|
Amar Sina Resort
Sharm El-Sheikh
By
Daniel Lanier
Those of us, which occasionally or regularly spend a vacation
in a typical holiday resort, know it: If you’ve seen one, you’ve
seen them all! It doesn’t matter, if it is a five-star resort or
a three-star facility – their design is too often an uniform,
assembly-line production, built by bored, uninspired designers.
Not that the tourist doesn’t feel comfortable. But sometimes he
may look from his balcony down to the usual pool, next to it the
usual pool bar, surrounded by the usual two or three-story modern
or kitshy apartment buildings – and he may feel somehow
unsatisfied. Everything seems to be a little bit too perfect, too
predictable, too standard, not unlike a first-class home for the
aged.
The little four-star resort »Amar Sina« in Sharm El-Sheikh
follows the same pattern, apartment buildings around a pool, but
it is different, very different. It has a soul, a »special
style«, as the hotel’s brochure writes it with a touch of
understatement. The owner is also the architect, and one feels it
everywhere, that he wanted to create a place not for tourists, but
for friends. With great fun and an appetite for detail and a sense
of harmony, he designed the apartment buildings, each one unique,
in a slightly rustic Nubian style, interlocked with each other to
generate as much shadow as possible, with different oriels,
balconies, terraces and wooden shutters, unobtrusively enriched
with rural Nubian ornaments, playful red brick walls, wooden
Nubian benches in front of the houses or shipwreck planks
integrated into the masonry.
The rooms are simple, but tasteful and cozy, equipped with
warmly tinted wooden furniture. The daylight shines through four
glassy bricks on the dome-shaped ceiling, each one in a different
color, so that the room’s atmosphere changes with the course of
the sun, yellow in the morning, red at noon, green and blue in the
afternoon and in the evening. Clean bathrooms, AC and satellite TV
are standard. The honeymoon suite features a romantic four-poster
from brass, so narrow, that bride and bridegroom, as the hotel
owner explains it with a smile, can’t escape from each other.
The swimming pool, near to the houses, looks like a private hidden
oasis. It consists of the main pool, a paddling pool for children,
a thermal pool and a Jacuzzi.
The guests have the choice between several restaurants, for
example an Italian restaurant, a seafood restaurant, the Ali Baba
roof terrace and the marvelous Bedouin Tent. An internet café is
open 24 hours per day, but think twice before you’re going to
print out e-mails. The price at LE 3 (80 cents) per page is
indecently high.
The hotel organizes all kind of activities, water sports, horse
or camel riding, desert safaris, and it hosts the Colona Dive
Club. Last but not least, the private Red Sea beach is located one
kilometer away from the hotel, where deck chairs and beach service
are free of charge to patrons and it is easily reachable by the
hotel’s free shuttle bus service.
One of the most fascinating attractions of »Amar Sina« is the
Egyptian farm behind the resort, with traditional Egyptian houses,
a garden, an oriental restaurant and a little zoo with pigeons,
ducks and other animals, especially popular with children. The
guests are allowed to get their breakfast there if they want, with
fresh and warm home-made Pita bread, vegetables from the garden
and fresh eggs from the chicken house.
Many of the guests return again and again to »Amar Sina« or
recommend it to their friends and relatives, apparently because
they really felt at home there.
»Amar Sina«. Ras Umm Sid, Sharm El-Sheikh. South Sinai.
Egypt.
Telephone: +20–69–6622-22 or -23/24/25/26/27/28/29.
Fax: +20–69–662233. E-mail: amarsina@sinainet.com.eg.
Prices per night including breakfast: Single $ 32. Per person
in a double room $ 22. (Prices increase during high season,
reservation in advance recommended.)
|
