Сервис по-кубински Service in Cuban

Hello! Today I want to talk about a trip to Cuba and the Paradisus Varadero hotel. We rested in Cuba in July 2014, Transaero flew from Moscow to Varadero, the flight took 12 hours 20 minutes there and 10 hours 50 minutes back, tiring, but worth it. The level of service in Transaero has increased compared to 2010, when I last flew them, everyone was given blankets, the entertainment system worked, in general the flight went well.
Of course, Cuba is a socialist country and we didn’t really count on chic service, but we expected to see more, no matter how, and the hotel is five-star, but in reality it’s three stars, and even then with a stretch.
We arrived at the hotel at lunchtime, settled immediately, but no one was waiting for us, there was no soap, towels and other accessories in the rooms, it was stuffy in the room, as it turned out later, the air conditioner did not work. Of course, after a 12 hour flight, I wanted to take a shower, but the maid went for towels and returned an hour later, which spoiled our mood a little.

The standard room is large with a balcony, but the furniture and plumbing are old, and on the penultimate day the glass door fell out in the bathroom and broke into small pieces, fortunately I managed to get out on time. The incident occurred at 1700, and the maid came to remove the fragments only at 2100. At the same time, no one made any special apologies in connection with the incident, they only offered to move to another room, but since we had a check-out the next day, we refused .
Here is another interesting story with beach towels, there were three of us in the room, and there were only two beach towels, no matter how much they asked the maid to bring another one, she didn’t bring one, we had to pick up one towel when we moved from one room to another. They couldn’t find a house for exchanging beach towels for a long time, as it turned out there was only one, despite the fact that the beach is large, and if you live in houses located closer to water activities, it takes quite a long time to go to it, and even then it’s not always possible to change a towel succeeded, as they constantly ran out of them. To which the staff said that the guy who brings the towels is delayed and will be around at 3 pm, when the clock was only 8 am. In general, the Cubans are insanely lazy, and the quality of their work did not improve at all if you left them a cookie or a euro, or an Alenka chocolate bar. All this happened in standard rooms, I can’t say anything about the improved rooms, the so-called “Royal Service”, outwardly the houses looked more interesting, but I don’t know what is inside and what service is there.
But not everything is so sad, the Atlantic Ocean made it possible to forget about all everyday troubles, the water is clean, calm and very warm - 28 degrees at an air temperature of 31 degrees, there are no algae and any sea creatures, the beach is wide with white soft sand.
The hotel works according to the "All inclusive" system - everything is free, restaurants, water activities, mini-bar. The hotel has one main buffet restaurant; grill bar, which works only at lunchtime; snack bar and 4 a la carte restaurants - Japanese, Italian, Mexican, "For love", they need to be booked in advance.

The buffet is not bad, meat, fish, seafood, pasta is prepared in front of you in the amount you want. A la carte restaurants, to put it mildly, were not impressed, in a Mexican restaurant they brought scrambled eggs for a snack, the main course: meat, chicken, fish or shrimp, to choose from, but everything was cooked the same way, dessert - cakes and ice cream from the main restaurant. After the a la carte restaurant we went to the main one.
The mini-bar consisted of a bottle of water, beer and soda such as Coca-Cola, Sprite and Fanta, as they called them differently. On the territory of the hotel there is a currency exchange office, a shop and a medical center, everything does not work around the clock, but according to a schedule.
The hotel is quite far from the busy part of Varadero, with cafes, shops, souvenir shops, about 15 minutes by taxi. There is nothing near the hotel, nowhere to go, but in the evening there were interesting concerts and shows in the hotel.
In general, I liked the rest, I can’t say anything about other hotels, but as it turned out, Paradisus Varadero is one of the best in Varadero, according to locals. In general, if everyday trifles do not bother you, go to Cuba to enjoy the wonderful ocean.