Ilia Lake

Great Old Town location, but hard to find, even for locals. Don’t get me wrong, they have been walking by it for decades, but it wasn’t a hotel then and the name of the street was different. That has to do with the Old Town being completely reinvented. In late 1800s most of the streets had Russian names as it was a major regional trading hub that brought together people native to Caucasus. Later, those names changed to Georgian revolutionaries and then to others. Even people who used to live in that area in 1970s hardly recognize parts of the Old Town. The hotel is well-built with nice materials. The hall is nice and spacious, but the rooms are small and minimally furnished and the bathrooms are inconvenient (one needs to step into the shower area to be able to open the bathroom door). On the positive side, the rooms were spotless, the climate control worked well and the breakfast was very good, with quite a few choices. The hotel staff was exceedingly polite and pleasant – be it the front desk, the cafeteria ladies or the cleaning crew. All of them, besides their native Georgian, spoke good English, Russian and some – in addition – Armenian and other languages. I’d like to specifically mention Lali and Tekla from the front desk, Elene from the cafeteria and Elsa from the cleaning crew. Overall, we are happy to have stayed at the Strofi hotel and won’t mind returning there if those drawbacks with the minimalistic furnishing and layout of the rooms are addressed and resolved.

Excellent staff, excellent rooms and lounge..