For our week long stay in Adler, we stayed at the lovely Altai Hotel. Both of us were not sure what kind of hotel experience we'd get after seeing all the news stories before we left (all those horrible hotel stories you read about were mostly confined to media hotels). The kind people at the Altai gave us a great place to stay.
We stayed on the 5th of 6 floors. The top two floors were added 2 years ago and are much more modern than the first 4 (which have been there for 10 years). I get the sense that the bottom 4 floors are probably less modern and less fancy but our room was very nice and we had no complaints.
Our bathroom was very modern (much nicer than I was expecting) and had a marble-ish material all over.
We had plenty of space and a TV where we could follow along with the Olympics on a few channels. We didn't have much time to really experience Russian TV but I did see a little of a Russian version of The Voice.
They also had free internet for us but the connection in our room was spotty. Sometimes we had to go out to our 5th floor landing to connect.
One of the smallest elevators I've used in a while takes guests between the floors.
Downstairs you can see some of the hodgepodge add-when-you-can construction but nothing was dirty or unkept.
They had a nice breakfast spread for us each morning (sorry, I forgot to get photos of that) which included two cereals, pancakes (more like crepes really), eggs and an assortment of breads and pastries. They also had fruit and fresh juice. It was a very nice and filling way to start our 14 our Olympic days.
I'm not sure about the quality of the neighborhood the hotel is in. It's not a slum but it's not Beverly Hills.
At no time did we feel unsafe. Not once. They park looked great in the early morning light too.
The hotel is on the small side, only 26 rooms total. It doesn't quite have a full bed and breakfast feel (almost) but is much more personal than a corporate chain. Angelina, who runs the hotel was very kind to us and we had very few problems communicating in (broken) english.
I might not drink the water in Russia but if I ever found myself back in Adler I'd stay here again. It's was very pleasant, our hosts were kind and it's actually in a great location to all Adler has to offer.
Spacibo Altai. Spacibo.
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