Hostelling International Christmas bike trip around San Diego

by Kelly Amabile on

Speaking of hostels, the latest Travelbytes newsletter from Hostelling International recently appeared in my inbox, with news of a unique holiday bike trip. It turns out that for over 50 years, HI has been hosting a 400-mile Christmas Bike Trip around the greater San Diego area.

So, if you’re looking for something different to do this holiday season, consider ringing in the new year after an intense six day bike trip! It would be a nice nod to the region, and a great way to support businesses that endured a tough wildfire fall. Just don’t expect to stay in many hostels along the way — alternative accommodations available for booking during the ride include inns, ranches and lodges. But riders can stay at San Diego’s Point Loma Elliott Hostel the night before the race, which runs from Dec. 26 through the 31. The registration cost for non-HI members is $350, which includes a year-long HI membership.

One for the Road: Great Hostels USA

by Kelly Amabile on

I’ve only stayed at one hostel in the USA. But I plan to visit more in the years to come. Which is why I was happy to come across Colleen Norwine’s Great Hostels USA. Although it’s a bit dated now (published in 2005), it is still a good resource to consider if you plan to do hostel travel in the USA in the coming year.

When Colleen decided to quit her job and spend a year traveling around the country, she was unable to find a dedicated hostel guidebook that met her travel needs. So she wrote one herself! Although she did use hostel web resources to plan her travels, she wanted to have a lightweight reference guide that could travel with her as well. But since she could not find one that suited her, she created this one as she went, personally reviewing over 250 hostels from Seattle to Bar Harbor.

Only 100 hostels made it into the book — her selection includes a mix of Hostelling International locations and other lodging options. There are reviews for at least one hostel in each of 25 states, as well as nine Canadian accommodations. Multiple entries exist for states like California, Florida, Colorado, New York and Massachusetts, so the book may be especially useful for folks planning to visit those places. There are a few thematic lists too — including the best hostels for hiking, mountain biking, partying, meetings and romance. Colleen’s hard work paid off, and earned her book the 2006 Independent Publisher Award for best travel guide.

Top 10 Hostels Around the World

by Justin Glow on

Our friend Benji over at the Guardian has compiled a list of the top 10 hostels around the world. “When I say I’m staying in a hostel instead of a hotel, they think I’m subtlety telling them I have a drug problem,” he writes. “But things have changed, people. Not all hostels are grubby dives run by people called Starchild.” It’s true; some of the cheapest and most unique places to rest your weary travel legs are hostels, even if you do have a drug problem. Here’s Benji’s picks:

  1. Villa Saint Exupery, Nice, France
  2. Hostel Celica, Ljubljana, Slovenia (pictured)
  3. Casa Caracol, Cadiz, Spain
  4. Art Hostel, Sofia, Bulgaria
  5. Backpack Guesthouse, Budapest, Hungary
  6. Backpackers International, Rarotonga, Cook Islands
  7. Long Street Backpackers, Cape Town, South Africa
  8. Casa Esmeralda, Buenos Aires, Argentina
  9. Sleeping with the Enemy, Sydney, Australia
  10. The Gershwin, New York, US

I haven’t been to any of these, but I’ll be looking for hostels to stay in next month in Ljubljana, Budapest, and Sofia, and each of his recommendations in these cities looks promising. Make sure to head over to the Guardian to read details — including website links — of each one of the hostels listed. [via]

Across Northern Europe: Two to a bed in Bruges

by Brook Silva-Braga on

There are many ways to end up sleeping with someone in a hostel bed but this was a new one for me.

Bruges, Belgium is a little city of 117,000 with about five million tourists on every cobblestone street so I was happy to find shelter at a hostel in the north part of town. My friend and I claimed beds in dorm room 10 and headed out for a long day of beer reconnaissance. Our exploration was as thorough as 8% alcohol levels will reasonably allow. It had been a good nine hours of diligent effort when we made it back to room 10.

Room 10 was darkened and filled with sleeping bodies, including one in my bed. My guidebook — which had been on top of my bed to hold the place — was now on top of my bag which had also been moved to the door. Naturally, reception was closed.

But the hostel bar was open and I staggered over there and asked the bartender what to do. He walked with me back to room 10 and observed that there was in fact someone else in my bed.

We went back to the bar and squinted at a computer spreadsheet. A group of nine had been split between rooms 10 and 11 and it appeared one of the fellas from room 11 had gone into room 10 instead. Sure enough there was an empty bed in room 11 and the barman gave me a key to the room and went back to pouring bier.

It was a comfy bed on the bottom of the bunk with a blanket of ideal weight. I was asleep for five minutes or an hour or a year when Stacey came into the room. I have no idea if her name was Stacey but we need a name for her.

“You’re in my bed,” Stacey observed in close proximity to my slumbering head. “You’re in my bed!”

“Shut up!” a guy in an adjacent bunk offered.

“I need to sleep and he’s in my bed,” Stacey clarified with a distinct Queensland, Australia accent.

I explained what had happened to Stacey and suggested she talk to the bartender. The bar was closed, she noted calmly and not at all drunkenly or annoyedly. It had reached the hour where even annoyedly was a word.

“I’m sorry, but this is the bed they gave me and it’s the only place I have to sleep and I’m not getting up,” I said.

Stacey curled up on the floor and proceeded the squirm audibly. “If you want to share you can,” I offered chivalrously. “That’s the best I can offer.”

And with that Stacey climbed into bed with her back to my back and her feet to my face. Sleeping with someone in a dorm-size bed is an act of skill, sleeping with someone in a dorm-size bed without touching them is an act of will.

I don’t often remember my dreams but I remember one from this night which I feel compelled to share. In it, I was sitting up in the bed while Stacey slept and since I didn’t know who she was I looked her up on Facebook and read through her profile. It seemed an odd way of learning about someone you were sharing a bed with. I don’t recall if her name on Facebook was Stacey but there is no accounting for the subconscious.

In the morning, Stacey and I were in much better spirits – though no thanks to each other, if you know what I mean – and both agreed that it had been no ones fault and we both behaved admirably. At breakfast she gave me a knowing smile and though she wasn’t as cute as her Facebook picture had made her seem, I hoped she’d share an undercooked egg with me and tell me her name and a few personal details I could put in this section of the story.

But instead she sat next to an American girl who had just been to Amsterdam. Reception was open now and they gave back my 17 euros. The hostel’s slogan is “party hard, sleep easy” but in Bruges the partying was the easy part.

###

Previously on Across Northern Europe:

  1. Shining a Light on Iceland
  2. Lonely Love on Iceland
  3. Iceland Gone Wild
  4. A Trip to the Airport
  5. Why Bother Going to Berlin?
  6. A Perishable Feast
  7. Globians Film Festival
  8. The Elusive Dutch Drivers License
  9. Terror in Berlin
  10. Authentic Belgian Beer

Brook Silva-Braga is traveling northern Europe for the month of August and reuniting with some of the people he met on the yearlong trip which was the basis of his travel documentary, A Map for Saturday. You can follow his adventure in the series, Across Northern Europe.

Do people really die in hostels?

by Justin Glow on

With the release of Hostel II, I was wondering: do people really die in hostels? I’m sure there are isolated cases, but is it common enough to actually make this movie series somewhat believable? After all, the director, Eli Roth, and friend Quinton Tarantino claimed the idea for the original movie was “inspired by true events.” They say the plot was born out of a Thai website they found which offered a sort of “murder vacation” package which offered “users the chance to torture and kill someone for the price of $10,000.”

So what’s the scoop — was the “murder vacation” website legitimate? “It doesn’t even matter,” said Eli Roth in an interview with pitofhorror.com, “because someone still thought of this and took the time to make [the] site, you could go and pay money to kill somebody.”

That had me thinking. He’s right, it doesn’t even matter. I stopped chasing that lead. Instead, I found a whole lot of other instances where people die in hostels. Real events, where large groups of happy-go-lucky travelers go to bed and never wake up. How does it happen? Let’s find out…

Childers, Queensland, Australia — June, 2000. A fire breaks out at Palace Backpacker’s Hostel. Travelers awake to the smell of smoke and sound of shattering glass instead of fire alarms, which evidence later revealed were faulty and turned off. Many escaped by jumping through a second-floor window onto a neighboring roof — they were at the right place at the right time. When trying to escape, the unfortunate ones were met with windows that had been nailed shut or painted over and emergency escapes that were blocked. Fifteen people perished in the fire. The story doesn’t end here, however. Robert Long, a 37-year-old vagrant fruitpicker, had been kicked out of the Palace Backpacker’s Hostel, and threats he made to burn the building down were overheard by other travelers. The night after the blaze, Long ran to a nearby sugar plantation, where the police caught up with him in a struggle which ended with shots fired. Long was hit once, and later charged with arson. He remains in jail today. The Palace has since been rebuilt, and its doors re-opened in April of 2004.

Todolella, Spain — February, 2005. Roughly 50 people had gathered in Todolella for a birthday celebration; some went home after the party, but 20 stayed at the Sant Cristòfol hostel in the Castellon province of Spain — a decision that would later cost most of them their lives. The hostel staff awoke next morning to find 18 of the 20 visitors dead, all from toxic fumes leaked from a faulty butane heating canister left on overnight. The two survivors were sleeping in an adjacent room and were found unconscious but later revived. Among the group that died were five young members of a local rock group which had performed at the party the evening before the tragic event.

Launceston, Tasmania, Australia — January, 2005. In a case eerily similar to the Childers hostel fire of 2000. New Zealander Tony Laurence McLennan, a 36-year-old employee at Metro Backpackers Hostel in Launceston greeted the new year by setting the building he worked in ablaze. While motives are sketchy, some reports claim other employees told McLennan he should stop drinking, which might have set him off. Others believe he lit the fire to cover up the fact that he had stolen money from the hostel. A 21-year-old Scottish man (pictured) died in the blaze, and McLennan recieved 9 years in prison for manslaughter. Fortunately the Launceston hostel fire was much less deadly than the Childers, but one is enough.

Uyuni, Bolivia. Andréanne Lacroix-Pelletier and Anne Christelle Dubé-Marquis (right), both 21-year-old students from Quebec, went to bed in a small-town hostel in Bolivia and never woke up. Once again, a faulty gas heater is to blame. “Richard Poulin, head of international studies at Laval, said the students likely died after breathing carbon monoxide from a faulty propane heater while they slept.” One of the girls had phoned her father earlier expressing concern about the condition of the hostel. I guess she was right. It turns out you’re much more likely to die from a quiet, flowing gas than a deranged lunatic looking to torture for fun. But how entertaining would a horror movie be about a faulty gas heater?

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