On a backpackers budget, hostels are the way to go. Yeah, you may sleep in large dormitory style rooms with shared baths but they are inexpensive, fun, and you’re sharing space with like-minded travelers
Our first hostel experience was in London. We were separated into girl/boy large dormitory rooms, but each had a bed and corn flakes for breakfast for under ten bucks. The legendary Mountain Hostel high in the Swiss alps impressed us so much we were back there with Carli in 2011. In 1985, a bed was two dollars, in 2011 twenty. Still well worth the million dollar views and world class hiking. In Italy, we spent a couple nights in a monastery turned hostel.
As a married couple the summer of ’85 we were allowed the FAMILY pass. With this pass and maybe ten dollars, we were lucky enough, at times, to get bunks in our own room. Bunks at Paddy’s Palace in Northern Ireland, bunks in Denmark, bunks in Norway? Yes way! No jive, in Rome the BeeHive Hostel was abuzz with backpackers. I even stayed a week at the Hawthorne Hostel here in Portland.
One of our favorite hostels was a tugboat, The Boat~el, on the canal in Amsterdam. But the Holy Grail of hostels is a tall sailing ship in the Stockholm harbor. The waiting list to get a bed aboard this hostel boat is a year and worth the wait. So we waited.
*In case you’re wondering what is printed on my shirt, it says HAPPILY MAUIED.
A souvenir T-shirt from my HUNNYMOON FIRST MATE.
