Youth Hostels in San Francisco in general

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. Let´s explore this first. The problem I´m 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 ...  Read the complete review

Pacific Tradewinds. Even the name is funky. I have recently spent a year travelling around the world and have stayed in a LOT of youth hostels....this one is definately up there with the best of them. I initially booked the Pacific Tradewinds on the useful website www.hostels.com where it is necessary to pay a small deposit using a credit card. This does confirm the booking, but you could avoid this charge by phoning the hostel directly, although booking in advance is highly highly reccomended especially during the busy summer months where it can be virtually impossible to find a bed in any San Fran hostel. The hostels location at 681 Sacremento Street is ...  Read the complete review

This is a review of the Fishermans Wharf Hosteling International approved hostel in San Francisco. I stayed there for two nights in April 2003 for the very reasonable rate of $22.50 a night for dormitory accomadation. I booked throught the excellent website http://www.hiayh.org which will give you the lowdown on this Hostel and any other HI hostel in the USA. Firstly this isn't the easiest of hostels to find, I arrived by Amtrak @ Emeryville and got the bus to Pier 39, Fishermans Wharf, San Francisco. On the map it only looked like a short walk to the hostel but it was a good 25 minutes, the last 150 yards being uphil! Not fun with a full 65 litre ...  Read the complete review

That is right. San Francisco is such a popular tourist spot that you might not be able to get any low-medium priced accomodation, if you have not already booked one before you arrived there, especially during summer time. And that was my experience. Giving up to stay in the youth hostel as soon as we arrived because of dissapointing with the conditions there, we found ourselves couldn't get any other accomodation apart from 4 or 5 star hotels. When we went back to the youth hostel it was already full, leaving us two choices - paying up to $150 per person in a hotel, or solve the problem free of charge in our car. We chose the second option. By the ...  Read the complete review