Cheap guesthouses in Yessentuki

The main question when booking in Essentuki is how close your hotel sits to Kurortny Park and the drinking pump rooms. From Teatralnaya Square you can walk to the Pyatitysyachnik Drinking Gallery in seven minutes, and to the Upper Nikolaev Baths in ten. If you're here for a treatment course and drink water three times a day, every extra kilometre means a minibus or taxi ride.

The best option for this kind of trip is the block around Internatsionalnaya, Kislovodskaya and Sovetskaya streets. From here it's an easy walk to the "Essentuki-4" and "Essentuki-17" pump rooms.

• PLAZA Essentuki — 1B Internatsionalnaya St., by Teatralnaya Square, from 7,600 ₽ per night.
• Kristi — 5A Sovetskaya St., a hundred metres from the park, from 6,300 ₽.
• Atlantida — 12 Kislovodskaya St., from 4,500 ₽, a compromise between proximity and budget.
• Park Shafran — 17 Andzhievskogo St., by the Upper Park, from 16,500 ₽. It's one of the two 5-star sanatoriums in the city (alongside the "Istok" sanatorium).

For the full list of options downtown, see the In the center collection.

A sanatorium, a hotel where you sign up for procedures separately, or apartments — each option has its own advantages and suits different goals.

A sanatorium handles everything at once: accommodation, a therapeutic menu and procedures all come in the package. You just need to show up on time.

A hotel is usually cheaper, but you'll have to book treatment sessions at a balneological clinic separately. You'll set your own procedure schedule.

Apartments make more sense for a longer stay. If your course runs two weeks or more, a flat with a kitchen and washing machine works out cheaper than a sanatorium. It also lets you cook meals to fit your diet.

You'll find ready-made options with treatment packages in the Sanatoriums in Essentuki collection.

For a long course, take a look at Apartments on Prostornaya Street 17k2. Rates start at 3,250 ₽ per day. The apartments have a kitchen and a washing machine. It's 4.5 km to the city centre, with a public transport stop nearby.

If you don't have a strict procedure schedule and you're fine catching a bus a stop or two to the pump room, take a look at the eastern part of town — along Pyatigorskaya Street. It's quieter here, the courtyards are greener, and rooms in 4-star hotels cost about what 3-star rooms cost downtown.

There's another upside — direct access to the "Kavkaz" highway. From this part of town it's about 17 km to Pyatigorsk, roughly 20 km to Kislovodsk, and about an hour by car to Mineralnye Vody Airport. Handy if Essentuki is your base and the trip itself is a route across the Caucasian Mineral Waters with day trips out.

• Aka Park — 117 Pyatigorskaya St. The hotel sits about two kilometres from Kurortny Park. Rates from 5,400 ₽ per night.
• ESSENIN — 139 Pyatigorskaya St. The hotel sits further from the centre. It's quieter here, and rates start at 5,000 ₽.