Marsa Matrouh – On The Road To Libya

Sign over the original hotel building.

The view of the public beach from Beau Site's private beach.

Saturday, August 14, 2009

Why go to Marsa Matrouh while in Egypt? Good question.  If you are in Egypt for only a couple of weeks, no need to put it on your list – it’s a bit far.  There are so many other fantastic and unique places to see in Egypt that skipping a beach town, as beautiful as the beaches are, would be OK.  Naturally, since my husband requires a beach of any sort for a vacation, that advice does not apply to us.

Marsa Matrouh is apparently a popular vacation destination for the locals.  I am a little puzzled by this.  Yes the beaches are beautiful but the choice of accommodations is limited and not inexpensive.

From Cairo, Marsa Matrouh is about a 5 hour drive.  Many stop at Marsa Matrouh before continuing onto Siwah, an oasis in the desert.  Once you hit the Mediterranean coast, you see miles and miles of desert with the sea shimmering tantalizingly out of reach beyond the road and unfortunately, many ugly concrete ‘villas’ and ‘resorts’.  It is beyond me how anyone can build some really ugly buildings on the coast for all to see and then someone else comes along builds even uglier buildings.  Well, there it is, a chain of very unattractive villas dotting the coast.  The villas do disappear after awhile and you are left with sand, sun and sea.

We arrived at Beau Site hotel around 5pm.  We had booked two rooms, a family room and a standard room.  When we were finally shown to our rooms, I was appalled.  Our room was behind another building, blocking the view of the beach.  The room was spartan and the bathroom miniscule (with a clogged drain as we later found).  We could have lived with that except for the stench.  The room, especially the bathroom, smelled like a sewer was running through it.  My in-laws’ room was no better and my mother-in-law and I were ready to cut our stay short, really short.  Given that we were paying nearly $200 a night for this (and that was because my husband snagged discounts as an Egyptian and Ramadan special) it was all too much to bear.  On top of all this, my older daughter was running a fever. 

Our stay included breakfast and dinner and we walked to the dining hall located right on the beach attached to the original building of the hotel.  Beau Site is supposed to be known for its food.  However, our dinner that night was not good.  We were striking out left and right.  We went to bed with our mosquito nets up (we brought our own) hoping for a better tomorrow.