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Youth Hostels in San Francisco (USA)
by Holidaying
When I visited San Francisco, I stayed in the HI (Hostelling International) hostel on Ellis Street.
This was a really great hostel with only one downside. The problem is, the downside is major and inescapable.
Letīs explore this first. The problem Iīm talking about is the location. Ellis Street- and certainly the ... part of Ellis Street that the hostel is located on- has a large homeless population. I am not going to explore the issue of homelessness in this review, and I am not going to pass judgement on those whjo are homeless. All I am going to say is that, in this part of San Francisco, the homelessness has been linked to crime.
In the week before I visited (and I was not aware of this- and part of the reason I am writing this is to help others to be aware), two people in the homeless community were killed on this street.
I cannot say that this creates an equal risk to one who is not a part of this community, but once I was staying in this hostel and had been made aware of what had happened, I was more nervous.
One could also say that walking down a street with drunk people shouting and swearing is unnerving, and I would say this. This was the situation when I was there.
Now I have made you aware of the negative, you should also know that if you walk up two blocks, you can feel far safer, and it is easy to do this from the hostel.
The hostel staff were well aware of the homeless people outside and they were accordingly helpful.
This brings me nicely onto the good points of the hostel. The staff were friendly and helpful, and did such things as booking tours for free.
The hostel was clean and spacious, and the rooms were cosy with en suites.
There was a small library and many leaflets to find out about other places.
There was also a telephone, which was good if you wanted to make a call!
The hostel had computers but you had to pay to use them and as far as I remember they were quite expensive.
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Big Apple Hostel (New York, USA)
by jennyf16
I have stayed in youth hostels before so know that the quality can very enourmously! This was the first hostel of many on my round the world trip. It is centrally located within a few minutes walk of both fifth avenue and times square. The area itself felt safe and walked there at night wasn't an issue, it also wasn't too noisy. We ... stayed in a 4 bed mixed dorm, which was bunk beds. The beds were comfy. the bathrooms were shared between about 4 rooms and rather than being big bathrooms there were 2 bathrooms to the 4 rooms and they were like proper bathrooms, the type you'd get in a house. These were very clean and probably one of the best I've seen. The disadvantage of having this type of bathroom is that you may end up waiting a long time to use the bathroom but the quality of the bathroom itself made up for this. Downstairs in the hostel there is a kitchen, we didn't really use this but it seemed adequate enough with a big fridge and lots of cooking utensils and even a list of local (cheap) supermarkets. The t.v room was quite small with no comfy chairs, just dining chairs and tables, we didn't spend long in here either! There are 2 computers with internet access which is quite reasonable for new york and probably one of the cheapest we saw in the city. The staff on reception very, there was one really helpful man and another that was just grumpy all the time. In all this is an excellent hostel to use as a base for exploring new york. It's clean and central, after all you're only sleeping there so what more could you want.
P.s there's also a cheap lovely deli next door for breakfast!
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American Backpacker's Hostel (Vancouver, Canada)
by Adam
I stayed at this hostel from July to September 2007 and had an absolutely amazing time. Whoever wrote that last review obviously was very confused. I have personally watched the staff here washing all the linens, cleaning the hostel constantly, and keeping a great atmosphere at the hostel. I have stayed at numerous hostels all over ... Canada, the Us and Europe and this hostel is easily in my top 5! I'll never forget you Vince and Angela!
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