Hammamet Le Saphir / Hammamet Village Review

Overall Rating

Sun, entertainment, hotel facilities, beach, ...everything !

None !

Intro:
I stayed at the Hammamet Village last September for 2 weeks. I was there with 5 friends of mine. What a nice vacation it was.

Hotel:
It's a 3-star hotel, but it's days are way gone. so now I think it could be classified as a 2-star but who cares. As long as I have a place to crash and a place to wash - I'm all set. Bungalows are great, we were getting drunk and playing crazy games, scaring the girls in the other room and all that stuff.

Entertainment:
There are 3 bars serving alcohol, beer is diluted with water, after couple of days of drinking that I got ill and I had to eat some carbo pills to stop it (but it's normal in Tunisia). Stronger alcohols are thinned as well, but guys got the thinking: gin is diluted with tonic, rum with Coke, and vodka with Sprite. They won't give you more than one drink per visit so it kinda sucks.

We were starting at the closest bar, taking drink walking up to another for a beer, and going to the furthest one for another drink, and so on, and so on. It worked, but still we couldn't get drunk with this.

I would recommend ordering MUSCAT, the local 17% sweet wine, whenever possible. It's not diluted because the crew didn't invent with what they can dilute it. The shots are small so the approach is: walk up to an empty bar, order muscat shots, drink immediately, and then order vodka-with-Sprite with Coke for example.

Sometimes the barmen were in a good mood so they were nice to people and served fancy stuff - they were adding this disgusting green mint liquor to colorize the drink, or some fruit liquor, or coconut. whatever it was added to, it tasted awful, don't drink it.

If you give the barman a tip, you may expect some generosity, like he would open a "fresh one bottle of BOUKHA" (boukha is their local vodka). the "fresh one" meant that it was an empty bottle filled with the dilute. Barmen have to improve their skills when putting the bottle caps - the "fresh" Boukhas had red caps while the original is white... funny stuff.

So all you need is strategy there, but it makes your vacation kinda like James Bond or something.

Pools:
One huge pool, very nice, 3,5 meters deep. and another small one, very nice too. There was even a small pool for kids, but it was out of order for the rest of our vacation. Hopefully we didn't bring any kids with us.

Every morning there was this "aperitif" game by the huge pool. Kinda noisy because one of the guys was screaming something from his booth, so you couldn't really take a nap, but vacation is not about taking a nap, is it. He knew many languages, and his name was SIG BOU, I'll remember that name forever.

The guys were not allowed to drink at work so they gladly accepted any free drink from us, so that they could get at least tipsy for a while. I even shared a plate of fries with one of the guys - what an exceptional moment.

The best thing is the ping-pong table. we basically spent the whole time there. Ping pong ping pong, that's the way she goes.

Food:
A nice scrambled egg every morning is what you need to start a good day in Tunisia and you have that guaranteed in Hammamet Village. The scrambled egg was sometimes too raw, but the cook didn't understand English, so it's literally impossible to explain him anything. He just does his job.

Lunchtime was always crowded with greedy ones standing in the line ready with their plates. We were always late for the lunch, so we never get the tasty looking chicken wings, but I got one once, and I think KFC does better job at chicken wings. The food is alright, I was happy with my daily intake of fatty fries, burned potatoes, and some meat scraps. I was eating until I was full, and when the food was gone I was packing myself with terrible cakes. I don't recommend eating watermelons or other raw fruits, unless you wash them properly.

The dinner time was kinda romantic, candles on the tables. Thanks to Hammamet Crew I now know Sade's "Smooth Operator" by heart and I can sing it at anytime. It's a valuable quality to know that song - think a bit and you'll know what I mean - girls love that song.

Between lunch and dinner you can get free pizza and fries from the pool bar, don't eat pizza. I need not to say more.

Beach:
A bit far from the hotel, but a bit of walking can do you good. The beach is very nice, there are loungers but the Crew wants money for using that, so it's up to you.

Outro:
Bring your booze. you have to drink a lot of REAL alcohol every evening to kill the germs from the Tunisian food.