The slums for refugees have turned into the best hotel in Georgia.

Blogger Alexander Belemkiy writes:

It is hard to believe how this place looked before. As a result of the war in Abkhazia, nearly a thousand refugees settled here, turning the building into a slum.

Today, there is a different life here — the "five-star" Radisson Blu, expensive restaurants, and the tallest pool in the city.

And just a few years have passed!

During a recent trip to Tbilisi, I stayed at this hotel, but I didn’t know its history.

Just recently, several hundred families lived in the former Iveria hotel. They left their homes to escape the horrors of war and treated their new accommodation as temporary, not caring much for it.

In 2004, a new era of change began in the country, and new people with ambitious plans came to power. Not all of them came to fruition, but the country started to change.

Major international brands, including Radisson, entered Georgia. The refugees were relocated, compensation was paid, and the building was completely reconstructed, and today nothing reminds of what was here before.

I arrived in Tbilisi late, just before midnight. I was immediately given a room, and this was considered an "early" check-in, not a late check-in from the previous day, which was nice.

I woke up, opened the curtains, and there it was... Tbilisi laid out before me! I got a corner panoramic room on the ninth floor.

Even in cloudy weather, there are excellent views of the Kura River.

The view of the old town and the Ministry of Justice, built during Saakashvili's time. Another bold building from that era. Such buildings are no longer constructed in the country.

In the room, I was welcomed with fruits, churchkhela, and a bottle of Georgian wine.

I met the charming Salome, the hotel's PR manager. She gave me a tour of the hotel, surrounding me with care and Georgian hospitality.

I come to the restaurant in the morning, and almost all the food is painted pink: buns, bread, and pastries. I posted a picture on Facebook — look how fun it is, and the SMM specialists almost immediately reacted and left a comment: it turns out, this was a campaign to draw attention to early-stage breast cancer diagnosis. (We weren't even acquainted with Salome at that time).

The hotel has three restaurants, in the Italian and Asian ones, dishes are prepared by chefs who came from Italy and Japan. And the wines in Georgia are excellent too!

On the very top, on the 18th floor, there is the Oxygen bar. If you find yourself in Tbilisi, stop by for a glass of red wine or a cup of coffee; it’s one of the highest points in the city.

The glass surfaces reflect light, but to avoid this, just come during the day on a sunny day and keep your camera lens as close to the glass as possible.

There is a joke about Georgia that the whole country is related. I look at this photo of the bartenders, and they remind me of five (!) of my acquaintances at once. Is it really like that?

On the same floor, there is a SPA center. While you can pop into the bar "from the street," here you need to be a hotel guest. There is a gym, several saunas, massage services, and treatments.

And the tallest pool in Georgia!

I love staying in places with stories. And here is a great example of how people change the reality around them. One could say — "just business," but often it is easier to build a house from scratch than to reconstruct an existing one.

Photos and text — Source