I'm a made redundant resting salesman and someday I'll enter an opinion on the fact that kids mothe...
I'm a made redundant resting salesman and someday I'll enter an opinion on the fact that kids mothers are nanny goats or should that be the other way round.I think I better add that I live in Co Londonderry, N. Ireland
Member since:31.07.2000
Reviews:31
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Well well the time has come for me to let all you happy Ciaoers (?) into the benefits or the pitfalls of holidaying with the Arabs. Mind you this is only as I see it, other people may have different expectations and desires for what makes a good holiday. In case you haven’t read any of my other holiday opinions and even if you have but not realised it. I go on holiday to relax, lie in the sun and potter around whatever town we’re staying in. I’ve travelled miles to get there so why do I want to travel many more miles once I get there. I know there are people who do this to see the sights but that’s not my cup of tea. I don’t want to come home and bore my friends showing them pictures of well known features of that country because it’s really a form of boasting, you know the been there, done that sort of bragging. Don’t get me wrong I do take pictures on holidays but of the place we’re staying in, the friends we make, the topless female sunbathers you know the sort of things people can relate to back at home.
One night in September 99 my wife and I stepped in to a Tunisian Airway jet plane at Aldergrove airport at 22:00 hrs, we were embarking on another late deal 1 week holiday to Tunisia. As we boarded the plane the only thing we knew was that we
were staying in a 3 star hotel half board somewhere in Tunisia for 1 week. We arrived in Monastir airport at 02:30 local time so there was not a lot to see. The holiday rep told us we were staying at the Royal Beach Hotel in Sousse.This of course meant nothing to us but we smiled anyway. About 1 and a half hours later on about the 5th stop we were disgorged at an hotel that literally sat on the beach, the back bit did anyway. We were shown to our room that contained 1 double bed, a built in wardrobe with an upper shelf, a small dresser with 2 drawers and that was it. There were no chairs because there was no room for them.
The next morning as I was talking to the manager about changing rooms and him saying how surprised he was because nobody else had complained he explained that sitting on the beds was normal in Tunisia. Anyhow he changed us to a bigger room but this had a double and a single bed in it and it took me an hour to convince him to take the single bed out. This meant we could lay our suitcases flat on the floor for the 1st time because we were going to live out of them for a week, cupboards being a nonessential furnishing seemingly in Tunisia.
We were there half board so I went down for breakfast the next morning and it was awful. The majority of the 30 odd people in there at that time appeared to be Scandanavian or German and if the breakfast fare was for them then they have a strange diet. It was a buffet style meal of rolls, hard boiled eggs in their shells in warm water, lumps of solid white stuff bearing a look alike resemblance to lard, a form of coarse bread that looked like it would come in handy for shining up knockers, door knockers in case some readers had other ideas, tea, coffee and nothing that bore any likeness to bacon and eggs or toast. The evening meals, we tried it once, were of the same quality or should I say lack of it. In short if we’d paid the full price for this holiday I’d have felt very hard done by because the food as the 2 of us saw it was appalling. As usual we found a couple of good value, good foodrestaurants nearby and pitied the people eating in the hotel because they’d paid top whack to do so. It made me realise that our holiday preference of S/Caccommodation was a wise decision but unfortunately it was not an option this time.
Sousse is a town about half way down Tunisia’s Mediterraneancoast. It has a commercial harbour and miles of sandy beach. The town has many shops, stores, cafes and there is a big outdoor market every Sunday where haggling is the done thing. The currency is the dinar which is a closed currency, ie. You cant get any before you arrive and you can’t take any home with you. We went with sterling Travellers Cheques and these were changed at the hotel as required. I checked at the bank out there and found the hotel’s exchange rate favourable.
We had heard many stories about shortage of booze since this is an Arab country, we were told you’d only get it in your hotel and it was expensive. What a load of poppycock, while there’s not a bar/café every 100 metres as in Spain, Portugal etc anywhere we ate we could have as much alcoholic drink as we liked at prices slightly cheaper than home. I must admit I didn’t see any bottles of spirits for sale round the supermarkets so if it’s part of your holiday bring your own.
I wrote earlier that we stay more or less where our tent is pitched but we do venture a little bit so we took a taxi the 5or 6 odd kilometres to Port El Kantaoui which was a much smaller town built round a large marina. The marina complex has many shops, cafes and bars scattered around it and it was nice to walk in somewhere to have a drink without lots of local men sitting drinking coffee and eyeing up the wife at the next tables.
The weather was fabulous, even in late September, although one afternoon we had what could only be described as a mini monsoon. For about a couple of hours it bucketed down then stopped as quickly as it started but there was water every where, vast puddles, water cascading down the hilly streets and torrents poring out of holes in rough brick walls but in an hour, apart from the rapidly diminishing puddles, you wouldn’t have realised the amount of rain that fell earlier.
Now the question is would I go back there? I doubt it. I’ve never been on a holiday where I spent so much time in my accommodation more or less trying to find something else more interesting to do. It’s OK lying about on the beach in the sun but if that’s the only option it sort of loses its appeal.
In conclusion I would say we never found all the things most people complain about like being hassled in the street and touchy feely advances on women happening although one man offered me a camel for my wife and I was tempted but I suspect an eagle eyed zombie at Customs and Excise might have realised the thing with me looked nothing like the passport picture so I had to turn him down.
It's nice to read about a place I can't go to ever(I'm Jewish)..LL
superpricee 19.11.2001 17:06
Although I've no experience of your hotel, I went to Sousse for 2 weeks a couple of years ago, and it's the ebst holiday I've ever had. Found the folks friendly, nothing too dear, Port el Kantoui was a very nice place to spend a day, and the medina in sousse has to be the dirtiest, smelliest place I have ever experienced. The hotel we were in (can't remember it's name) was huge, and the rooms had loads of space, cupboards, and chairs! Great op Peter. cheers - Ricky
Bickle 21.09.2001 22:47
I enjoyed reading this. I missed you Peter. One thing though, I just hate seeing English food i.e., bacon and eggs when I've travelled hundreds or thousands of miles to see another culture. The hard bread could have been German rye bread. The white stuff was probably white butter, don't you get that in the darker reaches of Ireland then?
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![Global Treasures Sousse Tunisia [DVD] [NTSC]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/83339623.jpg "Global Treasures Sousse Tunisia [DVD] [NTSC]")
Aug 30th, 2001
very helpful by (100%):
