Again in Taba, and the same Intercontinental
Were the second time in the Taba hotel "Intercontinental" from 18 to 25 May. The resort has fallen somewhat, either because of the crisis, or because of poor organization. There are few people. From Kyiv, one flight on Mondays, Few people travel from Sharm - three hours across the desert by bus. Of the foreigners were mostly Poles and Hungarians, a few French. Immediately striking is the large number of free places in the hotel. On Thursday-Friday, non-poor locals stop by with children's cries near the pools. The staff is more cheeky than last year, trying to make baksheesh. Again, the same showdown about bathrobes and slippers and a dirty room. I had to arrange a bullfight at the reception in such a way that even the manager came running to check the work of the cleaners. And when the wife joined in, the curtains in the room were changed. The food seemed to be depleted. Fruits are unripe, cut with a creak. Well, it's all negative. On the other hand, where else can you walk along the sea in the evening with half a kilometer intervals between the same motorists. Or leave the hotel along the coast - and you are already, practically, on a desert coast. Or evening tea with his wife under the Egyptian stars on the lawn near the room (the room was on the 1st floor). So there is something in that too. Since we have already been to Taba, but the time is only one week, so there was one excursion to the monastery of St. Catherine (the Orthodox monastery was founded in the 6th century, has been operating continuously since then + the burning Kupina + a library and a collection of thousand-year-old icons and other antiquities). The guide, whose name was Khabib, organized an individual tour for us, showed and told everything. (We liked the guide. A young guy, himself from Alexandria, studied in Ivanovo, earns money for his family in Taba). It’s worth visiting the monastery, it’s a specific place, everything is according to the Greek canon, the Orthodox are allowed to see the relics of St. Catherine and give out rings on this occasion. On the way back we stopped in Nuweiba, bought all sorts of nonsense, otherwise the prices in Taba (El Vekhala) are simply boorish. In general, the rest turned out to be quite good, the rating can be assigned somewhere - 4. Yes, the description of the hotel itself let us down a bit - there is not one five-story building, but a whole complex of buildings in the Arabic style.