Hammame Les Citronniers Reviews

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General comments: Dates: 26th sept - 3rd Oct 07. Hotel: Hotel Les Citronniers, Hammamet

INTRO
Okay, I've been thinking about how I should write this and I'm going to try and portray our holiday as much as possible. So I'll start at the beginning. I hope you manage to read all of this if you plan on staying at this hotel or even visiting hammamet because I wish I'd read a review like this before our visit! I've titled the paragraphs so that you can slide and skip bits if you want to.

THE BEGINNING
We booked on a late deal from Sept 26th - Oct 3rd. We arrived very tired as we had got a 7am flight from Gatwick (check in at 3.25) and didn't realise quite how long the baggage reclaim and transfer would take. We arrived at the airport early at 10.30 instead of 11am, but didn't all get on the coach until 12.30, then proceeded to drop everyone off, we were one of the last and got to the hotel at about 2pm ish. By then we were tired of being given things to fill out and very thirsty from the hot journey.

THE FACLITIES AND THE ROOM
We arrived to a smoke filled reception / lounge / bar with horrible black leather seats and a very stern gentleman on reception instructing us to fill in yet another lengthy form. We reluctantly perched on one of the leather seats engulfed by the smoke and filled them in. The porter then took our suitcases up to our room, which we were pleased with, as it was clean, looked like it did in the pictures! And they had done their best to give us a sea view room as requested (in the far distance, over the road and through the tree's we could see the hammamet walls and 5cm of sea!). I would like to add that the staff became more helpful and it turned out to be the language barrier that made them seem rude inititially. Whilst we're on the subject, the language is an issue and ideally you need basic french at least if you want to eat what you ask for in any of the restaurants.

When we arrived in our room, I was surprised there were no tea / coffee making facilities, also seeing as we can't really drink the water, having no fridg meant warm water most of the time. So as lovely as the room was and the balcony too, it felt a bit restricted when we were in there as we couldn't order room service or enjoy a drink etc without going downstairs.

BREAKFAST
The breakfast is simply either plain croissants or chocolate ones, sliced baguette and some jam and butter choices, there is canisters of tea or coffee and juice, it's served between 6.30 - 9.30 am. My husband enjoyed this more than me and loved the warm fresh baked ones first thing. In the end he just brought me up a couple while I slept a little longer!

MOSQUITO'S OR INSECTS ETC
We didn't have any problems with insects of mosquito's etc although we did have a plug in at night so that could have helped. I didn't see any creepy crawly's in our room or even on the balcony which was a bonus!!

THE POOL
The pool was nothing like I expected. The picture makes it look like an open space and a large pool, it's actually and gap between two buildings and the pool is no bigger than a children's sized swimming pool at a leisure centre. It's very enclosed and there is no view, even tree's to take in whilst you relax, also the pool bar wasn't open at all and the dress code for the bar inside was no swimming costumes. But I relaxed and decided not to care for a couple of the days taking a dip or too and forcing myself to lounge.

THE BEACH
This was the best bit! There is a private section for the hotel, the bar spreads out with old wooden benches in the sand so that you can chill with a beer with the sand in your toes, the breeze in your hair and the sea, lovely! The umbrellas stopped going out after a couple of days though due to a heavier breeze which meant us white English people couldn't eat there much and had to go in the sheltered bit. But still a lovely view. We enjoyed lunch almost every day at the beach snack bar, anything from burgers to fried calamari, it was lovely! We'd recommend the steak sandwich! yum!

HAMMAMET RESORT
Now it took us a while to get the hang of the resort of hammamet itself. We missed our rep welcome meeting because frankly it was our first day we were at the beach and couldn't be bothered to de-sand ourselves and return to the hotel! But we were left a list of excursions and through the 24-hour hotline booked 2 at the last minute. (Onto those in a moment).

Hammamet is basically made up of 3 parts in a way, you've got Yasmine - beautiful Californian type boulevard with palm tree's and a long stretch of beach with posh hotels and restaurants on the other side of the road, this is also where the port is and any boat trips will go from here. Then there's a stretch of wide spread hotels and sporadic shops or restaurants for tourists and the other end Hammamet centre. This is where the pretty walls are, which is in fact a medina and due to it being Ramadan (not sure of spelling) only tourist restaurants were open etc. Taxis are approx 4-7 diners to yasmine from Les Citronniers and Hammamet centre is about 5 - 6 diners. Please remember to negotiate your taxi fair before you get in! We forgot every time! Also they are only allowed up to 3 passengers in their taxi, if you end up sharing with other people don't let them squeeze more in, the police can stop them or they will drop you off if they see police.

RAMADAN
This was a whole other thing we would have liked to have known about!! Who knew the entire country was fasting! So anywhere that isn't high on tourists was closed. We trusted a taxi driver who said we should go to Nabuel! Big mistake, only the market was open and after avoiding all the hagglers and touts we realised that we were hungry with nowhere to go, no pubs, no restaurants, nothing!! And we paid 15 diners to get there! Only the restaurants surrounding Les Citronniers, Yasmine and Hammamet centre had restaurants open.

TOUTS! SALES SALES SALES!!!
Oh my lordy! We were so tired of saying 'no thank you' by the end of the holiday. And it wasn't just them, everyone! Restaurants, "you come eat, we look after you, free ice cream?" every single one you pass. Shops "you buy now! We have good things you like?" and the medina or the market! arrgh! Not relaxing at all, we were scared to look as we were immediately attacked with forceful sales pitches! And then on the beach, there you are bikini straps down, not really in a flattering position on your sun lounger (which you pay for with 2 diners on the beach) and again "Donuts, donuts" or "lovely rugs" or "shoe's" or "camels, necklace" blimey!!. I even got woken out of a nap at one point to say "no thank you!!".

DONUTS
Although I have to say there is one guy that does donuts, the guys that work at the beach snack bar seemed to know him, these donuts were amazing!! Lovely chocolate real freshly made massive donuts! but don't take the ones from the guy who almost hymns "doooonuts, dooooooooooonuts, anybody want dooooooooonuts".

DRINKS / ALCOHOL
Firstly, don't drink the tap water, the local shop has a large 1.5 litre bottle 0,500 diner each, (1 diner for 2 bottles).

Right now, more importantly - alcohol, everyone has a drink they like. I think hot sunny holiday, I see myself lazing by the pool with a lovely cocktail. My husband, although partial to beer, likes a good whisky and coke. Okay it was probably mainly due to our lack of funds that we didn't get to enjoy this. A beer from the hotel was the cheapest we found at about 2,400 diners (about £1), a cocktail (restricted choice mainly vodka, I managed to persuade them to put Malibu in a couple of times!) is 10,000 diners (about £4.50) but tiny!!! I took about 2 gulps, maybe 3. Whisky was again 10,000 but only for 1 shot. There is a pub called 'The Queen Victoria" part of le Hammamet hotel that had beer for 4,400 diner!!! Exactly the same beer, don't go there!

So anyway, we resorted to beer, bloated tummies and a slow sleepy lull of tiredness rather than the nice high we get from our spirits. So we thought, it's okay we'll find an off-licence and put some spirits in our room, then we can buy soft drinks and mix them, chill on the balcony and be happy. No. Spirits? What are they?! Nowhere, no off-licence, we asked these young guys at a market stall in Nabuel and they said no one drinks because of religion so very expensive and elusive. A bottle of whisky is over 100 diners there! That's like 40 / 50 quid! And we're talking normal whisky, JD etc.

EXCURSIONS:
We went on the Camel Caravan & Anchors Away excursions, Friday and Saturday.

ANCHORS AWAY - Le Sultan - Friday.
The coach trip did the usual rounds of picking people up and was a little long but bearable. The boat looked amazing! Proper pirate ship with sails and oh you know what I mean, I don't know the right words. We were quickly all rubbing our sun cream on ready to set sail and began to be surrounded by some young pirates with no tops, dark tans, eye patches and rugged clothes on. One of the more clothed pirates had an eagle and proceeded to perch it quickly on each persons shoulder then take a photo and moving on to the next. The eagle looked a bit fed up and irritated but did as it was told. We all knew that this meant they would be selling the photos and a couple of people managed to sneak some snap shots of their own. I'd recommend everyone swapping cameras before and taking each other's picture!

Then as the ship set sail very scary and exciting pirate music played and the pirates began swinging from the sails and ropes, climbing to the tops of the masts and shrieking in pirate form. It was very exciting! I stood high and looked out to sea pretending I was that lady in the movie (whatever it's called). All seemed well, lovely view relaxing, the music was playing the background Tunisian / belly dancing type music. Then there was a show apparently. We were most of us forcefully pushed onto the centre of the ship and they proceeded to make us do silly dance moves to le bomba! I enjoyed that but my husband was not impressed! I also was not prepared wearing a bikini top with not much support and being told to shake it! Apparently this was enough to impress them as I was then surrounded by all 4 of them and they jokingly (yet quite rudely) pushed my husband away from me and told me I had been chosen as Miss Pirate and the prettiest woman on the ship. As much as I could see they were playing a part, shoving my South African husband repeatedly was not really the best move. Luckily he smiled through his annoyance. We also had a pirate attacking us one by one for photos again. Then we were given a tiny break, but the music got louder. We took the opportunity to stare out to sea and try and have a nice moment. But every now and then the pirates would bite one of our bottoms, or whip us with their plastic sword or just make a silly comment. What was funny began to get annoying!!!

Then we stopped and got the chance to swim in the sea, this was nice, but I did feel a little more wary of bearing into my full bikini as they kept making a spectacle of me calling me miss pirate etc. However, we enjoyed it, had a nice dip and they provided some light snacks, which was basically either sausages or fish and some salad & bread. Then some coke. After that, back onto the deck and just when we thought we could enjoy the view, another show! They tried to drag me up and I refused this time, they took 3 girls up and it was kind of a pain inflicting show. This guy basically stuck spikes and metal things in himself to entertain us and the girls were there to push in the spikes or stand on him etc!! So I was glad I didn't go up! The rest of the trip was a mixture of trying to avoid them, loud music and some nice moments looking out to sea. I have to admit when they began the belly dancing I did want to join in, but my husband was so wound up by then I decided to stay with him for a bit. At the very end of the trip I did join in and show them how to do it! What they didn't know is that this English girl does belly dancing lessons! ha! so it was fun seeing their shocked faces.

CAMEL CARAVAN
Lovely. This was great. The first bit not so, we got dropped off at a market in the middle of nowhere for 1 and half hours, Way too long we were round the market in 20 minutes and there was nowhere to sit, drink or eat or even go to the loo. But after that on the camels was great fun and then back for a little dancing, dressing up as Arabs and eating some of their bread they make in pots etc. The mint tea was delish too! We loved this excursion. Although wear some repellent and be careful to cover up your feet, I had flip flops and now have a worrying looking rash on my ankle I'm going to get checked out at the doctors tomorrow.

SUMMARY
So to sum up, if we were to return to Tunisia, we would make sure we had at least a fridge in our room or go self-catering for some independence. We would take a couple of bottles of spirits or buy them in duty free before departing the airport etc. We would probably not go to les citronniers and much prefer somewhere with a pool that went onto the beach or at least was open, large and had a view and probably look for a higher star hotel that may have measure in place to prevent as many touts approaching you on the beach. Yasmine is probably the best place to stay. We would also take more money!!! :)

FLIGHT HOME
Once you are in departures there is no way to get money and some of the places do accept diners (despite what the rep told us on the coach!!) The best thing to do is keep at least £10 sterling on you from the beginning of the holiday to have on your return. We ended up having to go back through customs get cash out in diners and getting it changed to sterling which they changed as £3 per 10 diner, which is well, quite poor frankly! The cash point is on the right hand side of the escalator on your way up to the departure lounge for those that need it.

Our advice - if you or anyone travelling with you likes to be left alone or gets irritated by pushy people (or men!) then don't go OR go to a high or 5 star resort that will stop these people getting to you. But for late September it was hot and for my South African husband he was able to get a visa on entry within 10 minutes for only 10 diners, which allowed us to get the late deal.

We wish you a happy holiday and hope you have a more prepared time than we did :)

ginat90's review has yet to be rated - Be the first!
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Stayed at the Bel Air Hammamet, very dirty resort, hotel very tired and needed updating, music blasting out at the pool (no chance of sleeping). Karoake cancelled every night, rubbish food, warm spam and margarine type cheese, hard bread for breakfast. Dinner never was sure but I and many guests had a bad stomache ache for a few days.

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From the moment we arrived, until the moment we left, we were made very welcome by all the hotel staff. Service in all areas of the hotel was excellent, and the rooms were cleaned daily. The pool is clean and well-maintained. It is about a 5-minute walk to the beach, where the hotel has its own snack bar in the shade, with sun-loungers for rent. Our group consisted of 2 adults and 4 children aged between 12 and 18, and we all enjoyed our 7-night stay at Les Citronniers, so called after the lemon ...

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This is a wonderful hotel for those who want a quiet stay in Tunisia. Family run by the brothers Chebbli, there is a wonderful atmosphere here. They really try to meet guest's needs and usually succeed. This is only a two star hotel in terms of facilities but the service is five star. Not ideal for families. The pool is small and there is no children's entertainment at all. Staff are super friendly and very helpful. Meals are superb both English and Tunisian cuisine.