There are 5 restaurants available. The first 2, Fountain (ground floor) and Olive Garden (1st floor above Fountain) are buffet style with no booking required. We found the Olive Garden to be the better as it offered daily theme nights offering food from different nations. If you book at least a day in advance, you can elect to go for your evening meal to O Fogo (Brazilian), Mexican or Little Italy. The hotel offers a Gala night every friday, where you can enjoy a a hot or cold buffet outside whilst watching the entertaining floor shows.

Ghazala Gardens Hotel

The hotel entertainment was ok. The day time activities included water gym, pilates, salsa and volleyball. On some evenings, the hotel provided two singers for entertainment. We had access to the sister-hotel; Ghazala Beach located on the opposite side of the road, which was near the private beach. Snorkelling was fun, when the sea was calm the fish were clearly visible and you didn’t need to swim out too far. There were sectioned off areas in the sea slightly further out which meant that you could swim around it to view the beautiful coral and fish but were not allowed to swim within this section. A money saving tip would be to ensure you don’t change very much money before you leave UK. You will get a significantly better exchange rate into Egyption Pounds (LE) in Sharm el Sheikh at local banks.

A day trip to Cairo and the pyramids by plane starts at 4.30am and costs 175 pounds uk. The flight time from Sharm el-Sheikh airport to Cairo airport is approx 1 hour. On arrival, some organised tours take you straight from the airport to the pyramids on the outskirts of Cairo in Giza. Our guide advised us that this was not a good idea, as it would be packed with tourists and the tops of the pyramids would be hidden under cloud.

The first stop was on a very wide bridge to view the massive River Nile. The next stop was to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. You need to pay 60 LE (Egyptian Pounds) to go inside. This is the main museum which houses lots of fascinating artefacts. There were a few interesting things including Tutankhamen's Mask, mummification tables and mummified animals which had been kept as pets by the royal families. For an additional 100 LE, you could visit the Mummies Room which had lots of Kings and Queens laid-out with some of the bandages carefully cut-away. This was rather eerie as some of the dead bodies were very well preserved and you could clearly make out faces, teeth and hair.

After a buffet style lunch at a restaurant near Giza, the next stop was the pyramids and the Sphinx. You need to pay 60 LE just top get access to the site of the pyramids. By far the most impressive was the Great Pyramid. You need to get there a fair bit before 1pm as there are restrictions as to the number of people they permit to enter this pyramid. They only let in 150 people in the morning and another 150 in the afternoon. The reason for this is that there is no ventilation within, so the oxygen quickly gets used up. The additional cost of entry to the inside is 100 LE. By this time, the cloud has completely burned off and it is incredibly hot. Entering the Great Pyramid is not for the infirm. There is a lot of crouching down and masses of climbing within, most at a 1:1 or 1:2 incline. When you eventually reach the top of the interior, you are in the small burial chamber. You will be dripping in sweat by this stage as the air circulation is restricted. The returning long descent down the same single-track steps is not very enticing. However, on exiting, the hot air outside is rather refreshing! The locals on camels try to persuade you to have your photograph taken with them for an obligatory Baksheesh (the local term for a Tip). After the pyramids, it is off to the very close Sphinx which is a very large stone cat which sits in front of all the pyramids.