Our reviewer usually shuns youth hostels, but he finds this new Nottingham pad a much better budget option than many big hotel chains
I knew early on that hostels were not for me. Tales from my InterRailing mates made hostels sound like an endurance test. Food eaten by mice in the night; drunk interlopers comatose in your bunk; and even a story about a bloke fried on LSD attempting to pile all the furniture against the dormitory door. At 4am.
Once, in Amsterdam (naturally, I was in a hotel), I ended up drinking with a group of Australian backpackers who appeared to be tolerating one another solely because, as solo travellers, they badly needed the companionship. The loudest of them was very proud of the large felt-tip penis that somehow (use your imagination), had been drawn on his belly in the red-light district. Were these the kind of people you had to put up with in hostels? Because, frankly, I am not a big felt-tip-penis kind of guy.
Continue reading...