В плену Таласса Captured by Thalassa

We will try to save your time reading a useless review - if you answer yes to the following three questions, you do not need to read the review, you will go there regardless of what we wrote:

1. You are traveling outside the Russian Federation for the first time. It doesn’t matter, for the sake of interest or for the company, but in general Kabardinka / Gelendzhik / Anapa / Crimea / Sochi is the best vacation of all time!

2. Only the sea, the sun and the beach are important to you. The sea is already slightly cool, because the end of the season, but you can swim. It is also filled with jellyfish, which periodically "visit" tourists, but you may not be disturbed anymore, because they promised a cold snap, and they do not respect it. Well, the beach, in fact, is almost “white” sand, mixed with cigarette butts, which, however, can be carefully sprinkled on them.


3. You are either not particularly fond of reviews (then you won’t read to this point), or you don’t believe them (then why are you reading?
), or hope for the Russian "maybe" (like us).

Each topic will be written BIG, skip those that you are not interested in.

Go!

TOUR OPERATOR

We were traveling with the Pegasus company. They most often came across adequate prices (monitored for two months) and there were no additional "extortions". We were met, quickly (30 minutes somewhere) taken to the hotel, at the “rally” they didn’t strain us much, although, of course, they “pushed” commercially profitable shopping trips, from which they have a percentage. Other tourists said that there is a hotel group in VK, where there were many complaints about Olesya (the hotel guide). She once helped us (more on that below) to solve a difficult (or rather idiotic) situation and was the only representative of the tour operator whom we saw at the hotel every day (and there are four Russians in this hotel - Pegasus, Coral, Anex and someone so insignificant that I forgot).
God grant that you do not need the help of a tour operator, but it is better to have his representative on hand (in this hotel - 100%).

TOURS. We were only on SUPER TUNISIA, and there was nothing to see there:

1) a hundred-meter mini-market of the "capital" with "correct" prices at least 2 times higher than in a store near the hotel;

2) a mosaic museum, where a guide who speaks poorly in Russian will retell you the plot of Homer's Odyssey in the style of Kolobok;

3) lunch in a small five-star hotel, where the food is better than in your big four-star hotel;

4) the Tunisian "Santorini" of two huts, which greatly amused us, who saw the Greek and lived in the Egyptian;

5) three stones and one phallic symbol left from the Carthaginian bath No. 1.

There was neither desire nor strength for a two-day excursion to the desert.

Of the shortcomings - the next point.

AIRLINE

"Northern wind" or NORDWIND

Firstly, it will leave you without breakfast / lunch / dinner if you fly to Tunisia from Moscow.
Secondly, from drinks they will offer only water, but unlimited, which is a plus!


Thirdly, it registers “from the tail” of the aircraft, so the best places will fall to all lifelong “latecomers” and non-residents (like us)!

Fourthly, he sells seats in the aisles and at the exits for "green".

Of the pluses: the greedy we in both directions received absolutely free of charge the places described in paragraph 4, because the greedy ones did not buy them all! Conclusion: reduce prices, gentlemen, air carriers!

HOTEL

“I love to have fun, and especially to eat! "- one of our friends used to say. In this hotel, she would not die of hunger, but she could well go crazy from boredom. But in order...

As for FOOD: food seems to be there, but it seems to be not there. For breakfast, you will be offered an omelette and / or (not always) scrambled eggs, croissants and all sorts of rolls (unlimited), sausages (my sister said - soy), cereal (or crushed to?
version), yoghurt (or sour milk tinted white/pink), jams, some vegetables, pancakes, donuts, muffins, sometimes halva...I don't remember anything else because they didn't eat it. Pancakes and egg dishes were popular with the people, and “kilometer-long” queues lined up behind them. Coffee in the main restaurant could only be drunk during breakfast if you had enough cup.

Here's what's interesting: we were told that at the end of September (and this is almost the “final” of the season) there were 1000 guests in the hotel, and no more than a hundred cups were taken out to the restaurant, the same number of plates. And for every (except breakfast) meal, the restaurant was opened 10-15 minutes later than the stated time, so a decent crowd managed to gather at the entrance, which (not being guilty of that) looked like a herd. I can imagine what happened in July! About serving, dirty dishes and garbage on the tables - I am silent. The Egyptians, in comparison with the Tunisians, are pedantic cleaners!

As for lunch/dinner: its main problem is the main course! You'll find side dishes (pasta, rice, and powdered puré e), salads (mostly cabbages of all kinds), crappy tomatoes and tasteless cucumbers, standard sauces, lots of boiled vegetables, unlimited olives and black olives (which is a definite plus for lovers like me). But you will almost never find edible meat or fish! They exist, but they cannot be eaten. The meat is all rubber, the fish is tasteless, at the sight of the chicken we asked: “What holiday is today? » Half of our friends had problems with their teeth and gastrointestinal tract. Guests with children complained that they (especially babies) did not eat anything and showed indigestion (vomiting, diarrhea). For children, the hotel only has a mini-water park. No food, no entertainment.

But at least the kids did not understand what humiliations their parents and other uncles and aunts had to go through in order to get something edible for themselves.
Quest is the right word! People stand in huge queues for a small piece of meat, there can be no question of an additive to take for two (companies in flight), you still need to persuade. With all this, in front of your eyes, without a queue, a huge (most-most) piece will be laid not even by the Tunisians themselves (of whom there are three cripples, and then on a day off), but by their neighbors - the “Parisians” from Algeria (yeah, and we are queens Victoria and Elizabeth of England). From the European contingent - 10 British, 10 French, 10 Germans (including a drunken granny with a bump on her forehead, who was especially indignant at the small container in the bar) and Mr. Hotel. There were also: a couple of Belarusians and 900 Russians, including five citizens who identified themselves as persons of Tatar nationality.

Especially it should be noted TARA in bars - these are glasses of 150-200 ml, of which you can get no more than 2 pcs. alcohol + 2 pcs. bezalki in one hand.
Of course, we are not proud ...we will come two or five times ...And you stand at the tap for 14 hours without a break ...Well, something like this. But what the heck!! ! This is wildly humiliating!! ! Healthy adequate men are forced to beg for a normal portion of alcohol in a bar, as if they were some kind of drunkards. And all this under the vile jokes of the bartenders.

It is strictly forbidden to take food out of the restaurant! You can’t openly ...Even an apple, if you don’t defiantly eat it on the go. This is, of course, game. But the strictness of the law, as they say, is more than compensated… What to do if you are already inside!?

A la carte is a waste of time. There is the same crap, but in smaller quantities.


Desserts and fruits. Who cares, but we just had enough. Personally, I didn't need anything other than melon. The sister was content with watermelon, apples, plums and twice with grapes.

ENTERTAINMENT, as it were.
“Like” is the best friend of our “hotelier”: like four stars, like all inclusive ...In the restaurant twice a week, a saxophonist performs five compositions, twice a local uncle sings to the accompaniment of a synthesizer, Latin American music sounds in the pool bar in the evening, which the bartender thinks Russian. During the day, Chicks do yoga and aqua aerobics, teenage girls fall in love with animators, older girls fall in love with "Parisians", forty-year-old "grandmothers" like us ...suffer from boredom. At 21:30, the kids dance their five dances cutely, then everyone watches vulgar tricks and forty-year-old “grandmothers” like us dance their five dances cutely. At 23:00, the camp announces a retreat.

There is also a water park, as it were, but it works for four hours, there are not enough cheesecakes for everyone even in October, even on a weekday, so we rolled up a couple of times and left this business to the “youth” and “Parisians”.

WiFi is free as well. In the lobby.
But in fact there is no Internet, especially when literally a hundred people gather there. A local sim card can be a way out of the situation. But there are few gigs on it, so the output is also “sort of”.

The TERRITORY, in fact, is small, mediocrely cleaned. We paid attention to cleaning. And that's not good! We sunbathed near the pool, which was being cleaned at that moment. Tourists who have vacationed in Turkey, for example, will understand what I mean - they do it so early there that you come "with everything ready. " Even after the hellish storm! And in Thalassa, after an average thunderstorm, there was a srach for three days!


On the territory of the hotel there are a couple of shops with quite reasonable prices, which can be lowered below the neighboring "fixes". The "elephants" (a kilometer to the left of the hotel) have a couple of shops, cheaper and richer in choice - the left one. We had a good conversation with the owner's daughter and got a 10% discount - a trifle, but nice. And so - on the way to the elephants there are three more shops. The taste and color, as they say ...
We had a VOUCHER ROOM in the main building, but at the time of check-in there were no free rooms, and we were sent to bungalow 131. We were so tired that we did not argue and did not unpack our suitcase until morning, hoping to leave this dirty place with ancient polished (once) furniture. The next day, we (on request, free of charge) were provided with an option in the building to the left of the entrance in front of the lobby from the street side, first floor, room 2001. Normal room, but 1.5 times smaller with a high balcony and a view of the "pit". We stayed in a bungalow. And our adventures began!

SERVICE. We stayed in the bungalow and found that our toilet was leaking. We turned to the "receptionist" Med. Silence. Contacted again. On that day, we remembered the review about the staff who visits the rooms strictly when you are inside. The master came when I was in the shower. And he did not come half an hour later, as I asked him.
In the evening, Olesya translated our complaints to another "receptionist" and agreed on the repair and cleaning of the room. The dissatisfied "spotted" manager received a "bream", however, we saw the master and cleaning only a day later, when I caught the "spotted" one on the territory, which I now knew by sight. My sister joked that my "Help me please" gave her convulsions. However, it ended up helping us a lot. There has been a series of thefts at the hotel.

Perfume was stolen from our friends and three neighboring rooms. A safe with money and documents was taken from a family’s room, they were urgently asked to leave, and their tour operator did not help them in any way. However, I digress. Remember "spotted"? She broke into our room twice at a time when we were not usually there. And we decided to use the old way to determine if someone entered through the door, which hangs a sign "Do Not Disturb".
They would put it on “stop” for the season and watch the miraculous transformation of a terrible caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly.


SAFETY can be described by three facts:

1. in 10 days at the hotel, we saw the beach "patrol" twice

2. hotel security - unarmed guys who are engaged in "cleaning" the beach and repairing umbrellas

3. on the day of the tour at 6:30 in the morning, only a "receptionist" and a lone unarmed security guard were found in the hotel, who brought us 10 yesterday's croissants for an "early breakfast"

That's why it's important! With us on the tour were people from the hotel, in which (after they landed in the evening the guide told us) there was a terrorist attack several years ago, a man shot tourists on the beach. On that day, all the cameras were turned off, no one was found, the hotel operates under a new name.

SUMMARY

We tanned and even got a little better. Will we come again? No. On vacation, we like to relax. There is enough tension and stress at home.
"Think for yourself, decide for yourself... "

Your Queens Victoria and Elizabeth of England