Hotel Shterev Karlovo — Hotel in Karlovo

This is a friendly clean hotel that is right beside the pedestrianized area of July 20th Square.||First, parking; it is tricky and very busy around the hotel. There are two or three spaces right beside the check in area of the hotel but do not rely on them being free. You likely will have to park on the street.||Check in is relatively painless, you will be given a key, the remote for the television and also the remote for the air conditioner in the room.||The rooms are small and pretty basic. The beds are pretty hard and there are sleep sacks under the top sheets that you climb inside for sleep so that there is no need for individual bed sheets. Pillows are in the closet.||The bathrooms are basic, my room did not have a tray for the shower so the water dumps on the bathroom floor and goes down a drain, be careful it gets ‘slippy’. Other rooms have a tray for the shower so I was told.||There is soap, shampoo and clean towels in the room. The shampoo sachets are pretty tough so I recommend you open them before you have wet hands, it becomes a struggle otherwise.||The rooms are laid out with the odd numbered rooms on the front of the building overlooking the shopping area and the even numbers on the back of the building and overlooking a side road…try for an odd number to get a better view.||The internet signal is stronger nearer the stairs so whichever floor you are on try for a low number room. The downside is if you are in the rooms that end in 01, 02 you have great signal strength but the stairs are outside the door and you can hear everyone coming and going.||If you have a higher number room ending in 13, 14 or 16 you have no outside noise because you are near the end of the building but the internet signal is weak….a middle number seems the best compromise or work downstairs in the lobby for the best signal.||Breakfast is next door in the restaurant. It starts at 7am weekdays and 8am weekends, perhaps a few minutes later. Advise you learn the words for butter or jelly/jam for your toast..otherwise they are not provided.||Coffee is small and strong, I loved it but some in our group prefer a more American type of coffee and were disappointed.||If you are expecting a Holiday Inn or similar this is not it. If you are looking for a functional, better priced hotel while you explore the area then this is it.||Make the effort to speak Bulgarian if you can, the people seem to really appreciate it and their smile is well worth the effort.||As you explore, look for the Waterfall Restaurant for evening meal and get to the Bakery Boss on the square for a hot tasty snack...

Don't waste your time and money on this misery! Inadequate staff! We arrive at 21:00 and are told that we have nowhere to sleep, and we have prepaid a room for 3 people. We are offered one of us to sleep on the ground in a double room the size of a closet. The "manager" (absolutely inadequate!) Offers us the room for free. We don't have many options, that's why we go inside and we are greeted with beds without bedding, which we have to make ourselves and some kind of floor mat on which one of us can sleep. Subsequently, however, the "Manager" decided that it could not go that way and still forced us at 1 o'clock at night to pay some money for the room. Horror movie. The hotel and the rooms are dirty and quite neglected already. Bonus - a pub under the window, where people celebrated their wedding until...

Aviod the single room, extremely tiny and the worst: the shover head is simply in the middle of the bathroom, flooding everything when you use it. Unacceptable. Look for the "suite" which is nice.||Breakfast in the resturant next door, very basic. Theoretically starts at 7:00 during the week, but de facto only 7:30. ||Nice attendants at the reception, but most of them speak no or very poor english.||Well located in the center of Karlovo.||Really not my favourite, but I am not sure if the other hotels in the city...