My first hostel experience was during my orientation to study abroad in Cairns, Australia. It was already booked for me, and I was pleasantly surprised. With hostels not being common in America, I was expecting the worst, someone getting slaughtered the next room over as they show in the movies. During my whole trip in Australia and New Zealand, I had nothing but great experiences. No, I did not wake up with chocolate on my pillow and fresh towels every morning, but the best you can expect for 15 bucks a night.
My first hostel I stayed at in Cairns, Australia
My friend Kristin and I booked a one way ticket to Europe this past September. Although we wanted to have an open plan and live day by day, we thought it would be a good idea to book a couple of hostels and buses in the beginning of our trip to get us started on our adventure. On our way from Glasgow, Scotland to London, England we wanted to make a stop in-between. We chose a town Keswick in the Lake District of England because it offered unique outdoor activities such a Ghyll Scrambling. While still at home we looked up hostels in the area online and there were a handful and they all sounded decent. We just chose the cheapest hostel and didn't look into comments of people who had stayed there. We paid a deposit for 10% to lock in our spot.
Mistake number one, when booking our bus from Glasgow to the Lake District I didn’t research the actual time of the bus. When it said 3:15 am on the bus ticket, I just assumed it was in New York time so it would be 8:15 am in Scotland. Well, I was wrong. Waking up in the middle of the night wouldn’t normally be much of a problem, but since we have been on the go every day, drinking, gallivanting and barley sleeping, it was torture to catch a 3:15 am bus. We managed to make it to our bus on time. We survived the 4 hour bus ride to Carlisle filled with smelly men playing Indian music on a very chilly bus. At one point the bus driver stopped the bus short, on the highway in the pouring rain and screamed at the passengers “This lady said it was too hot, is this true?!” pointing at a frightened Indian lady. We arrived in windy Carlisle which is in the northern Lake District at 7:00 am, and we found out the next bus to Penrith that connected to Keswick was not for another hour and a half. It was freezing, darkish, raining and there was nowhere to sit. We huddled in a little convenient store and read the papers about 9/11 in the states as our huge backpacks blocked the front door. About 3 hours later after much waiting and riding buses with loud British school children, we were dumped off at a Keswick supermarket where the wind howled louder than I’d ever heard in my life.
Exhausted from traveling to the Lake District
Snoring, smelly man that we dealt with on one of our bus rides
We struggled to make our way down the main street where we had been directed by our bus driver that our hostel was on. Hurricane Irene that hit the east coast of the states had been hitting the west coast of the UK. The winds were magnified by lugging 50 pound backpacks. I kept checking behind me because I thought Kristin was going to blow away. We just couldn't do it the wind was that strong and our bags were too heavy. We charged back to the grocery store called a cab and finally made it to the Denton House, dun dun dunnnnnnn. At first glance the place looked like it was going to blow over in the wind storm. We let ourselves in the door that was wobbling from the wind and found a man that would defiantly be on your neighborhood watch list. We were sooo tired we were desperate for a place to lie down. As the serial killer look-a-like led us down the long dark hallways, I felt like he was leading us to our death. Kristin was bugging out and I couldn’t blame her, but I tried to keep half a smile and think, well, it could be worse. Again, I was wrong. He showed us to our room labeled “Catbells”. There were 3 rickety bunk beds and we could feel the walls shake every time Irene’s winds blew. After telling the creep to get lost and we tried to lock our door, too bad it had no lock. We laid down the small blankets we stole from Iceland Air down on the bed to avoid any contact with the germ infested beds. Somehow we managed to fall asleep for a little bit by curling up into little frozen balls. Waking up to the skylights blowing open and a floor covered in leaves was not a good sign. We had to get the F out of here. We left our huge backpacks in the Catbell room and secretly hoped someone would steal them. Kris and I marched out of the still empty, soon to be murder scene hostel, determined to find somewhere else to stay in this little English town.
The only picture we took of the horrid "Denton House"
We ended up finding warmth in a cozy pub “George Bar” and drank enough strong beer to forget about our concentration camp style hostel. Earlier we checked out some other options to sleep that night but they were all 100 pounds plus, which is the equivalent to about 170USD. Unfortunately that kind of money was not our budget. It was getting late and we were terrified to go back to the “Dent in my Face House” so I figured I’d ask they had any rooms available at the George Bar. The receptionist, who doubled as the bartender asked how much I was willing to spend and I told her not a lot. She explained the best suit in the place had opened up because a few men of a team had dropped out and they were willing to take whatever they could for it. I got her down to 40 pounds, SOLD! Kris and I drunkenly ran up to our Cinderella suite and jumped on the beds and celebrated our movin’ on up success! We dug into our stash of free cookies and snuggled up in our warm, amazing hotel room to rest up for our complementary English breakfast in the morning! Lesson learned, it wouldn’t kill is to do a little more research for our accommodations next time.
After a stressful day, finally finding our sanctuary!
Keswick was a very cute town minus the Denton House
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