We travelled to Tunisia with Just Sunshine tours (via Secret Escapes) for a 7 day all inclusive stay. The hotel was excellent, although some people were initially in unrefurbished rooms and complained. Our room was excellent – sea and pool views. Having read very mixed reviews on this property I was looking forward to seeing for myself. My sister and I spent a week here. The staff were very friendly and mostly very helpful. The food was plentiful with lots of choice if you wanted to eat it! You needed to be very careful in making those choices as the food varied considerably in all the restaurants. We took advantage of the all inclusive chance to eat in the A La Carte restaurant twice. We had the choice of 2 at most 3 dishes for the main course when we booked! -Not when we arrived in the restaurant! and No choice for the other courses. Not my idea of A La Carte. The Tunisian meal was horrible, we had lamb which had a great big knuckle bone in it with very little meat on it for which we were very grateful as it was so tough the knife nearly bounced off it. The couscous was dry with no taste and very gritty! A number of people walked out! Having said that we very bravely, I thought, went back for the Lebanese night. It was different again, very tasty, well cooked and a pleasure to eat. The main restaurant seemed to have little or no idea of quality control as two trays of the same food could be very different.. ie totally overcooked and rock hard or nicely golden brown and a joy to eat! The food did seem to improve as the week went on but I am still not sure if it did or if we got used to it or if we got to know the right choices to make! There was wifi in the hotel, but in our room it was a different connection – I think it covered all the hotels in the chain. There was another connection in the Reception area which was slightly better and just for the hotel. The connection was very poor and kept dropping out so I was unable to down;load my newspaper for the whole of our stay, although my sister got hers for 3 of the 7 days. It would be inadvisable to rely on it if you have urgent business needs – even emails did not always arrive. I cannot praise the staff highly enough – they were delightful – even before we tipped them – and all our needs were dealt with. The all-inclusive nature meant a relaxed attitude to ordering drinks – the barman in the piano bar provided us with a surprise cocktail each night when we asked him for "something different" from our usual tipple. At £499 for 7 days, this was very good value for money. The dinar is a closed currency so you had to change money at the hotel – but a fixed exchange rate everywhere. We only went on one trip as we were only there for a short time- to El Djemm (the second largest Roman amphitheatre in the world) and Monastir. I would recommend a holiday in Tunisia, especially as the French Government is apparently boycotting it!
