The Best Places to Visit in Sharm El Sheikh

Naama Bay in the evening

Naama Bay is the old heart of Sharm — the original resort strip, and still the closest the town has to a proper promenade. Come here for the evening rather than the day: as the heat comes off, the seafront walk fills up, the shopfronts and cafés light the whole curve of the bay, and the place takes on the unhurried, out-late rhythm that a Red Sea resort town does better than almost anywhere. The pedestrian promenade along the water is the point — you walk it slowly, you stop for a juice or a coffee, and you let the bay move around you.

What surprises first-time visitors is how late and how family-centred it all is. Long after dark the promenade is full of families with young children, out together in the cool of the evening in a way that feels perfectly normal here and would be unusual back home. Nobody is rushing; the evening is the event. If you have picked a hotel in one of the quieter outlying bays, Naama Bay is the place you come to feel the town's pulse — it is where Sharm is most awake.

We tell guests to treat a Naama Bay evening as a stroll, not an itinerary. There is no single sight to tick off; the pleasure is the promenade itself, the sea air, the shop windows, and a long unhurried loop with a stop or two for something cold. Go after the sun is down, give it a couple of hours, and let the bay set the pace.

Ras Mohammed — a sea day at the peninsula's tip

Ras Mohammed is the national park at the very tip of the Sinai peninsula, the point where the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba meet, and it is the single most special piece of nature within reach of Sharm. What makes it extraordinary is exactly that meeting of waters: two gulfs converging over a shelf that drops away into deep blue, and along that edge some of the most vivid coral reefs in the world, right where the shallows give way to the depths. Standing on the headland you can often see the colour of the water change in bands as the seabed falls off beneath it.

For a lot of visitors this is the best day of the trip, and it is a day made by car. The park sits south of the town, out past the airport and along the coast, and there is no wandering into it on foot — you drive out, spend the day at the water, and drive back. Give yourself the whole day rather than a rushed morning: the drive is a real drive, the light on the reefs is best when the sun is high enough to reach into the water, and the point of Ras Mohammed is to slow down and be in the sea, not to rush a checklist.

A few honest notes. This is a protected national park, so it is nature rather than a resort — bring what you need, respect the reefs, and leave them exactly as you found them, because their condition is the whole reason to come. We do not steer guests to any particular operator or boat for the water itself; the reefs are a public natural wonder, and any reputable, licensed arrangement will show them to you. What the day really needs is time and a car that waits, so the drive out and back does not eat the hours you came for.

The Old Market and Ras Um Sid

The Old Market — Sharm El Maya, the town's original quarter down toward the western end — is where Sharm feels least like a resort and most like an Egyptian town. This is the antidote to the polished hotel strips: a dense grid of lanes with spice stalls, shisha cafés, lamps and lanterns, textiles and trinkets, and the smell of grilling food and sweet tobacco hanging over the whole place. Go in the evening, when it wakes up, the lights come on, and the lanes fill with people out to browse, bargain and sit.

The way to do the Old Market is on foot and without a shopping list. Wander the lanes, sit in a café for a shisha and a mint tea while the market moves around you, and buy — if you buy at all — by eye rather than by plan. Bargaining is part of the ritual and is meant to be good-humoured, not a battle. It is louder, cheaper and more authentic than the resort promenades, and for a lot of visitors it is the part of Sharm that felt most like actually being in Egypt.

From the Old Market you are near Ras Um Sid, the headland at the town's south-western corner, where the cliff drops to the sea and the view opens right out across the water. It is one of the best vantage points in Sharm to watch the light change over the sea — a natural pairing with a market evening: the headland for the view as the sun goes, then down into the lanes as they come alive. The two sit close enough to fold into one outing.

SOHO Square nights in Nabq

SOHO Square is the town's built-for-the-evening entertainment quarter, up in the Nabq bay area at the northern end of the resort strip. Where Naama Bay is a seafront promenade and the Old Market is an old-town grid, SOHO is a planned plaza — a large open square of fountains, cafés, restaurants and shops laid out to be walked in the cool of the evening, and it comes alive after dark rather than during the day.

It is an easy, comfortable evening, and it works particularly well for families and for anyone who wants to be out among people without a long walk or any planning. Children have room in the open plaza, the lighting and the fountains give it a festive feel, and everything sits together in one place so you are not moving between venues. Come after dinner or make an evening of it; either way it is a place to stroll, sit and watch rather than a sight to see.

Worth knowing for how you plan your days: SOHO Square is up in Nabq, the northern bays, while the Old Market is right down at the south-western end of town, so the two are a proper drive apart — not a walk. They are both evening places, but you would not do both in one night. Pick the one nearer your base for a relaxed evening, and make the other its own outing.

How the bays fit together — picking your base

Here is the thing to understand before you book a hotel: Sharm is not a single town you walk around but a chain of separate resort bays spread along the coast, each a self-contained pocket of hotels, and they sit roughly twenty to forty minutes apart by road. What reads as one destination on a booking confirmation is, on the ground, several small towns strung along the shore. Get that clear and everything else — where to stay, how far the good things are, how you will move — falls into place.

Very broadly: Naama Bay is the old centre and the most walkable, lively strip; SOHO Square and the entertainment quarter are up north in Nabq; the Old Market and the Ras Um Sid headland are down at the south-western end; and Ras Mohammed is further south again, out past the airport. None of these is close enough to the others to reach on foot, and that gap is the single biggest thing to plan around.

So choose your base for the kind of trip you want. If you want to walk out of your hotel into the evening buzz, Naama Bay puts you in the middle of it. If you want a quieter resort bay to retreat to and are happy to travel in for the town's livelier corners, one of the outlying bays gives you calm with the rest a short drive away. There is no single right answer — but knowing the bays are genuinely separate, and planning for the distances between them, is what turns Sharm from one hotel gate into the whole coast.

Bay to bay, chauffeured

A plain truth sits under all of this: the best of Sharm is spread across bays that are twenty to forty minutes apart, and how you move between them decides whether the town opens up or shrinks to a single hotel. The gap between seeing Sharm and seeing only your own resort is very often just the transport.

That is exactly the shape of trip a waiting driver suits. Out to Ras Mohammed for a sea day and back with the car holding your gear; over to Naama Bay for the evening and home again without standing on a dark kerb at eleven looking for a ride to a bay twenty minutes away; the Old Market one night, SOHO Square another, each an easy hop rather than a negotiation. The distances that make Sharm feel like several small towns are precisely what make a car and driver the comfortable answer for the evenings out. We drive these exact runs every day, which is where this guide comes from; if you would like the same trip chauffeured, that is what we are here for. But the geography above is the real gift — understand how the bays fit together, and Sharm gives you its best however you travel.

Getting there, chauffeured

Frequently asked questions