UPDATE
It sees my page now comes up the top of the list when you search for home stays in Tbilisi! Irena has a webpage but i cant remember what it is and its virtually impossible to find on google. If you want to stay and Irenas and who wouldnt….
Homestay Irene -19b Ninoshvili tel: +99599111669
Call ahead if you can, she can arrange a driver at the airport to be waiting for you with a sign "Irenas Homestay". If that doesnt work (like for us, out plane was so late the driver had already buggered off), just call and get her to talk to the driver, she will tell him where to take you.
Rock!
Welcome to Irenas Homestay, your place and mine when in Tbilisi, Georgia! Irena is a sizable Georgian woman who runs a guesthouse in Tbilisi, she has a big old house which she has decked out with as many beds as can comfortably fit and you will not find a more lovely or welcoming woman. She gets up at 3am to let us in, in fact we already woke her half an hour earlier because we couldnt find out taxi driver and we had to get her to speak to the next driver over the phone in georgian.
From the beginning its obvious Irena runs this place for the love of having people around, prices and cheap and whatever she can do to help, its yours. Hanging around the living room you meet a fairy hardy bunch of travellers, Georgia is far enough off the beaten track that general intelligence and adventurous level of the guests is way high, the stag parties drop off at Riga it seems, so what you have left is a bunch of cool hip people who really want to learn about the culture. Of course you might get conscripted for a while if you hang out in the lounge room long enough, when people call, skype or email for a reservation you might be asked to help. Irenas english isnt very good so she might get you to talk to someone on the phone or write an email reply to someone, its great!
On the second evening we had a full house, not that Irena would ever turn anyone away, you might just get a matress on the floor or a couch but you will never be turned out to the street. There was a big group of us sitting around in the lounge and all of a sudden all this georgian style pizza shows up and a lot of it. Next a few of us are asked to go down the street and pick up the beers from her friend, Irena has decided to put on food and drink for us, free of charge, so that we may all have a good night dancing the night away to the funky funky disco beats of… you guessed it.. DJ Irena spinning those mp3s. We all ate, drank and danced and had a throughly good time.
I dropped off around 3am but apparently around 6am the 3 polish people I had helped Irena email in reply to earlier that day showed up… to find randoms laying over the room, empty plates and beer bottles and cigarettes ashtrays all over the place, took one look and just walked back out again. haha. If only they knew what they were missing out on, only the lady with the biggest, more generous heart in Tbilisi.