A disappointing experience
The Monastir Center hotel is located on the Avenue Habib Bourguiba, five minutes from the seafront. It's a four-star hotel, but looks can be deceiving ... when we arrived and saw the building, the reception and outdoor pool looked great, but the hotel itself was pretty lousy. The lobby is quite spacious and bright, with high ceilings, and a sofa area. From here you can access the pool, two hotel bars, and a buffet restaurant where breakfast is served. The outdoor poolside area was very nice, with a bar and some tables.
There's also a small stage where, in high season, they put on shows at night (so be careful if your room is overlooking it). The furniture is very basic and functional: two beds with bedside tables, a desk, TV (a luxury in Tunisia) and wardrobe. There was also air conditioning, but we didn't need it. The bathroom had modern tiles, suggesting it had been recently renovated. It was small, with a shower cubicle rather than a bath, and the basin and toilet behind the door. It seemed okay until we tried to use it ... water dripped everywhere, and the shower didn't drain well. When we went to bed, we realised that there weren't enough blankets for comfort, and the sheets were also placed in a strange way.
We were staying on half board. The first meal we had was a dinner buffet, in a huge room with poor lighting. They offered salads, grilled vegetables, lasagne, pasta, the ubiquitous chicken stew, fried fish ... and miraculously, dessert was strawberries and petite fours (other hotels only offered us oranges). Well, although there was plenty of variety, the quality left a lot to be desired. There was a guy grilling tuna steak - not too bad, but too dry and, worst of all, it formed a cloud of smoke in the room, filling it with the horrible smell of frying fish. The smell was still there when we went down to breakfast the next day ... breakfast was pretty good, with juices, cereals, cold cuts and some pastries. The hotel also had meeting rooms, a kids club, a gym, and a hammam (Arab bath), with sauna and massage area, but we didn't try as it's only open in the high season. In short, we were quite disappointed by this four-star hotel.
