We arrived at the hotel after flying a red-eye from Poland, so we were exhausted. They put us in rooms quite quickly, giving us a very good room. I'm still wondering if it is because we are Americans, traveling with a Polish group, though. :) It doesn't matter, I appreciate the wonderful location of the room--near the restaurant, beach and unheated pool.
Our room seemed huge. Someone suggested 50m2, though maybe not that big. The bathroom was large as well. We slept well. The beds were not too hard (sometimes at some of these resorts, the beds are like rocks). We managed to get up and make it to breakfast before it ended at 10 am.
The food was good, though not great. Breakfast was pretty similar the whole week with choices like French toast, some sort of pink meat that wasn' t ham (??), and of course, omelets. Each day someone made omelets for us, so I chatted with the person making them. Usually we had cheese, tomatoes, and onions to add to the one or two eggs you could get. While the griddle was a bit hotter than I'd prefer, the eggs were good. There was always cut up fruit which was mainly honeydew melon and apples and what looked like yogurt. I didn't even notice everything since I headed for the eggs and breads and fruit. The breads...yum. Croissants--plain and with chocolate drizzled over it, filled pastries with just a dab of fruit or a cream/puding type of filling. They were always made fresh. The juices, quasi, were pineapple, hibiscus, or orange. Always very cold, which I liked. You could also serve yourself from the soft drinks at breakfast if you wanted. They had tea and coffee, too, though I'm not a a hot drink drinker.
The others meals had a good variety of foods and each day was different from the next. We were very pleased. Even the Egyptian beef, which IMO, isn't usually very good was "okay to good" here.
The grounds were gorgeous in January. The flowers were in full swing and the scenery really could hardly be better. I compared our grass to other hotels when we picked up and dropped off people and ours was the best in the area of the hotels we went into. :)
Because the rooms are made up of several smaller duplex type buildings, it was scattered about. The place is quite large and you get some exercise walking from one end to the other. My kids spent some time at the heated pool, which was not really close to our room, so we hiked over there to swim.
The wind was strong in January, so even at 22C, it wasn't too warm. But it was beautiful.
The guys working the various bars were very helpful and esp. the big pool's bar. I had asked for Diet Coke the first day and they had none, but they got some in the second day of our stay and so I was able to drink that for the rest of the time. I fail to understand why they didn't fill the machines which were self-serve, however, since there was a slot for it. Maybe it had to do with the political crisis going on.
We went right during the beginning of the upheaval in Egypt. While we were there, no one at the hotel would have known that anything was going on except that the guys who had the various small stores all had their tvs turned on to the news to watch what was going on in Cairo. They assured us that in the vacation resort areas, however, things were calm. And they were.
All the hotels in Marsa Alam are pretty isolated from anything like a town. Because the complex of the Kahramana is so large, we had a bit of shopping right "on site" and really didn't have to go off to find scarves, film, flippers, goggles, etc. Because the Habbiba resort right next door was also part of the G & B complex, we could have used their pool as well, but we didn't need to.
The cleaning guy didn't know how to make animals or very many flowers with the towels though. As silly as it is, that was my biggest and ONLY disappointment in this hotel/trip. Overall, it was really relaxing and wonderful.
- Kahramana Beach Hotel
- Kahramana Beach Marsa Alam
- Kahramana Marsa Alam
