Michael and I have now been back in the country since Friday morning, and although we only spent a week in Tunisia, it's been weird adjusting to the heat, the sounds, and the view that we now wake up to back in England - and not only that, but the fact that we are once again at opposite ends of the country.
Most people our age have spent their summer heading off to Malia, Ayia Napa and various other party destinations, so we did feel a little like a 60 year old couple when we arrived at our couples hotel, but it wasn't long before we took a look around and realised that there were plenty of other young couples on their holidays too; because let's be honest, Ayia Napa isn't exactly a top destination for someone in a committed relationship anyway!
I'm so happy we chose to go to Scheherazade Couples Hotel. We looked through so many mixed reviews and honestly weren't quite sure what to expect when we arrived, but we were welcomed warmly and sent straight down to dinner, though we were a little too tired to enjoy it after a few hours travelling, but the Mediterranean theme that we got a taste of was delicious. Once we got to our room we absolutely loved it. The bed was set out beautifully and the room was lovely and clean.
The next day we were a little more awake and ready to enjoy the breakfast. I wish I'd managed to get a photo of the buffets each day, because they were always really impressive, but I felt a little strange snapping pictures of food! So I'll have to explain it to you instead: we had so many options for breakfast, to the usual eggs, omelettes, beef sausages (as they are a predominantly Muslim country), cereal, toast, this delicious thing called Ouji eggs which I had almost every day, pancakes, waffles and then an impressive amount of pastries and breakfast cakes, a plum & custard pastry being our favourite. You were spoilt for choice.
Onward we went to explore the hotel and it wasn't long before we were caught by Ali Baba. BEWARE. If you are going to visit this hotel and a man without a name badge approaches you just say no thank you. Ali Baba is a man whose real name I didn't care to remember, who does bookings for excursions. It's legitimate from what I gather but is much more expensive than the Thomson excursions, and you feel very forced into it. I think our first day was a little ruined by the stress he caused us after writing down a booking, handing us a ticket and then asking us to drop by £50 to him in an hours time, oh you can't do an hour? How about sometime today? Sometime today it is, see you later. Avoid him as best you can, and book with Thomson for a stress free, unforced and cheaper experience. We got out of handing any money over to him, thankfully, but he wasn't best pleased. Did we care? Nope! I don't understand why he's allowed to skulk around the hotel and pounce on guests, especially those who aren't used to such selling tactics!
Enough of that though! The rest of our day was lovely, with a beautiful view, an hour workout at the strange little gym for Mike, a welcome meeting with one of the reps, plenty of sunbathing and a lovely swim in the sea. Now the sea and beach is something that reviewers often commented negatively upon, but it's really not as bad as some people made out. People from the hotel are up in the early hours cleaning the beach of the washed up weeds, and a few cigarette butts here and there, and the beach is nice and clean by the time you go to sunbathe. The sea is immaculate in the morning, crystal clear. But when it came to the afternoon weeds did start to wash in - but that's nature and I wouldn't expect the hotel staff to gather up the weeds in the sea! There were some other bits off rubbish floating in the sea by the afternoon, such as bottles and wrappers, but it didn't come in ridiculous amounts, and moving to the pool wasn't much effort! Tunisia as a country isn't particularly clean, so it's quite impressive that the sea isn't swarming with rubbish in my opinion!
A wrong destination for lunch was our biggest mistake on day one - we went to the salad and bread only poolside lunch, rather than the cooked and much more delicious restaurant lunch, lesson learnt, we stuffed our faces for the rest of the week on the right lunchtime buffet! Like breakfast you're spoilt for choice; with pasta, meat in sauces, fish, veg, spaghetti, bread, a ridiculous amount of puddings and so much more, with a few chefs cooking up something at their station too. Whilst most of the dishes that were cooked on the spot were delicious, if you pay a visit do check them and ensure they are cooked! We had some undercooked food - including chicken and eggs - that you'd want to avoid! It didn't spoil our appetite though and it was all delicious.
The pool (which I never got a photo of!) was our favourite afternoon spot during the week, with music and entertainment set up from 3 onwards. This included some dodgy DJing by Asharaff - with a mixture of great music and some questionable choices - and later to join him came Hedi, infamous for his excitable, friendly and attentive nature. There was a mixture of entertainment from pool games, to cocktail making competitions, aqua aerobics, raffles and quizzes. Often we'd be offered a free cocktail, cakes and various smoothies all poolside to enjoy the entertaining show put on by Hedi.
The night time entertainment was always impressive. It followed on from dinner which was from 7 until 9:30pm. Each night was a different theme for the buffet, consisting of Tunisian (of course), French, Spanish, Mexican, Far East, Italian, Mediterranean and a special Black and White night. The Italian buffet disappointed Mike a little, offering only one type of pizza (the horror) and personally I too thought it was one of the worst. The best was the Mexican night, and I also enjoyed the French, but mainly because of the starter...French Onion soup mmmmm. You were once again spoilt for choice, and a few people who reviewed the hotel said that they didn't have much choice of what to eat during their stay. Our response to this is: HOW?! There is a ridiculous amount of food, and we found that to try everything each night we needed two plates full of food and a lie down afterwards! Some stuff was insanely spicy, but there was plenty of stuff that was cooler and some that wasn't spicy at all.
Back to the night time entertainment (always distracted by food). The hotel always did a good job with this, gathering us by the courtyard pool or the outside one, to watch dancers - who were amazing, extremely flexible, stunning and showed every woman in the audience up and had the men, my boyfriend included, gawking with his jaw dropped - sand artists, acrobats, belly dancers, musicians and others too which after our belly full of food we didn't manage to make it down to, laying on the bed like two whales washed ashore.
I'm so happy we chose to go to Scheherazade Couples Hotel. We looked through so many mixed reviews and honestly weren't quite sure what to expect when we arrived, but we were welcomed warmly and sent straight down to dinner, though we were a little too tired to enjoy it after a few hours travelling, but the Mediterranean theme that we got a taste of was delicious. Once we got to our room we absolutely loved it. The bed was set out beautifully and the room was lovely and clean.
We had a welcome letter, bottles of coke, water and red wine all in the room for us - but no cork screw so we didn't get to taste (and not enjoy, because I hate red wine!) the wine until a few days later. That was no bother, as all we wanted to do was crash out on the slightly hard bed - good for your back though!
The next day we were a little more awake and ready to enjoy the breakfast. I wish I'd managed to get a photo of the buffets each day, because they were always really impressive, but I felt a little strange snapping pictures of food! So I'll have to explain it to you instead: we had so many options for breakfast, to the usual eggs, omelettes, beef sausages (as they are a predominantly Muslim country), cereal, toast, this delicious thing called Ouji eggs which I had almost every day, pancakes, waffles and then an impressive amount of pastries and breakfast cakes, a plum & custard pastry being our favourite. You were spoilt for choice.
Onward we went to explore the hotel and it wasn't long before we were caught by Ali Baba. BEWARE. If you are going to visit this hotel and a man without a name badge approaches you just say no thank you. Ali Baba is a man whose real name I didn't care to remember, who does bookings for excursions. It's legitimate from what I gather but is much more expensive than the Thomson excursions, and you feel very forced into it. I think our first day was a little ruined by the stress he caused us after writing down a booking, handing us a ticket and then asking us to drop by £50 to him in an hours time, oh you can't do an hour? How about sometime today? Sometime today it is, see you later. Avoid him as best you can, and book with Thomson for a stress free, unforced and cheaper experience. We got out of handing any money over to him, thankfully, but he wasn't best pleased. Did we care? Nope! I don't understand why he's allowed to skulk around the hotel and pounce on guests, especially those who aren't used to such selling tactics!
Enough of that though! The rest of our day was lovely, with a beautiful view, an hour workout at the strange little gym for Mike, a welcome meeting with one of the reps, plenty of sunbathing and a lovely swim in the sea. Now the sea and beach is something that reviewers often commented negatively upon, but it's really not as bad as some people made out. People from the hotel are up in the early hours cleaning the beach of the washed up weeds, and a few cigarette butts here and there, and the beach is nice and clean by the time you go to sunbathe. The sea is immaculate in the morning, crystal clear. But when it came to the afternoon weeds did start to wash in - but that's nature and I wouldn't expect the hotel staff to gather up the weeds in the sea! There were some other bits off rubbish floating in the sea by the afternoon, such as bottles and wrappers, but it didn't come in ridiculous amounts, and moving to the pool wasn't much effort! Tunisia as a country isn't particularly clean, so it's quite impressive that the sea isn't swarming with rubbish in my opinion!A wrong destination for lunch was our biggest mistake on day one - we went to the salad and bread only poolside lunch, rather than the cooked and much more delicious restaurant lunch, lesson learnt, we stuffed our faces for the rest of the week on the right lunchtime buffet! Like breakfast you're spoilt for choice; with pasta, meat in sauces, fish, veg, spaghetti, bread, a ridiculous amount of puddings and so much more, with a few chefs cooking up something at their station too. Whilst most of the dishes that were cooked on the spot were delicious, if you pay a visit do check them and ensure they are cooked! We had some undercooked food - including chicken and eggs - that you'd want to avoid! It didn't spoil our appetite though and it was all delicious.
The pool (which I never got a photo of!) was our favourite afternoon spot during the week, with music and entertainment set up from 3 onwards. This included some dodgy DJing by Asharaff - with a mixture of great music and some questionable choices - and later to join him came Hedi, infamous for his excitable, friendly and attentive nature. There was a mixture of entertainment from pool games, to cocktail making competitions, aqua aerobics, raffles and quizzes. Often we'd be offered a free cocktail, cakes and various smoothies all poolside to enjoy the entertaining show put on by Hedi.
The night time entertainment was always impressive. It followed on from dinner which was from 7 until 9:30pm. Each night was a different theme for the buffet, consisting of Tunisian (of course), French, Spanish, Mexican, Far East, Italian, Mediterranean and a special Black and White night. The Italian buffet disappointed Mike a little, offering only one type of pizza (the horror) and personally I too thought it was one of the worst. The best was the Mexican night, and I also enjoyed the French, but mainly because of the starter...French Onion soup mmmmm. You were once again spoilt for choice, and a few people who reviewed the hotel said that they didn't have much choice of what to eat during their stay. Our response to this is: HOW?! There is a ridiculous amount of food, and we found that to try everything each night we needed two plates full of food and a lie down afterwards! Some stuff was insanely spicy, but there was plenty of stuff that was cooler and some that wasn't spicy at all.
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| The Black and White themed evening |
We visited one of the two bars on many occaisions, with our all inclusive spoiling us with cocktails, wine and many double vodka lemonades (I'm campaigning for our £9000 tuition fees to become all inclusive, so our food and alcohol is free!). The cocktails are hit and miss, some are delicious - mmm the Vodka Sunrise - and some are grose - personally I hated their version of a Strawberry Daiquiri. Most drinks taste a little weak, and as a Muslim country they themselves don't drink, which often means they don't put the amount of vodka in a drink us Brits would, but requesting a double always helps!
Overall, we had a very pleasant stay at the hotel. The reps - Tammie and Kirk - are on hand to answer any question whether it be reasonable, dumb or a bit ridiculous, the rooms are cleaned daily, the bar staff are very friendly and the receptionists are also helpful too. The grounds are beautifully maintained with one of the gardeners working in 42 degree heat on one occasion! Everyone at the hotel works extremely hard to make your stay a happy one, and if we weren't so keen to explore what the rest of the world has to offer, we'd definitely return.
That's not my holiday post over though! Keep an eye on my blog to hear about the area we stayed in, camel riding and exploring North Tunisia.
MissIsGoode
