Hotel Safir in Hurghada Egypt

Along the red sea coast in Hurghada Egypt is a street called Sheraton road, it is full of shops and restaurants and it is busy 24/7. It is an amazing place to go on holiday if you want the hottest weather and a change in culture and you will never run out of things to do or places to eat. However it is that busy that I wouldn’t recommend in staying in a hotel on the road as most hotels in Egypt do not have double glazing and the cars on the road are constantly bibbing and honking their horns even throughout the night. That is why I picked the Hotel Safir, it is an amazing hotel at the far end of the road, away from the busyness of the street but still in walking distance to it, it is after all on the same road.

I have travelled to Egypt many times with my partner, we have been to the top of Egypt in Cairo and we have travelled along the red sea coast line all the way down to the bottom of Egypt in Luxor. We have stayed in many hotels, most of them above average because when we pick hotels we always do are research, however there is usually always at least one thing wrong with them, either the air conditioning is too noisy, or the food isn’t up to scratch, usually something that we just except because after all we are in Northern Africa. However the Safir Hotel has nothing wrong with it, and I mean nothing, it really is the most perfect hotel that we have stayed in.

When we first took a taxi to the hotel I have to admit that at first I was worried when the driver past the busy street and came to the end of the road, the entrance to the hotel was a little shabby and there was a lot of rocks and rubble around the entrance. At first I was convinced that I had picked a 1 star hotel and was ready to tell the driver to turn around, I’m glad to say that I didn’t. It may have looked rundown on the outside but when we walked through the entrance it was as if we had walked into the king’s palace. The floors were made out of marble and the décor was fit for The White House and the hotel lobby was huge compared to what it had seemed on the outside. After a twenty minutes’ drive from Hurghada airport we were hot to say the least, but the air conditioning in the hotel immediately cooled us down.

We were met at the entrance by at least four members of staff, the manager, the porters and a busboy called Ehab who we later took out for a meal because he was so kind to us and had helped us many times on our two week stay. We arrived at the hotel in the early hours of the morning at around 2am but the hotel has 24 hours room service, and when we checked in the manager asked us if we would like some free food brought to our room as a welcome gift. We politely accepted and asked for a burger and chip’s each and as Ehab took our bags to our room, the food arrived not long after. Ehab gave us a little speech before he left our room, it was a welcome speech that he had obviously rehearsed and it was a bit cheesy but it was just the start of how kind and friendly the staff was willing to be for us to enjoy our stay.

The hotel room could have put a few 5 star hotels in London to shame, it was the largest hotel room that I had ever seen, it had very quick and easy to handle air conditioning and quiet not like some of the rattling air conditioning that we have had to put up with in the past. It was clean and easy on the eye and came with a massive balcony that was completely secluded. The food in the hotel was very cheap, and if you had it delivered to your room there was only a small surcharge, we would often order food and drinks throughout the night even if it did make the staff think we were a little crazy, but hey we were on holiday.

My favourite thing about the hotel was the gardens and the swimming pool. The pool was pretty huge and never got overcrowded and the gardens had lizards and weird insects walking about that kept us both amused for a little while. The red sea was only twenty yards away from the pool, the private beach however was manmade which meant it was a bit gritty but this didn’t bother either of us, we had the red sea at our disposal with little Nemo fish swimming around our feet so the fake sand wasn’t a big deal. When it came to excursions we had hit the jackpot, it turned out that the Hotel Safir was one of the main hotels on Sheraton road where the excursions meeting point was situated. This meant that when we wanted to go diving or do any water sports we only had to walk out of our hotel room and onto the beach, while other guests from other hotels in the area had to travel to our hotel, and because we stayed at the Safir Hotel we had gotten to know the people who held the excursions so we got many excursions for free.

We spent two weeks in Hurghada and because we got to know the staff at the hotel, we got to go quad biking in the desert for local rates which cost about £9 each. That consisted of a 5 hour day, setting off at lunch time and being driven only 20 minutes into the desert as the desert in Egypt is never far away of course. We got to drive around the desert for a good 2 hours on the quad bikes and we drove out to meet the Beduins and spent time camel riding before returning to the outskirts of the desert for an evening barbeque. We were then driven back to our hotel completely exhausted and it was the most fun that I had ever had for five hours in my life, for £9 each it was worth it and if we had booked the same trip with the travel reps in the hotel it would have cost us about £45 each. The staff, the hotel, the food, everything and everyone in this hotel was truly 5 stars, and can you believe it only costs around £30 per person to stay there for a week, which meant it only cost us £120 for the both of us to stay at Hotel Safir for two weeks, unbelievable.