Fodor's Expert Review Ilala Lodge Hotel

The lodge's elegant interior design is tempered with thatch roofs, giving it a graceful African look. Dining outside under the night sky at the award-winning Cassia Restaurant, with the Falls thundering 300 feet away, is a particularly enticing way to while away a Zimbabwean evening. The Cassia also serves a great terrace lunch overlooking the bush. Guest rooms are hung with African paintings and tapestries and filled with delicately caned chairs and tables and with dressers made from old railroad sleepers. French doors open onto a narrow strip of lawn backed by thick bush. Unlike most hotels in town, Ilala Lodge has no fence around it, so at night it's not uncommon to find elephants browsing outside your window or buffalo grazing on the lawn or at the pool.