5 Star Hotel My Arse

Well it just goes to show you cannot accept anything on the Internet as real and genuine. I arrived at the hotel after a 3 hour drive, it was a boring drive other than we saw a Semi Truck, or a Juggernaut if your European. go crazily out of control just in front of us and then spin off the road and through some trees, i was expecting it to turn over but somehow it jack-knifed and stayed upright. the driver climbed out of the window and looked shaken but not stirred. We continued to our destination, the driver spoke a little English and i told him the hotel name about 9-10 times and he kept asking if it was the palace hotel, i said probably. The palace hotel was just before the main town which is called Gafsa, and as we arrived, i shook my head and said no this isn't the hotel, i got out my papers and showed him the name Jugurtha, and he then started repeating a strange name like inkitha, he stopped at the police check point and asked for the inkitha hotel and they looked baffled, so i waved the paper at them and they read it and said yes the Jugurtha hotel and gave him directions, I was feeling a bit shocked to realise that the guy couldn't read, he was then asking me to check the signposts for the name of the hotel, i eventually had to tell him the directions from the hotel signposts that are liberally dotted about the city to direct all the desert tourists to the many hotels in this part of the country. As we arrived i was pleased to see an enourmous hotel surrounded by trees and well kept gardens. i went inside with my two huge bags and told them i had a reservation and they said i wasn't booked in. This didn't sound good, i asked for a room and they told me the price for Bed breakfast and evening meal, about 35 Euros, pretty cheap i thought for a 5 star hotel, the lobby was a crazy painted place, with unimaginable colours on the ceilings and walls, i went to my room to be met by even crazier coloured furniture and i saw it was all local made stuff, meaning it was pretty rough made and horrible quality, the bathroom was tiled but badly finished, you know when people use their fingers to put that tricky bit of grout around taps and tight spots, it looked shabby and very amatuerish, the whole atmosphere of the hotel was rundown and cheap looking, i went for a look around the gardens and found two of the three pools broken and empty apart from the piles of leaves and sand in them, the gardens were not as well kept as i thought and just away from the main drive the grass was uncut and the paths hadn't been swept in months or even ever, the walls surrounding the place were not even finished off, i then realised the whole hotel was an unfinished project and hadnt been touched for years, maybe 5 years, there was cables hanging out of holes in walls and glass with the white cross in the middle from the initial installing, unpainted doors and windows in the outbuildings, the list goes on and on, the gardens were not 40 hectares as stated but more like 1\2 a hectare, the lies that website told were huge, but overall the place is pretty acceptable and the food again is OK, but the decor is just insane, the chairs are built for giants and are gold in colour, the walls have huge murals that look like they were created by children. It is the ugliest interior design i have ever seen and is nothing like what you would have seen in this part of the world ever. The last hotel was designed to look authentic north african and they achieved a good deal of that and it was snug and nice, this on the other hand is brash and tasteless and not appealing at all, it looks like something that Las Vegas would do as a casino calling it the kasbah or something like it, quite the ugliest hotel i have ever been in and the quality of the finishing is just terrible and typical of a rushed cheapo job. If you want genuine north africa this isn't the hotel to come to, if you want a nights sleep then this is just OK. At least they make their own bread and it is very nice.