Hotel Siva Grand Beach

The location was good, there wasn't even as much aviation noise from the nearby airport as I had expected, but like this you got quickly integrated in the city life and there was always something going on in the evening.

The rooms were okay. We had only booked a bungalow room. But we couldn't use the balcony, as the plastic chairs and tables were covered in a thick layer of dust (probably because of the construction site next door). Well, that could have had all kinds of reasons. Apart from that our room was tip-top in the afternoon again everyday (that was probably also due to the 4 Euro tip we left the room boy everyday). We had forgotten to bring our shower gel and after we had used up the testers we asked the roomboy to get us more, after 4 days it got refilled again (that should normally be standard).
But as we already knew Egypt, we also knew their motto: NO TIP, NO EFFORT...
But in any case some regular guests who were not as generous with the tips had a worse time than we did and their room still hadn't been cleaned by 4:00pm.

The food was okay, though it was too bad that the selection of fruit was relatively limited (like I said, I compared it to the offer of other all inclusive hotels). There was freshly squeezed orange juice (very delicious) everyday, but we had to pay 2.50 EUR per person extra for it ( I would have preferred a buffet of fruit, from fresh oranges to fresh pineapples, but nobody would have drunk the juices then). The waiters were overactive in the morning, afternoon and evening and tfried to sell us the "shows in the evening" (Oriental night, Carribean Night, American NIght etc., which also cost converted into Euros between 12 and 15 Euros per person plus drinks!). Like this we quickly spend 60 Euros one night, as the wine was as expensive as the theme night - well, it was always worth the experience, but this added quickly up to additional 300 Euros a week. The cocktails didn't taste so good, but a glass of red wind (which was included) at dinner was also okay. What annoyed me was that there were "lines" at dinner though there were several restaurants and despite the vacant tables the waiters assigned the tables to you. If you were very thirsty, it could happen that you were almost done eating by the time you got your drink. Apart from that everything was mostly okay and like this you could get mightly amused about how eager the waiters tried to sell ouzo and other drinks you had to pay for to the guests.

I know that it wasn't a sport hotel but I had still expected a better offer. (Water aerobics could have been called retiree sport 50+ and yoga was pretty much the only offer for women apart from that there was beach volleyball or soccer for men or you booked a surfing course at the beach at extra cost - you could get the most out of that).
The pool chairs on the beach were pretty much okay, and unless you were highly overweight, it was not very likely that the pool chair collapsed while you were lying on it, but a few wobbly chairs were among them. Apart from that is was always very clean, tidied up, but too bad that the beach bar didn't open until 11:00am, it would have been good, if it had opened one hour earlier. But there were those huge water containers everywhere for self-service, so nobody died of thirst.

I already mentioned the rooms, they were okay, as we had booked a Junior suite, but you are only in the room for sleeping anyway, aren't you?

In this category it was probably the best hotel we could have stayed at. The age average was about 50+ (probably due to the time of the year), but by and large it was a nice holiday - like I said, if you don't expect much, you won't get disappointed!