Aqua Vista is, together with Aqua Blue and Beachalbatros Garden, situated in the second line from the seashore. It’s a quite new (4-year-old) building. Out of those three hotels, Aqua Vista is definitely the least impressive one when it comes to the view from outside but it is the best one when you get inside.
Aqua Vista has large swimming pools which are beautifully designed, with bridges and a shallow shore from one side which makes it feel like you’re on the beach. There’s loads of loungers, and some four-poster beds. You don’t have to take your own towels from home as there is a towel box by the swimming pool and each guest can get a towel and change it throughout the stay. You can take the towels to the beach as well. There are bars and restaurants along the pools and they constitute separate buildings with outdoor terraces. Big swimming pools, restaurants and straw umbrellas made the hotel areas spacy and more beautiful than in two other hotels.
In order to get to the beach you can take the bus that goes there every half an hour (though it is not that regular), the journey takes about 8 min, or go on foot for about 15 min which is very pleasant as the weather was not that exhausting. I love sun but it is hard for me to stand hot temperatures. In Egipt I had no problems with that – 40 Celsius degrees is hot but it is so windy there that you can really breath easily without sweating too much. The beach belongs to Beachalbtros Hotel and looks really nice and clean, however one day we couldn’t stand the wind that caused dust and sand flying everywhere so most times we spent time at the lovely hotel poolsJ Next to the beach, there was another beach belonging to Albatros Palace and there was a small but really nice reef. It is worth going there to observe colorful fish etc. There isn’t any town center around the hotel but you can use the area of all three hotels so you definitely won’t get bored. Hurghada is just 15 minutes away by taxi and it is the best transport though we obviously had to bargain. The price should be 4-6 dollars one way depending on the number of people going. Hurghada itself is not so nice and it is definitely best to go there in the evening, but it has a beautiful marina with boats, bars etc.
Aqua Vista consists of six three-floor buildings of about 40 rooms. We got a beautiful room in building number 4 with a wonderful view on the pool area, restaurants and even the sea in the background. The balcony was spacy and so was the room, there’s a safe in each room, the bed was comfortable. The bathroom was modern and clean, wasn’t shabby. There was a hair-dryer in the bathroom of course (if you want to use it as it takes 5 minutes to dry hair outsideJ) Once a small lizard appeared in our room and we couldn’t reach it beacause it was on the ceiling, but we treated it as an adventure;-)
In general, people from the service were very nice and most of them spoke English. The rooms were cleaned every day, accurately enough to satisfy guests. The barmen and waiters were very nice and friendly, though sometimes seemed exhausted and sluggish probably because of the Ramadan. The pools were kept clean all the time.
There are animations only in Fench but you can attend international animations is Aqua Blue just 200 meters far. There are some parties and shows and one will definitely pick someone for themselves. Anyway, the French animations were nice, too with songs and dances etc. However, other nationalities rather didn’t take part in games and events because of the language barrier. If you want to go to a bigger club, you can pay and go by bus which is organized twice a week by the international animation team. The club’s name is Havana and it’s quite nice if you like parties. If you just want to see it, I wouldn’t recommend it. Mix of people and prices makes it not worth it unless you want to go crazy in the foam.
Definitely the greatest plus of hotel Aqua Vista is food. There were four restaurants: Asian, Italian, Fish and one general. The food was excellent and choice very wide – from soups and main dishes to desserts and cakes. Everything was delicious.
Unfortunately, there were some minuses of this stay as well. Firstly, we had to call room service a few times. We got a defective safe and after the first intervention, everything seemed to work fine. But one evening it broke down again and we couldn’t open it. The problem was that all the money and telephones were in the safe. At the reception we heard that opening the safe would be possible only at ten in the morning next day. I was very nervous so I asked them firmly and they somehow managed to open it in the evening. After that, we stopped using the safe. Then another day we couldn’t close the door so we called for someone. He came and clattered a few times, closed the door and we thought it was fine. Next morning it was worse – we couldn’t open the door and get out. We called the room service and waited almost an hour until he forced the door. He had to change the lock and we were barely on time for breakfast.
I wouldn’t recommend the shops in the hotel area as it is difficult to get normal price. It is better to buy souvenirs at the airport – there’s a great choice and prices are ok. If you decide to buy something in a shop by the hotel, be extra-careful as the shopkeepers tend to swindle.
In Aqua Vista, most guests were French and Russian, there were more Poles in Aqua Blue. Russians often didn’t care about the queue at the bars or restaurants which could be annoying even for me (as I usually don’t care about various national habits). The Poles happened to be very rude to us, drunk and shouting. Pity. Another thing is that everyone from the three hotels could use the area of all the pools. Because the pool area of Aqua Vista was the best, a lot of people were coming from other swimming pools. As a result, we couldn’t find a free four-poster beds after breakfast. Nevertheless, there were loads of very nice loungers so it wasn’t a very big problem.
A bigger problem was (though I didn’t hear about it before) the fact that Aqua Vista, Aqua Blue and Beachalbatros Garden’s guests were allowed to use only one third of the beach. The rest was reserved for Beachalbatros’ guests. It wasn’t too much space for us…
Smaller disadvatages were: slippery floor at the swimming pools (my brother almost broke his toe, had to call insurance company, pay 15 dollars for the phone call before he went to the doctor, fortunately, the medical service was of high standard), material curtain instead of glass door at the shower – a little unhygienic, and cleaning service waking us up by loudly knocking early in the morning, even though we hanged the information “don’t disturb”, they were tenacious. Anyway, they probably changed the people cause after a few days it stopped, though we didn’t complainJ
The last thing I want to mention are the excursions that we took. I wouldn’t recommend them. Giftun and snorkling was nice and worth it but do not rent any mask from them, I was accused of breaking it though I did not and they wanted me to pay shouting at me. It was horrible. Luxor was worse, not very well-organized with a nice guide though he had poor knowledge (unless he didn’t want to share it;-) All the products in the places that we visited were extremely expensive and not worth their prices. Lunch was extremely poor and not tasty. The same were the breakfast boxes that we got – we laughed when we saw them. I’m not exagerrating as I saw people’s boxes from other hotels – at least they were fresh.
All in all, Hotel Aqua Vista was brilliant and I had a wonderful time even in spite of those minuses. The area and food were so nice that the minuses were quickly forgotten.