they will wander in if they are not engrossed gossiping in the main bar. It stimulates discussion later amongst the guests in the bar. Do not bother going out of the hotel at night looking for entertainment as almost all the
entertainment is within the hotels.
The hotel is clean and appears to be in good structural and decorative order. Walking around the hotel grounds you notice a lot of security guards patrolling around and you are sure that only the hotel guests are inside the hotel complex. This adds to the feeling of comfort, relaxation and security in a foreign land that is much appreciated by female guests.
Outside of the hotel there were taxis. yellow in colour and cheap, the Marina in Port El Kantaoui for 3TD and Sousse for 6TD. There is a tourist noddy train that runs from the hotels into Port El Kantaoui and onto Sousse that is a novelty. The service buses used by the local people are in fact articulated bendi-buses but as with the louages - community taxis, like 8 seater MPV's operating on fixed routes - the destinations are only displayed in Arabic script, not French. This is odd, as all other signs, road or business are in Arabic script and French. The centre of Port El Kantaoui is just a 20 minute walk from the hotel whether you walk along the beach or along the
road. If you walk along the road then the Marina is hidden through an arch, you would not know that the sea and the Marina are beyond the arch, which is confusing to newcomers including me!
The resort of Port El Kantaoui is civilised, clean and purpose built in 1979 - no local people live here. It has a French style to it, which is not that surprising as Tunisia was a French colony until independance in 1956. This is not Costa Del Blackpool or a typical European town, there are no global chains - you feel as though you have gone away. It is not Ibiza either, there are some cafes and restaurants but no nightclubs or amusement arcades. All the buildings look impressive and are low rise - this is not Birmingham by the Sea. Around the fountains the traders give a
little bit of hassle by encouraging you to come into their shop by offering best price, Asda price, cheap as chips etc. They are into the Arabic culture of haggling on price and can appear pushy. Inside the Marina it is different, more relaxed with fixed price shops where you can browse with ease.
The beach on the right of the hotel runs all the way to the marina. You will see traders walking along the shoreline offering goods for sale. If you are sat on a the beach they will not bother you, they will turn your way and simply smile. If you actually want to look at what they have, you must walk over to the shoreline to meet them. It is good that you are not hassled like a lot of tourists are in many other countries. The beach on the left of the hotel runs forever, with the hotels along the shoreline finishing and the beach being almost deserted on the day I walked in that direction. After about an hour I stopped and sat on the sand, admiring the beach and looked out to sea. I then walked past some houses onto the main road of the village which is called Chott Meriem . It is very different to the tourist resort of Port El Kantaoui and looks like a typical Arab village with all it's local life. You now feel that you have walked into normal Tunisia and it was only when I got home that I found out on the internet that in October 2004 a boat of 75 illegal migrants - 70 Moroccans and five Tunisians - broke into pieces off the town of Chott Meriem. There were at least 28 confirmed dead in this tragedy. I walked back towards my hotel along the main single carriageway road, past some small shops used by local people and from the end of the village it was just farmland. Then the road opens out into a dual carriageway and the dust stops. It is like walking into another world as this is the start of the resort of Port El Kantaoui with it's many hotels.
One day I went on a two hour quad bike ride on a Yamaha 125cc Grizzly . There are plenty of outfits offering quad bikes on the main road turning right outside the hotel. This was the first one we came to but I think they all charge about the same. This cost me 30TD and I went with a friend I made at our hotel. A leader led us over scrubland and into the countryside far away
from the resort. This is basic farming land with the odd house here and there. It does look a bit bleak and barren but the feeling is great to be out in the sticks. These quad bikes are easy to use, are remarkable tools and a joy to ride. We paused for a brief break at a cafe that was little more than a tent and a beer crate! What a lovely contrast, riding around in the dirt, not knowing where you are, no roads, no signs, just follow the leader. It was a buzz and one I would like to do again.
On our second day at 11.30 Anthony Hill, our First Choice rep, gave us a welcome meeting. This was simply not just a chance for him to pitch the excursions to us but was an excellent presentation all about Tunisia, our hotel and the local resorts. You could tell that Anthony really liked living and working in Tunisia and that it is now his home. He told us pretty much all anyone would really want to know and none of his talk was boring.
The government has tight control on tourism and every day life. The excursion prices are set by the government so there is no point in shopping around for a better offer. Before we left home we found out that Tunisa local time was the same as British Summer Time but on arrival at Monastir Airport we found that the clocks were one hour ahead of BST. Anthony explained that this had been done at short notice by President Ben Ali, he had done it before and then changed his mind three days later, maybe he was bored and fancied a change.
The excursions available were - you can only pay in Tunisian Dinars...
2 Day Desert Safari 155TD
3 Day Desert Safari 220TD
Tunis, Carthage & Sidi Bou Said 60TD
Dougga 60TD
Kiarouan, El Jem & Mahdia 50TD
Nabeul Market 24TD
Boat Cruise 32TD
Catamaran 27TD
Bedouin Feast 37TD
Ostriches & Friguia Zoo 38TD
El Jem (half day) 34TD
Pirates and Gladiators 53TD
Welcome tour of local resorts 19TD
Camel Caravan 27TD
Hammamet 27TD
Cabaret Night 30TD
We decided to go on the Kairouan, El Jem and Mahdia trip for 50TD each. We were picked up at 07.35 by an English speaking guide on an air conditioned coach. We picked up some other tourists at hotels in Sousse and Monastir getting the same impression as when we arrived that the better hotels were the ones further away from the airport.
I noticed a lot of posters of President Ben Ali everywhere. Advertising hoardings with the President waving and smiling at you wherever you go. President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali won re-election for a fourth five-year term on October 24 by 94.5 percent of the vote. Imagine posters of President Tony Blair smiling at you in the UK, not just at election time but all the time.
I was also surprised at the number of Police check points on the roads stopping drivers at random. Human rights defenders, like dissidents generally, are subject to heavy police surveillance, sporadic travel bans, dismissals from work, interruptions in phone service, and police harassment of spouses and family members. Tunisia’s press remains largely controlled by
the authorities. None of the print and broadcast media offer critical coverage of government policies, apart from a few low-circulation independent magazines that face occasional confiscation of their issues or problems at the printers. The government’s rhetoric promotes electronic communication as a vehicle of modernization, yet it blocks certain political or human rights websites. Human rights in Tunisia are limited and are quite a shock to what we enjoy in the UK. We do have an open society in the UK but we can wonder if our much trumpeted democracy is only a fragile veneer. We have just the one vote every four or five years to elect representatives whilst the real power is held by a small number of businessmen who employ the population and pay the wages. Yes, we have a free press and internet access but look at the
influence that the big boys hold. Tunisians cannot criticize their very powerful government for fear of harrassment but what can the average man in the street back home in the UK actually achieve?
Our first stop at Kairouan was at the Aghlabite water tanks. The 9th century was the golden age of Kairouan. In 800, Ibrahim bin Aghlab, an Arab from Algeria, seized the city and thereby half of North Africa. The Aghlabite dynasty constructed an extensive irrigation system that brought water from the mountains to encircle the city in a green belt of parks and gardens. Aghlabite princes built the Great Mosque in its present form and, along the coast, erected and endowed the ribats —fortresses that were also a kind of monastery and were garrisoned by men as dedicated to prayer as to battle. These water tanks are no longer used for domestic water but as a tourist attraction and by some locals for swimming as the nearest beach is a long, long way, away.
Our second stop at Kairouan was a walk into the Great Mosque where our guide explained it's long history and use. Kairouan is the 4th holiest city of Islam (after Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem). Our guide assured us that for Muslims 7 visits to the Great Mosque in Kairouan is equal in Islam to 1 visit to Mecca where every Muslim aims to make a pilgrimage to in their
lifetime. This becomes a much cheaper alternative for Muslims in North Africa. Legend tells of a warrior's horse that stumbled on a golden goblet buried in the sands. This goblet was recognized as one that had mysteriously disappeared from Mecca some years before. When the goblet was dug from the desert sand, a spring miraculously appeared and the waters of this spring were said to issue from the same source that supplies the sacred Zamzam well in Mecca. The power of these three miracles - the mysteriously lost and then found Meccan goblet, the miraculous gushing forth of the spring, and the source of that spring - exercised a magnetic effect upon the early North African Islamic people and thereby established the site of Kairouan as a pilgrimage destination for ages to come. The Great Mosque, also known as the Sidi Oqba mosque, had its
simple beginnings in 670 AD, during the time of Uqba ibn Nafi, the original founder of Kairouan. As the city expanded during the following three hundred years, the original mosque was torn down and rebuilt in 703, again in 774, and then significantly enlarged by rulers of the Aghlabid dynasty in 836 and 863. By the end of the 9th century the mosque had attained the size and proportions that it exhibits today, though numerous renovations and ornamentations were conducted during the 13th and 14th centuries by the Hafsid dynasty rulers and during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries (when the region was controlled by the Turks) by the Mouradite and Husseinite rulers.
Our fourth visit in Kairouan was into the Barbier Mausoleum, in which is the tomb of Abou Dhama, nicknamed Sidi Sahab - "Carrier of three hairs" of the prophets sublime beard. He was a contemporary companion of Mohammed. This tomb attracts a lot of visitors wishing to pray because of the religous significance.
Our fifth visit in Kairouan was to a restaurant as lunch was included in the price of this excursion. This restaurant was obviously contracted by the tour operators and we were not the only coach pulling up for lunch. The atmosphere was basic and workmanlike, like a transport cafe back in the Uk. A 3 course lunch was served, there was no choice but it was very eatable. Conversation with the other tourists at the tables was simply "What do you think this is we are
eating - do you know?". We later gathered from our guide that the meat was Turkey. You cannot complain and it simply added to the adventure of foreign travel - a culinary lucky dip.
That was it for Kairouan whose main industry is carpet manufacture and our coach then took us to El Jem.
Along the way our guide explained the way of life for the local people, their problems and why their homes appear half built. Money is tight so people buy a plot of land and then build as they can afford it, room by room. That is why you see flat roofs with steel poking upwards.
On arrival outside the Amphitheatre at El Jem you initially think so what? Is this just a boring old ruin? It does not look that impressive compared to the modern stadiums we have today. However, when you have walked all around from the coach park and gone inside through the gate you get a totally different impression . It seems at lot bigger inside than outside. It also appears to be a lot taller and then you can imagine how in the 3rd century AD it held 30,000 spectators. It is possibly the third or fourth biggest in the Empire after the Colosseum (or Coliseum) in Rome and that at Capua. Its 427m outside circumference is 100m shorter than the Colosseum. This is why it was chosen as the location for the film Gladiator. It is amazing how they built to this standard so long ago. You are free to roam about the whole site, climbing loads of stairs, playing hide and seek with your partner whilst enjoying the views from the tops over the flat terrain on all sides. You can see why this is an UNESCO World Heritage site.
We then travelled onto Mahdia which is one of the few towns on the central Tunisian coast that has managed to escape being turned into a tourist trap. It's a beautifully relaxed place, founded in 916 AD and set on a small peninsula some 200km (125mi) southeast of Tunis.
The town's main attraction is its old medina, already established by the time the famous historian Ibn Khaldoun visited in the 14th century and called Mahdia the jewel of the Barbary Coast.
Life is very different in this traditional seaside town. You get a slower pace of life with men sat in cafes gossiping over soft drinks. There are no signs of any nightlife like in binge-drinking Britain.
We did another coach trip for 24TD to Nabeul. This is on a Friday as this is Market Day. We picked up at some other hotels and then went to Hammamet where we stopped at a fixed price pottery shop for 20 minutes. This was good because you could see a guy making pottery, there was no pressure whatsoever to buy and you then had a guide price for pottery items at the market later. Our English speaking guide gave us a lovely commentary along the way before we parked up for 90 minutes in the coach park which is at the end of the long street where the market is held. It is a very busy market popular with locals and tourists. Most prices are negotiable, if something does not have a price attached then you will have to haggle, do not be hassled into paying too much as there will be busloads more tourists next Friday for the traders to latch onto. Some items and stalls are priced so you will be unable to haggle but their prices appear fair.
Obvious warnings are for pick pockets in such a busy and crowded area, we did not become a victim to this. My wife was walking in front and said that if I wanted to look at something to tap her on the shoulder. She was about half a coach length in front of me when she went into a stall and stopped. I caught her up and asked her what she wanted. She thought that I had put both my hands around her hips and guided her into this stall to look at something of interest to me. I
explained how far back I had been when she stopped and we were both at a loss to the mystery person who had guided her in. Was it someone who wanted to get passed and she was in their way? Was it the stall holder looking for a customer? Was it a chubby chaser gauging her size and weight?
After the market we went back to Hammamet and stayed by the medina for 60 minutes. This was ample time to buy a basic snack in a cafe at the side of the medina that overlooks the beach. Being used to All-Inclusive it is still a shock as to just how much you could spend on little snacks throughout the day. My impression of Hammamet from driving through on the coach and walking around the medina and it's beachfront was that it is an established busy resort. It is quite commercial and very well developed and was the first mass tourist resort in Tunisia. It looks down-market compared to Port El Kantaoui but does have history and local colour.
This was a lovely, relaxing and refreshing holiday. I would be happy to go back to Tunisia and this hotel again. This is not a holiday for the 18/30 disco clubbing living it large crowd but does give you good value for money if you want a quieter, chilling out holiday.
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Laganas, Zakynthos, Greece - October 2004.
My wife and I paid £392 each to stay for 7 nights, all-inclusive at the Margarita Hotel, Laganas on the Greek island of Zakynthos . We had paid a little bit extra to fly from Bristol Airport and sitting in Premium seats. We flew out on Tuesday 5th October 2004 at 13.30 and flew back from Zakynthos at 19.55 on Tuesday 12th October 2004.
The hotel is close to the airport, which gives a short coach transfer time, so that you are early enough to get your evening meal after you have checked in.
This is an all-inclusive hotel. All your food and locally produced drinks are included in the price. This is ideal if you enjoy your food and drink, simply have as little or as much as you want, as there will be no worrying bill at the end of your holiday. Breakfast is served from 08.00 to 10.00 - lunch 12.30 to 14.00 - evening meal 19.30 to 21.00 - alcoholic drinks from 10.00 to 23.59 and snacks from the pool bar 10.00 to 23.59
The food is very good, as good as Tebay Sevices on the M6, with plenty of choice. It is an international menu with something for everyone. It is served buffet style - simply help yourself to as little or as much as you want. The soup was watery but tastey.
The drinks were good - plenty of choice and quality. The beer was draught Lowenbrau and very drinkable indeed.
This hotel is exclusive to First Choice so all the guests are British. All the staff whether British or Greek speak very good English and everything is done in English. Because of this the atmosphere is totally British, you do not feel abroad, you may as well be in Skegness . All the staff were efficient and consciencous. This hotel is well run and clean.
The hotel has 2 swimming pools. An adult-only pool at the front which is great and a general pool at the back which has the pool snack and drinks bar which is OK.
The entertainment on a night is very poor. Bingo-bingo and some naff games. This may keep the children and intellectually challenged happy but everyone else just sits around chatting and getting drunk.
Cigarette smoke is a problem, not just around the pool bar. The smoke also blows across the lounge into the dining room. This is caused by the sheer volume of smoke coming from the chain smokers taking advantage of the cheaper cigarette prices - 27 euros for 200.
The rooms are basic - in a 2 or 3 storey building with either a balcony or a veranda. Air conditioning is optional at a big extra cost which we did not need or opt for. We did pay an extra 15 euros for the safety deposit box in our room. There is some peeling paint but our room was clean although it could smell a little musty and damp in places - particularly the wardrobe. Storage space is very limited, you are better off living out of your suitcase. The beds are poor - a soft mattress lying on wooden slats. My wife was uncomfortable and all the other guests complained. You would not put up with it at home.
The resort of Laganas is mainly 2 storey. With it's KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, UK style pubs and numerous night clubs you could be at any British seaside resort. The cost of food and drink is about the same as in the UK. There are loads of scooter and car rental firms to choose from but why bother, if you have your own car you may as well have gone to Newquay . You do not get the impression of being abroad. English is the most overheard language and you feel as though you were in Cornwall. There is a 9km long sandy beach that is narrow and stacked with sunbeds, bars and tavernas. The sand is generously littered with discarded cigarette butts from the masses of sunbathers.
The local bus service is bad, infrequent and with big gaps in the service. I can however recommend the round the island coach trip. Do not buy this trip from the First Choice rep as you will be paying double for the same trip. Buy your ticket from any of the agents in the main streets, there are many firms doing the same trip and they all charge the same. It is normally 12 euros but being the end of the season this was reduced to 10 euros. Each coach has an English speaking guide.
After your coach has picked up all the passengers your first stop is in the village of Macherado where you walk into the church of St. Mavra . After this you drive up into the mountains stopping at a cafe to admire the view of Laganas bay and Zakynthos town. From here you continue to look around the Monastery of Anafonitria before stopping for lunch at a restaurant. Because of the number of coaches doing the same trip at around the same time of day it is the luck of the draw as to which restaurant your coach stops at. I think they are all much of a muchness. My coach stopped at the Galaxy taverna at Anafonitria and I had moussaka with a beer for 8.80 euros which was Ok but I would not want to eat there for a week. Then we stopped at a roadside gift shop that sold the usual tourist things and also did wine tasting. Next was the viewpoint that overlooked shipwreck bay which appears in most guides to the island. A cargo ship that was smuggling goods ran aground in the 1960's. There is a rickety iron platform where you can stand to take your own photograph whilst being amazed at just how far and sheer the drop below actually is. There was a short stop at the village of Volimes with it's numerous craft shops. Next was the optional boat trip from St. Nicholas Bay to the Blue Caves for 7 euros which I and half the coach did not bother with. St. Nicholas Bay itself does not have much to offer, just a harbour, a taverna and a garage. When the boat party returned after about 40 minutes the coach continued along the eastern coast and dropped passengers off at Alykes, Alikanas, Tsilivi, Argassi and Kalamaki. When you see these other resorts you begin to realise that Laganas is the best on the whole island. The other resorts appear tatty, in a state of decay with litter and graffiti problems.
Before I left I bought a copy of the Rough Guide to the Greek Islands and we followed the suggestion of trying the Zougras Taverna to see if a traditional Greek taverna offered better food than the Margarita Hotel. The Zougras is the last building on the left hand side going out of Laganas towards Kalamaki. The food was no better than our hotel and you loose the benefit of the help yourself buffet service. The price was similar to a pub lunch back in the UK. It was a disappointment and I cannot recommend it to anyone. The food in the tavernas of Laganas appear to be all of a muchness.
A couple of nights later we wondered if the local nightlife would be any better than the bingo-bingo at our hotel. Not being Club 18-30 ravers we tried a local bar called the Captain Morgan . I was disappointed - was just like your average British seaside pub yet paying more for the drinks than back home. All that way to watch Sky television on big screens. I will not be going back. We paid 14 euros for 2 pints and 2 brandy with lemonades.
Then we went on to Loopers which had a nice atmosphere with Stephen the Guitarist from Germany (Monday 11th October) and his dog. We had a nice comfortable drink in relaxed and pleasant surroundings. It was worth calling in as I was attracted inside by the blackboards displayed outside. If you are walking past, then I suggest you call in and give it a go.
We paid 10 euros for 2 pints and 2 brandy with lemonades.
Our week quickly came to an end. You get picked up from the Margarita Hotel on the transfer coach for your 19.55 return flight at 16.20 - the check-in time is 17.55 and we got to the airport at 16.40 - quite early but you can see why. The space is somewhat limited for the numbers of departures and the First Choice reps have to shepherd the holiday makers through a series of queues because there is only one check-in desk per airline in this cramped airport. Women get rather stressed by the time they have to stand and queue. The reps appear genuinely embarrassed by this lack of facilities.
The impressions I brought away with me were that the Margarita Hotel has good food and drink. Eating and drinking out was poor value, quality and choice. The overall costs are the same as in the UK and the atmosphere is the same. Nothing is outstanding, there is no point in returning. The hotel does it's best but the island seems like another Lincolnshire.
Efharisto.
My wife and I paid £392 each to stay for 7 nights, all-inclusive at the Margarita Hotel, Laganas on the Greek island of Zakynthos . We had paid a little bit extra to fly from Bristol Airport and sitting in Premium seats. We flew out on Tuesday 5th October 2004 at 13.30 and flew back from Zakynthos at 19.55 on Tuesday 12th October 2004.
The hotel is close to the airport, which gives a short coach transfer time, so that you are early enough to get your evening meal after you have checked in.
This is an all-inclusive hotel. All your food and locally produced drinks are included in the price. This is ideal if you enjoy your food and drink, simply have as little or as much as you want, as there will be no worrying bill at the end of your holiday. Breakfast is served from 08.00 to 10.00 - lunch 12.30 to 14.00 - evening meal 19.30 to 21.00 - alcoholic drinks from 10.00 to 23.59 and snacks from the pool bar 10.00 to 23.59
The food is very good, as good as Tebay Sevices on the M6, with plenty of choice. It is an international menu with something for everyone. It is served buffet style - simply help yourself to as little or as much as you want. The soup was watery but tastey.
The drinks were good - plenty of choice and quality. The beer was draught Lowenbrau and very drinkable indeed.
This hotel is exclusive to First Choice so all the guests are British. All the staff whether British or Greek speak very good English and everything is done in English. Because of this the atmosphere is totally British, you do not feel abroad, you may as well be in Skegness . All the staff were efficient and consciencous. This hotel is well run and clean.
The hotel has 2 swimming pools. An adult-only pool at the front which is great and a general pool at the back which has the pool snack and drinks bar which is OK.
The entertainment on a night is very poor. Bingo-bingo and some naff games. This may keep the children and intellectually challenged happy but everyone else just sits around chatting and getting drunk.
Cigarette smoke is a problem, not just around the pool bar. The smoke also blows across the lounge into the dining room. This is caused by the sheer volume of smoke coming from the chain smokers taking advantage of the cheaper cigarette prices - 27 euros for 200.
The rooms are basic - in a 2 or 3 storey building with either a balcony or a veranda. Air conditioning is optional at a big extra cost which we did not need or opt for. We did pay an extra 15 euros for the safety deposit box in our room. There is some peeling paint but our room was clean although it could smell a little musty and damp in places - particularly the wardrobe. Storage space is very limited, you are better off living out of your suitcase. The beds are poor - a soft mattress lying on wooden slats. My wife was uncomfortable and all the other guests complained. You would not put up with it at home.
The resort of Laganas is mainly 2 storey. With it's KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, UK style pubs and numerous night clubs you could be at any British seaside resort. The cost of food and drink is about the same as in the UK. There are loads of scooter and car rental firms to choose from but why bother, if you have your own car you may as well have gone to Newquay . You do not get the impression of being abroad. English is the most overheard language and you feel as though you were in Cornwall. There is a 9km long sandy beach that is narrow and stacked with sunbeds, bars and tavernas. The sand is generously littered with discarded cigarette butts from the masses of sunbathers.
The local bus service is bad, infrequent and with big gaps in the service. I can however recommend the round the island coach trip. Do not buy this trip from the First Choice rep as you will be paying double for the same trip. Buy your ticket from any of the agents in the main streets, there are many firms doing the same trip and they all charge the same. It is normally 12 euros but being the end of the season this was reduced to 10 euros. Each coach has an English speaking guide.
After your coach has picked up all the passengers your first stop is in the village of Macherado where you walk into the church of St. Mavra . After this you drive up into the mountains stopping at a cafe to admire the view of Laganas bay and Zakynthos town. From here you continue to look around the Monastery of Anafonitria before stopping for lunch at a restaurant. Because of the number of coaches doing the same trip at around the same time of day it is the luck of the draw as to which restaurant your coach stops at. I think they are all much of a muchness. My coach stopped at the Galaxy taverna at Anafonitria and I had moussaka with a beer for 8.80 euros which was Ok but I would not want to eat there for a week. Then we stopped at a roadside gift shop that sold the usual tourist things and also did wine tasting. Next was the viewpoint that overlooked shipwreck bay which appears in most guides to the island. A cargo ship that was smuggling goods ran aground in the 1960's. There is a rickety iron platform where you can stand to take your own photograph whilst being amazed at just how far and sheer the drop below actually is. There was a short stop at the village of Volimes with it's numerous craft shops. Next was the optional boat trip from St. Nicholas Bay to the Blue Caves for 7 euros which I and half the coach did not bother with. St. Nicholas Bay itself does not have much to offer, just a harbour, a taverna and a garage. When the boat party returned after about 40 minutes the coach continued along the eastern coast and dropped passengers off at Alykes, Alikanas, Tsilivi, Argassi and Kalamaki. When you see these other resorts you begin to realise that Laganas is the best on the whole island. The other resorts appear tatty, in a state of decay with litter and graffiti problems.
Before I left I bought a copy of the Rough Guide to the Greek Islands and we followed the suggestion of trying the Zougras Taverna to see if a traditional Greek taverna offered better food than the Margarita Hotel. The Zougras is the last building on the left hand side going out of Laganas towards Kalamaki. The food was no better than our hotel and you loose the benefit of the help yourself buffet service. The price was similar to a pub lunch back in the UK. It was a disappointment and I cannot recommend it to anyone. The food in the tavernas of Laganas appear to be all of a muchness.
A couple of nights later we wondered if the local nightlife would be any better than the bingo-bingo at our hotel. Not being Club 18-30 ravers we tried a local bar called the Captain Morgan . I was disappointed - was just like your average British seaside pub yet paying more for the drinks than back home. All that way to watch Sky television on big screens. I will not be going back. We paid 14 euros for 2 pints and 2 brandy with lemonades.
Then we went on to Loopers which had a nice atmosphere with Stephen the Guitarist from Germany (Monday 11th October) and his dog. We had a nice comfortable drink in relaxed and pleasant surroundings. It was worth calling in as I was attracted inside by the blackboards displayed outside. If you are walking past, then I suggest you call in and give it a go.
We paid 10 euros for 2 pints and 2 brandy with lemonades.
Our week quickly came to an end. You get picked up from the Margarita Hotel on the transfer coach for your 19.55 return flight at 16.20 - the check-in time is 17.55 and we got to the airport at 16.40 - quite early but you can see why. The space is somewhat limited for the numbers of departures and the First Choice reps have to shepherd the holiday makers through a series of queues because there is only one check-in desk per airline in this cramped airport. Women get rather stressed by the time they have to stand and queue. The reps appear genuinely embarrassed by this lack of facilities.
The impressions I brought away with me were that the Margarita Hotel has good food and drink. Eating and drinking out was poor value, quality and choice. The overall costs are the same as in the UK and the atmosphere is the same. Nothing is outstanding, there is no point in returning. The hotel does it's best but the island seems like another Lincolnshire.
Efharisto.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Torba, Turkey. May 2004.
My wife Gail and I went on a holiday to Turkey staying at the Club Milta , Torba - which is on the Bodrum Peninsula and part of the Aegean Coast. We booked with First Choice and flew from Bristol Airport on Monday 10th May 2004 returning on Tuesday 25th May 2004. We paid £562 each which included the travel insurance being upgraded to "Gold" and the allocation of Premium seats offering extra legroom.
Rather than pay a lot of money to park our friends car at Bristol Airport, we paid £45 to use the Park Farm - which is just off the A38 going towards Felton. You can park your car there at their secure site and they will then take you and your party the 600 metres to the airport. When you come back you simply stand outside arrivals and telephone them to come and pick you up in their minibus.
Our flight left at 21.00 on an Airbus A321 and was uneventful. The loading of passengers by the reps onto the transfer coaches was efficient. Our hotel was the nearest to the airport so we were only on the coach for about 30 minutes. Our hotel had 292 rooms and our room was on the ground floor, close to the stage. It was clean, with a tiled floor and a very powerful shower in the bathroom. There was a veranda with a couple of chairs and a table that looked out onto one of the gardens. There was a televison that had both CNN and the BBC World Service for English speaking guests. We had a free safety deposit box in one of the wardrobes. Our friends who booked with us, had the room next to us.
This is an all-inclusive hotel and offers excellent value for money. The food starts at 07.30 and stops at 02.00 - it is a self service affair with a canteen culture. There is plenty of variety for breakfast with two chefs cooking pancakes, omelettes and fried eggs whilst you wait. Lunch and evening meal has 16 hot food trays, a huge salad table and 5 chefs cooking meat, pizza or fish whilst you wait. There is no wondering how the food is cooked, just stand and watch. At other times the snack bar is open.
The bar opens at 10.00 and closes at 23.59 and serves all hot and cold drinks, alcoholic or not. You can have any locally produced beer - which is Efes lager, red, rose or white wine and a range of spirits. For those wanting a disco and/or more drink, the fun continues to 02.00
The swimming pool is very big and I guess is about 40m X 20m. It goes from 0.55m to 1.68m deep with a separate kiddy area. Be careful not to get sunburnt. I bought some NO-AD sun protection cream with a SPF of 45 (which is the strongest they do), cheap from ASDA . Gail thought it would be too strong for me but it did the trick. I did not get sunburnt but she did. Other holiday makers had also bought the same brand of sun protection and thought because of it's cheap price may not be effective but I heard of no bad reports.
Entertainment is provided by an animation team , who do a different act every night at 21.45 on the stage. A few evenings we had the extra entertainment of a singer/guitarist next to the bar from 19.00 - he was better than the full time entertainment staff and had a wonderful relaxed style. It is lovely having entertainment, eating and drinking in the open air. Bring a fleece jacket as it gets a lot cooler at night and enjoy sitting there, the remoteness of it all, looking across the bay to the northern coast of the Bodrum Peninsula. Everything is available on site and you soon feel to become part of a community. The entertainment follows a strict pattern and you soon recognize the links and the music. It has a flow that you get swept along with.
The beach at the hotel was very small but provided access for the watersports. I had a go with the canoe and other people used the pedaloes.
The location is rather remote but you are not cut off from the world and the hotel has it's own internet cafe which I used. It cost me 9m tr lr for an hour and they use the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser rather than my favourite browser which is Mozilla Firefox . The keyboard is Turkish so some of the keys are different and all the menus are in Turkish but the system is useable.
The hotel is very clean and the staff appear to be cleaning all the time. Their health and safety practices are spot-on. If a guest breaks a glass or something, a staff member suddenly appears with a pan and brush, as if by magic. One guy is continually mopping the side of the swimming pool. The staff work 15 hour shifts with only one day off a week but seem content and well motivated. The hotel is French owned and has a French feel to it, with French being the first language. The animation team also speak German and English.
At the welcome meeting our First Choice representative Pauline told us all we needed to know and gave us a street plan of Bodrum and Gumbet with the list of organised trips they were running. If you paid for a trip, you would get the £6 Bodrum City Tour trip free. We took the Turgutreis excursion for £8 which is on a Saturday - market day. Turgutreis is as far west as you can go on the Bodrum Peninsula and is a small fishing town with a new marina. It is very busy on a Saturday with something for everyone. Tourism is growing in Turgutreis mainly because of the marina and should become a popular resort in years to come. On the way back our coach stopped at a gold shop in the Oasis Centre . I did not go into this gold shop but looked at this shopping centre which looked trendy, new and fresh with plenty of food outlets to interest the visitor.
The Bodrum City Tour was very intersting and varied. We picked up other people at different hotels before parking on a cliff top overlooking Bodrum where our guide told us all about the history of Bodrum and what you can see from the cliff top looking over the town and the bay. We then went to Bitez for a 3 course lunch that was included in the price of the trip - even if you got it free! Bitez is a lovely seaside village and we ate at the Four Seasons restaurant, which is actually Chinese but does international food. I do not like Chinese food but they did a 3 course Turkish meal and it was lovely. So fresh, varied and tasty - it was a big change to the canteen culture at Club Milta. From there we went to the Oasis Centre where people had the chance to go into another gold shop or enjoy the site. Then we went to a leather shop that was rather pricey but they did put on a fashion show and gave us free drinks! After everyone had finished we did the return trip around the hotels before arriving back at Club Milta. I can recommend this trip as it gives you a perspective on Bodrum, which is quite like Brighton - Gumbet, which is like Blackpool and Bitez, which is like a typical Cornish fishing village.
We paid £19 each for the Dreamgirls Show in Gumbet. The price included admission, dinner, your first local drink and coach transport. This was a big change to the rest of our holiday. We may as well have been in Blackpool. The whole audience was British, the dinner was roast chicken with potato wedges and a tiny bit of lettuce and tomato. The caberet was provided by three drag artists who could never offend a grandmother. The drinks cost about the same as back in the UK. I could not recommend this night out to anyone - it was mediocre, the humour was light and the atmosphere was cheap - like an old fashioned British seaside town. If you wanted to watch three blokes dress up as women and mime to records after having typical cheap Britsh pub fayre then you would come away happy and would have not heard a word of Turkish spoken. That is not my idea of a foreign holiday - you can get that in Cleethorpes!
When you book your holiday you think the hotel is in Torba, which is a fishing village on the northern Bodrum Peninsula coast. The hotel is actually at Kaynar Mevkii, which is down a lane off the main D330 Milas to Bodrum road. You can walk to Torba from the hotel by turning right onto the main road but it will take you 65 minutes to get there. Torba has a few hotels, a few convenience stores and a harbour. Do not make a special effort to visit Torba as there are far better ways to spend your time. Do not go onto the main road and walk to the left as I did, as there is nothing but similar looking hotels as Club Milta - all backing onto the coastline. I walked for 90 minutes as far as a group of houses that formed a hamlet called Gokceler, a campsite called Alternative Camp and what looked like a fish farm.
What you want to do is take the dolmus, an 18 seater minibus than operates every 30 minutes from the hotel for the 15 minute journey to Bodrum with a fare of 1.250m tr lr. From the bus station in Bodrum you can go anywhere. The most popular model of dolmus is a 2,500 cc Peugeot J9 with a Karsan body.
I had a walk around Bodrum, it is a very busy little town with everything you could possibly want. Plenty of shops, restaurants and entertainment venues. I bought a nice pair of sturdy shoes for £20 and a belt for £4. There is a large harbour leading to an expensive looking marina. Plenty of tourist boat trips were on offer at good prices that generally included a lunch on board.
I took another dolmus, which runs every 30 minutes, to Yalikavak . The fare was 2.000m tr lr and the 20km journey took around 45 minutes. It is a lovely drive across the mountains past some old windmills and down into this fishing village on the north western coast of the Bodrum Peninsula. There are a few shops and restaurants with a market every Thursday. They have built a new marina and there are some boat trips for tourists. It is not commercial and is worth spending a couple of hours and having a stroll along the beach.
I also took a dolmus to Gumusluk on the western coast of the Bodrum Peninsula. This was another 2.000m tr lr fare for the 45 minute journey across the mountains and through some poor looking villages. Gumusluk is also known as Myndos "The sunken city". The Myndos civilisation sank into the sea due to an earthquake so there is a lot of history here. It is a small fishing village with a few shops and restaurants. I even managed to buy a copy of The Wall Street Journal to satisfy my lust for a serious newspaper. Looking across the bay you can see Asar Tavsan Adasi - known as Rabbit Island.
I took my last dolmus trip to Gundogan . This town is on the nothern coast of the Bodrum Peninsula and is a 28km, 40 minute journey from Bodrum. The dolmus fare is 2.000m tr lr and the route follows the coast past Torba, through a forest then drops down along the narrow streets of the town before finishing near the beach. Gundogan is a seaside village popular with the Turks for their own holidays. There is a working harbour where fish is caught and sold. There are a few small shops, some restaurants and hotels. There is a fair amount of building work going on, mainly of hotels that will enjoy the view of this lovely sheltered bay. This would be a very nice place to stay.
We got picked up from Club Milta at 01.30 after having a wonderful 14 days and because of the location we were the last people to be picked up before the airport. We wanted to have a late check out as the usual time is at noon. We decided with the other couple that we went with to keep one room on at an extra charge of £20 so that the girls would have somewhere private to shower and change. We had the use of this room until we were all ready to leave.
My final thoughts on leaving were what a lovely spot we had been in, the sense of community that we shared with our fellow European guests, the goodness of human nature and the friendliness of ordinary people. We partied for 14 days and fell in love with Turkey and it's people.
Tesekkur ederim.
My wife Gail and I went on a holiday to Turkey staying at the Club Milta , Torba - which is on the Bodrum Peninsula and part of the Aegean Coast. We booked with First Choice and flew from Bristol Airport on Monday 10th May 2004 returning on Tuesday 25th May 2004. We paid £562 each which included the travel insurance being upgraded to "Gold" and the allocation of Premium seats offering extra legroom.
Rather than pay a lot of money to park our friends car at Bristol Airport, we paid £45 to use the Park Farm - which is just off the A38 going towards Felton. You can park your car there at their secure site and they will then take you and your party the 600 metres to the airport. When you come back you simply stand outside arrivals and telephone them to come and pick you up in their minibus.
Our flight left at 21.00 on an Airbus A321 and was uneventful. The loading of passengers by the reps onto the transfer coaches was efficient. Our hotel was the nearest to the airport so we were only on the coach for about 30 minutes. Our hotel had 292 rooms and our room was on the ground floor, close to the stage. It was clean, with a tiled floor and a very powerful shower in the bathroom. There was a veranda with a couple of chairs and a table that looked out onto one of the gardens. There was a televison that had both CNN and the BBC World Service for English speaking guests. We had a free safety deposit box in one of the wardrobes. Our friends who booked with us, had the room next to us.
This is an all-inclusive hotel and offers excellent value for money. The food starts at 07.30 and stops at 02.00 - it is a self service affair with a canteen culture. There is plenty of variety for breakfast with two chefs cooking pancakes, omelettes and fried eggs whilst you wait. Lunch and evening meal has 16 hot food trays, a huge salad table and 5 chefs cooking meat, pizza or fish whilst you wait. There is no wondering how the food is cooked, just stand and watch. At other times the snack bar is open.
The bar opens at 10.00 and closes at 23.59 and serves all hot and cold drinks, alcoholic or not. You can have any locally produced beer - which is Efes lager, red, rose or white wine and a range of spirits. For those wanting a disco and/or more drink, the fun continues to 02.00
The swimming pool is very big and I guess is about 40m X 20m. It goes from 0.55m to 1.68m deep with a separate kiddy area. Be careful not to get sunburnt. I bought some NO-AD sun protection cream with a SPF of 45 (which is the strongest they do), cheap from ASDA . Gail thought it would be too strong for me but it did the trick. I did not get sunburnt but she did. Other holiday makers had also bought the same brand of sun protection and thought because of it's cheap price may not be effective but I heard of no bad reports.
Entertainment is provided by an animation team , who do a different act every night at 21.45 on the stage. A few evenings we had the extra entertainment of a singer/guitarist next to the bar from 19.00 - he was better than the full time entertainment staff and had a wonderful relaxed style. It is lovely having entertainment, eating and drinking in the open air. Bring a fleece jacket as it gets a lot cooler at night and enjoy sitting there, the remoteness of it all, looking across the bay to the northern coast of the Bodrum Peninsula. Everything is available on site and you soon feel to become part of a community. The entertainment follows a strict pattern and you soon recognize the links and the music. It has a flow that you get swept along with.
The beach at the hotel was very small but provided access for the watersports. I had a go with the canoe and other people used the pedaloes.
The location is rather remote but you are not cut off from the world and the hotel has it's own internet cafe which I used. It cost me 9m tr lr for an hour and they use the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser rather than my favourite browser which is Mozilla Firefox . The keyboard is Turkish so some of the keys are different and all the menus are in Turkish but the system is useable.
The hotel is very clean and the staff appear to be cleaning all the time. Their health and safety practices are spot-on. If a guest breaks a glass or something, a staff member suddenly appears with a pan and brush, as if by magic. One guy is continually mopping the side of the swimming pool. The staff work 15 hour shifts with only one day off a week but seem content and well motivated. The hotel is French owned and has a French feel to it, with French being the first language. The animation team also speak German and English.
At the welcome meeting our First Choice representative Pauline told us all we needed to know and gave us a street plan of Bodrum and Gumbet with the list of organised trips they were running. If you paid for a trip, you would get the £6 Bodrum City Tour trip free. We took the Turgutreis excursion for £8 which is on a Saturday - market day. Turgutreis is as far west as you can go on the Bodrum Peninsula and is a small fishing town with a new marina. It is very busy on a Saturday with something for everyone. Tourism is growing in Turgutreis mainly because of the marina and should become a popular resort in years to come. On the way back our coach stopped at a gold shop in the Oasis Centre . I did not go into this gold shop but looked at this shopping centre which looked trendy, new and fresh with plenty of food outlets to interest the visitor.
The Bodrum City Tour was very intersting and varied. We picked up other people at different hotels before parking on a cliff top overlooking Bodrum where our guide told us all about the history of Bodrum and what you can see from the cliff top looking over the town and the bay. We then went to Bitez for a 3 course lunch that was included in the price of the trip - even if you got it free! Bitez is a lovely seaside village and we ate at the Four Seasons restaurant, which is actually Chinese but does international food. I do not like Chinese food but they did a 3 course Turkish meal and it was lovely. So fresh, varied and tasty - it was a big change to the canteen culture at Club Milta. From there we went to the Oasis Centre where people had the chance to go into another gold shop or enjoy the site. Then we went to a leather shop that was rather pricey but they did put on a fashion show and gave us free drinks! After everyone had finished we did the return trip around the hotels before arriving back at Club Milta. I can recommend this trip as it gives you a perspective on Bodrum, which is quite like Brighton - Gumbet, which is like Blackpool and Bitez, which is like a typical Cornish fishing village.
We paid £19 each for the Dreamgirls Show in Gumbet. The price included admission, dinner, your first local drink and coach transport. This was a big change to the rest of our holiday. We may as well have been in Blackpool. The whole audience was British, the dinner was roast chicken with potato wedges and a tiny bit of lettuce and tomato. The caberet was provided by three drag artists who could never offend a grandmother. The drinks cost about the same as back in the UK. I could not recommend this night out to anyone - it was mediocre, the humour was light and the atmosphere was cheap - like an old fashioned British seaside town. If you wanted to watch three blokes dress up as women and mime to records after having typical cheap Britsh pub fayre then you would come away happy and would have not heard a word of Turkish spoken. That is not my idea of a foreign holiday - you can get that in Cleethorpes!
When you book your holiday you think the hotel is in Torba, which is a fishing village on the northern Bodrum Peninsula coast. The hotel is actually at Kaynar Mevkii, which is down a lane off the main D330 Milas to Bodrum road. You can walk to Torba from the hotel by turning right onto the main road but it will take you 65 minutes to get there. Torba has a few hotels, a few convenience stores and a harbour. Do not make a special effort to visit Torba as there are far better ways to spend your time. Do not go onto the main road and walk to the left as I did, as there is nothing but similar looking hotels as Club Milta - all backing onto the coastline. I walked for 90 minutes as far as a group of houses that formed a hamlet called Gokceler, a campsite called Alternative Camp and what looked like a fish farm.
What you want to do is take the dolmus, an 18 seater minibus than operates every 30 minutes from the hotel for the 15 minute journey to Bodrum with a fare of 1.250m tr lr. From the bus station in Bodrum you can go anywhere. The most popular model of dolmus is a 2,500 cc Peugeot J9 with a Karsan body.
I had a walk around Bodrum, it is a very busy little town with everything you could possibly want. Plenty of shops, restaurants and entertainment venues. I bought a nice pair of sturdy shoes for £20 and a belt for £4. There is a large harbour leading to an expensive looking marina. Plenty of tourist boat trips were on offer at good prices that generally included a lunch on board.
I took another dolmus, which runs every 30 minutes, to Yalikavak . The fare was 2.000m tr lr and the 20km journey took around 45 minutes. It is a lovely drive across the mountains past some old windmills and down into this fishing village on the north western coast of the Bodrum Peninsula. There are a few shops and restaurants with a market every Thursday. They have built a new marina and there are some boat trips for tourists. It is not commercial and is worth spending a couple of hours and having a stroll along the beach.
I also took a dolmus to Gumusluk on the western coast of the Bodrum Peninsula. This was another 2.000m tr lr fare for the 45 minute journey across the mountains and through some poor looking villages. Gumusluk is also known as Myndos "The sunken city". The Myndos civilisation sank into the sea due to an earthquake so there is a lot of history here. It is a small fishing village with a few shops and restaurants. I even managed to buy a copy of The Wall Street Journal to satisfy my lust for a serious newspaper. Looking across the bay you can see Asar Tavsan Adasi - known as Rabbit Island.
I took my last dolmus trip to Gundogan . This town is on the nothern coast of the Bodrum Peninsula and is a 28km, 40 minute journey from Bodrum. The dolmus fare is 2.000m tr lr and the route follows the coast past Torba, through a forest then drops down along the narrow streets of the town before finishing near the beach. Gundogan is a seaside village popular with the Turks for their own holidays. There is a working harbour where fish is caught and sold. There are a few small shops, some restaurants and hotels. There is a fair amount of building work going on, mainly of hotels that will enjoy the view of this lovely sheltered bay. This would be a very nice place to stay.
We got picked up from Club Milta at 01.30 after having a wonderful 14 days and because of the location we were the last people to be picked up before the airport. We wanted to have a late check out as the usual time is at noon. We decided with the other couple that we went with to keep one room on at an extra charge of £20 so that the girls would have somewhere private to shower and change. We had the use of this room until we were all ready to leave.
My final thoughts on leaving were what a lovely spot we had been in, the sense of community that we shared with our fellow European guests, the goodness of human nature and the friendliness of ordinary people. We partied for 14 days and fell in love with Turkey and it's people.
Tesekkur ederim.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Olu Deniz, Turkey - May 2003.
My wife and I went on holiday from Thursday 1st May to Friday 16th May 2003 at Olu Deniz in Turkey. We booked our holiday with First Choice and paid £583 each for 14 days All Inclusive at the Olu Deniz Resort Hotel .
At the welcome meeting they give you a guide which, if you read it from cover to cover as I did, tells you all you would want to know about Turkey. This is a lovely hotel set in marvelous grounds - it is like living in a garden centre. There are two gates at this hotel, one is the coast road and the other leads straight onto Belcekiz beach. The hotel is on the edge of the resort, which is about the size of Lyme Regis. The heart of the resort is only 10 minutes walk along the promenade. A lot of my family, friends and workmates questioned my choice of opting for an All Inclusive deal rather than having bed and breakfast or half board. Well, I definitely made the right choice! It was great not having to traipse around looking where to eat and not having to worry about the cost. Gail always wants a starter, main course and a pudding - she is not a cheap woman to feed and water!
I had the best food I have ever eaten. The range of food was huge, quality top rate and everything was thoroughly cooked. The taste is difficult to describe - so full of flavour, nothing was bland. You simply helped yourself to as little or as much as you wanted with no restrictions whatsoever. It was 14 days of feasting. I put on 8 pounds and Gail put on 10 pounds. From 00.00 to 07.30 you could only have drinking water. From 07.30 to 23.59 you could help yourself to umlimited food and soft drinks, including tea and coffee. From 10.00 to 23.59 you could have unlimited alcoholic drinks - no catches - just ask. There was Tuborg lager, locally distilled whisky, brandy, vodka, gin and raki. Red, white and rose wine. I enjoy real ale at home but I found the lager very easy to drink. I do not drink spirits but tried the local raki out of interest. It is a Turkish spirit very similar to Pernod. Wow, it certainly gives you a kick - great with lemonade. I had a number of these - great after the lager. The red wine was great with your dinner.
The staffing levels were very high - their morale was very good. Their customer facing was spot on. Not false and American, just personal. They all appeared to speak some English - all the signage was in English as well as the entertainment. The fun and games start at 10.00 and continue to 23.59 - the music is varied with a lot of euro-disco. The lead entertainer would talk in English and repeat the important bits in Dutch, German and Russian. There were 6 entertainers, 3 men and 3 women plus a Belgian DJ. The humour was rather gay but never offensive - I think it went over a lot of people's heads! At noon and at 23.00 there was the ritual of the "Club Dance" - you get the hang of it very quickly. It was done to a record called "Yaman Olacak" by Reyhan Karaca.
All the accomodation is either 2 or 3 storey with a balcony or veranda. Each room is air conditioned with full disabled access - ramps and grab rails everywhere.
The swimming pool is large with a big 1.8m depth swimming part. There is an amphitheatre for the 22.00 nightly show which was also used during the day for activities. I was very impressed with this hotel and can recommend it. It is aimed at families and couples, not stag and hen parties.
It was time to trim my beard so I tried the traditional Turkish Shave - 12m lira - for the experience. Nobody has ever shaved me before and boy do they fuss. Soap, more soap, massage, crack finger joints, more massage, more soap and shave. Pull the skin and not a knick. Nasal hair cut, eyebrows cut and ear hair singed with fire. Loads of lotions and potions - this is pampering, I felt like a real tart!
The resort of Olu Deniz is good. It is not for your living-it-large party drunkards or 18/30 disco fodder. It is not overtly commercial, it is not plebby or a mini Blackpool. There are no global chains - just small local businesses.
Going further west is the famous Blue Lagoon , the most photographed beach in Turkey. It is a well managed water park which is quite similar in character to Cosmeston Lakes . I had a stroll around and saw a camel, with one hump, sheltering below a tree. So I took a photograph of it and it's owner came up behind me and in English offered to use my camera for £3 and take photographs of me on his camel going around the car park. I got up on King Corbain and what a shock I got. When he was laid down he appeared the size of a dairy cow but when he got up he got higher and higher! Goodness knows how long his legs where! Around the car park we strolled, pausing for photographs. His owner gave the command for him to let me off and he knelt as gracefully as a kneeling coach. The path does not go all around the Blue Lagoon so I hired a canoe for an hour at 7 million lira - £2.80 - to see the other side. I have not had a go in a canoe before but the lagoon is so sheltered and calm I was not in any danger. The canoe was very light and I did not get wet. I mastered control after a bit and fully appreciated this nature reserve.
We got chatting to another couple and they had been horse riding . I have never ridden a horse and the price had always dissuaded me but they had only paid £10 and they were gone for hours. So I paid my £10 and was picked up in a minibus from our hotel at 15.30 and taken to a farm miles away from anywhere. The guy asked how often I rode and I told him never. So I was put on a female horse called Altin and off we went in a convoy of six. A leader at the front, four punters and another leader at the back. There was a metal ring at the front of the saddle to hold on to and the lead from her head. It was as easy as sitting on a bus! Up and down dale we went, along footpaths, through forests and around rocks. This was the back of beyond - and we ended up at Kaya Koy, a ghost village. Here the horses were rested and I bought a beer. After about 45 minutes we got back on the horses and went back to the farm the same way. I probally spent about 2 hours 30 mins on horseback and coupled with the free transport to and from the farm made this the best £10 I have ever spent on a leisure activity.
We went on an organised trip at £18 each for an Ottoman Night. We were picked up in a first class touring coach and taken to the ghost village of Kaya Koy where we had a guided tour around the abandoned village. Then we had a three course dinner and unlimited free drinks - all included in our £18 ticket. We were entertained by traditional Turkish wedding dances and a Turkish belly dancer. My dad was right when he warned me that belly dancers can be very erotic. We were then invited to join them in the dancing which was an absolute hoot! The drunken coachload left at around 23.15 - a great night out.
I was in the market for a new pair of shoes and caught a dolmus to Fethiye . A dolmus is a minibus that is used as a community taxi. The fare to Fethiye, which is 12km away, is only 2m lira - about 80p and you pay on exit. The market is every Tuesday and is huge. You can buy a lot of "genuine fakes" there. You need to be assertive because these boys can sell, really sell. The market traders either price their goods, where the price you see is the price you pay, or they haggle. With the hagglers you can use the guideline of making a deal at 70% of their initial offer price or, as I did, decide before hand how much you will pay and not budge from that. I was willing to pay £20 for a good pair of leather shoes. I liked one pair of shoes and the guy wanted £32 for them, which in his style eventually reduced to £23. I told him I was not there to waste his time and tried to walk away - two steps I got before he tugged my arm - "OK" he said and accepted my £20.
Our rep offered a trip to Dalyan for £19 but for £29 you could do the same trip plus afterwards stay at an hotel where you would have a room and evening meal and only a 20 minute transfer to Dalaman airport. As our plane was flying out at 03.50 were went for this option - as recommended by other internet users! We were picked up in a top class touring coach - I never knew that Mitsubishi did coaches - and were taken to a Turkish carpet making place. Women were making these carpets by hand - long and slow with double knots. Each carpet taking months, even years. I asked the guide why they did not use computerised machines and I was told that machine made carpets would only last 20 years while he claimed their hand made carpets would last over 100 years. I asked him if the women were browned off with such brain numbing work and he assured me that they knew no better and had always done this work. We then went to Dalyan and got on a boat and went up river to a Turkish Mud Bath. Gail and I chickened out of the gunge and smell and had a beer instead! Not far from the mud baths along the river bank I spotted briefly, just below the surface, a loggerhead turtle, which the area is famous for. We then went down river to a riverside restaurant where we had lunch, which was included in the ticket price. Then we went past some catacombs before arriving at Iztuzu Beach were we spent a couple of hours.
We sailed back to Dalyan were the coach took us to Club Alla Turca Hotel on the outskirts of Dalyan. This is a 60 room hotel in a wonderful location. There are mountains on both sides, no commercial activity - just a few farms - a true, peaceful retreat. I swam in the 1.55m deep pool gazing up at the mountains. The evening meal was a delicious hot and cold buffet affair on a veranda besides the pool. It seemed daft booking a 00.30 alarm call at reception for the airport transfer but it was right to get some sleep before the long journey home. This hotel was the last pick up point before Dalaman airport and is a brilliant way to end the holiday. It also gave us the chance to compare our hotel with others. There is nothing wrong with the Club Alla Turca Hotel but it is in a different league compared with the Olu Deniz Resort Hotel. You get what you pay for - and considering how much Gail and I ate and drank - I do not think they made much money out of us. Repeat business yes. We certainly had our money's worth - I dread to think how much a similar holiday would have cost us in Scotland. We were simply quids in.
Tesekkur ederim.
My wife and I went on holiday from Thursday 1st May to Friday 16th May 2003 at Olu Deniz in Turkey. We booked our holiday with First Choice and paid £583 each for 14 days All Inclusive at the Olu Deniz Resort Hotel .
At the welcome meeting they give you a guide which, if you read it from cover to cover as I did, tells you all you would want to know about Turkey. This is a lovely hotel set in marvelous grounds - it is like living in a garden centre. There are two gates at this hotel, one is the coast road and the other leads straight onto Belcekiz beach. The hotel is on the edge of the resort, which is about the size of Lyme Regis. The heart of the resort is only 10 minutes walk along the promenade. A lot of my family, friends and workmates questioned my choice of opting for an All Inclusive deal rather than having bed and breakfast or half board. Well, I definitely made the right choice! It was great not having to traipse around looking where to eat and not having to worry about the cost. Gail always wants a starter, main course and a pudding - she is not a cheap woman to feed and water!
I had the best food I have ever eaten. The range of food was huge, quality top rate and everything was thoroughly cooked. The taste is difficult to describe - so full of flavour, nothing was bland. You simply helped yourself to as little or as much as you wanted with no restrictions whatsoever. It was 14 days of feasting. I put on 8 pounds and Gail put on 10 pounds. From 00.00 to 07.30 you could only have drinking water. From 07.30 to 23.59 you could help yourself to umlimited food and soft drinks, including tea and coffee. From 10.00 to 23.59 you could have unlimited alcoholic drinks - no catches - just ask. There was Tuborg lager, locally distilled whisky, brandy, vodka, gin and raki. Red, white and rose wine. I enjoy real ale at home but I found the lager very easy to drink. I do not drink spirits but tried the local raki out of interest. It is a Turkish spirit very similar to Pernod. Wow, it certainly gives you a kick - great with lemonade. I had a number of these - great after the lager. The red wine was great with your dinner.
The staffing levels were very high - their morale was very good. Their customer facing was spot on. Not false and American, just personal. They all appeared to speak some English - all the signage was in English as well as the entertainment. The fun and games start at 10.00 and continue to 23.59 - the music is varied with a lot of euro-disco. The lead entertainer would talk in English and repeat the important bits in Dutch, German and Russian. There were 6 entertainers, 3 men and 3 women plus a Belgian DJ. The humour was rather gay but never offensive - I think it went over a lot of people's heads! At noon and at 23.00 there was the ritual of the "Club Dance" - you get the hang of it very quickly. It was done to a record called "Yaman Olacak" by Reyhan Karaca.
All the accomodation is either 2 or 3 storey with a balcony or veranda. Each room is air conditioned with full disabled access - ramps and grab rails everywhere.
The swimming pool is large with a big 1.8m depth swimming part. There is an amphitheatre for the 22.00 nightly show which was also used during the day for activities. I was very impressed with this hotel and can recommend it. It is aimed at families and couples, not stag and hen parties.
It was time to trim my beard so I tried the traditional Turkish Shave - 12m lira - for the experience. Nobody has ever shaved me before and boy do they fuss. Soap, more soap, massage, crack finger joints, more massage, more soap and shave. Pull the skin and not a knick. Nasal hair cut, eyebrows cut and ear hair singed with fire. Loads of lotions and potions - this is pampering, I felt like a real tart!
The resort of Olu Deniz is good. It is not for your living-it-large party drunkards or 18/30 disco fodder. It is not overtly commercial, it is not plebby or a mini Blackpool. There are no global chains - just small local businesses.
Going further west is the famous Blue Lagoon , the most photographed beach in Turkey. It is a well managed water park which is quite similar in character to Cosmeston Lakes . I had a stroll around and saw a camel, with one hump, sheltering below a tree. So I took a photograph of it and it's owner came up behind me and in English offered to use my camera for £3 and take photographs of me on his camel going around the car park. I got up on King Corbain and what a shock I got. When he was laid down he appeared the size of a dairy cow but when he got up he got higher and higher! Goodness knows how long his legs where! Around the car park we strolled, pausing for photographs. His owner gave the command for him to let me off and he knelt as gracefully as a kneeling coach. The path does not go all around the Blue Lagoon so I hired a canoe for an hour at 7 million lira - £2.80 - to see the other side. I have not had a go in a canoe before but the lagoon is so sheltered and calm I was not in any danger. The canoe was very light and I did not get wet. I mastered control after a bit and fully appreciated this nature reserve.
We got chatting to another couple and they had been horse riding . I have never ridden a horse and the price had always dissuaded me but they had only paid £10 and they were gone for hours. So I paid my £10 and was picked up in a minibus from our hotel at 15.30 and taken to a farm miles away from anywhere. The guy asked how often I rode and I told him never. So I was put on a female horse called Altin and off we went in a convoy of six. A leader at the front, four punters and another leader at the back. There was a metal ring at the front of the saddle to hold on to and the lead from her head. It was as easy as sitting on a bus! Up and down dale we went, along footpaths, through forests and around rocks. This was the back of beyond - and we ended up at Kaya Koy, a ghost village. Here the horses were rested and I bought a beer. After about 45 minutes we got back on the horses and went back to the farm the same way. I probally spent about 2 hours 30 mins on horseback and coupled with the free transport to and from the farm made this the best £10 I have ever spent on a leisure activity.
We went on an organised trip at £18 each for an Ottoman Night. We were picked up in a first class touring coach and taken to the ghost village of Kaya Koy where we had a guided tour around the abandoned village. Then we had a three course dinner and unlimited free drinks - all included in our £18 ticket. We were entertained by traditional Turkish wedding dances and a Turkish belly dancer. My dad was right when he warned me that belly dancers can be very erotic. We were then invited to join them in the dancing which was an absolute hoot! The drunken coachload left at around 23.15 - a great night out.
I was in the market for a new pair of shoes and caught a dolmus to Fethiye . A dolmus is a minibus that is used as a community taxi. The fare to Fethiye, which is 12km away, is only 2m lira - about 80p and you pay on exit. The market is every Tuesday and is huge. You can buy a lot of "genuine fakes" there. You need to be assertive because these boys can sell, really sell. The market traders either price their goods, where the price you see is the price you pay, or they haggle. With the hagglers you can use the guideline of making a deal at 70% of their initial offer price or, as I did, decide before hand how much you will pay and not budge from that. I was willing to pay £20 for a good pair of leather shoes. I liked one pair of shoes and the guy wanted £32 for them, which in his style eventually reduced to £23. I told him I was not there to waste his time and tried to walk away - two steps I got before he tugged my arm - "OK" he said and accepted my £20.
Our rep offered a trip to Dalyan for £19 but for £29 you could do the same trip plus afterwards stay at an hotel where you would have a room and evening meal and only a 20 minute transfer to Dalaman airport. As our plane was flying out at 03.50 were went for this option - as recommended by other internet users! We were picked up in a top class touring coach - I never knew that Mitsubishi did coaches - and were taken to a Turkish carpet making place. Women were making these carpets by hand - long and slow with double knots. Each carpet taking months, even years. I asked the guide why they did not use computerised machines and I was told that machine made carpets would only last 20 years while he claimed their hand made carpets would last over 100 years. I asked him if the women were browned off with such brain numbing work and he assured me that they knew no better and had always done this work. We then went to Dalyan and got on a boat and went up river to a Turkish Mud Bath. Gail and I chickened out of the gunge and smell and had a beer instead! Not far from the mud baths along the river bank I spotted briefly, just below the surface, a loggerhead turtle, which the area is famous for. We then went down river to a riverside restaurant where we had lunch, which was included in the ticket price. Then we went past some catacombs before arriving at Iztuzu Beach were we spent a couple of hours.
We sailed back to Dalyan were the coach took us to Club Alla Turca Hotel on the outskirts of Dalyan. This is a 60 room hotel in a wonderful location. There are mountains on both sides, no commercial activity - just a few farms - a true, peaceful retreat. I swam in the 1.55m deep pool gazing up at the mountains. The evening meal was a delicious hot and cold buffet affair on a veranda besides the pool. It seemed daft booking a 00.30 alarm call at reception for the airport transfer but it was right to get some sleep before the long journey home. This hotel was the last pick up point before Dalaman airport and is a brilliant way to end the holiday. It also gave us the chance to compare our hotel with others. There is nothing wrong with the Club Alla Turca Hotel but it is in a different league compared with the Olu Deniz Resort Hotel. You get what you pay for - and considering how much Gail and I ate and drank - I do not think they made much money out of us. Repeat business yes. We certainly had our money's worth - I dread to think how much a similar holiday would have cost us in Scotland. We were simply quids in.
Tesekkur ederim.
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