me and my girlfriend went to london last summer. it was her first time in london and also her first time staying in a hostel.
we arrived, got our room and were very happy.
we booked 2 beds in a 4 bed dorm and had it all to ourselves and a little patio too. it was beautiful and better than expected!
we put our begs on the top bunk and we're planning to sleep in the bottom bunk. we took a shower and hung our towels on the bed to dry.
we planned the rest of our day and night and left the hostel.
when we got back to the hostel at about 2 am we found 3 people sleeping in the room. one guy in our top bunk.
we went to the reception and told them someone was sleeping in our bed. the receptionist (a mexican) followed us up to our room. he woke the people (all spanish) and asked them for their receipt.
they were all talking in spanish which was so rude and even when i asked them to please talk in english they still kept talking in spanish.
the guy sleeping in our bed started yelling at us.
we saw he threw all our bags on the floor and both our towels were soaking wet again.
they said they thought the towels came with the room (i have stayed in approx 50 hostels around the world and there was not a single one that didn't charge for towels. i mean come on you pay 10 quid a night for a HOSTEL and think you're getting a HOTEL room and hotel service? if you're backpacking bring a friggin towel!!)
so the receptionist was just watching us yell at eachother and then FINALLY offered us a new room that we had to ourselves again.
we had to ASK for new towels as he was thinking 2 girls wouldn't mind using their towels after 2 strange guys used them or more likely he wasn't thinking at all!
next morning the manager knocked on our door and said we could
stay another night free of charge. we didn't plan on staying there for another night but accepted it since it was free.
we left the hostel to do more sightseeing and when we came back the receptionist told us they had to move us to a different room. THEY PACKED OUR BAGS!!! what the hell?????
so they moved us into this tiny 8 bed dorm which turned out to be the total party room with lots of drinking and smoking. we couln't fall sleep til late and had to get up early to check out.
3 stars for the hostel, 3 stars for the manager, -4 for the receptionist
what started so great ended in 2 nighs in 3 different rooms and with people sleeping in our bed, using our towels, throwing our stuff on the floor and staff packing our bags!
thanks for overbooking our pretty little room.
too much for us! not coming back
*** P.S. if you ever get a hostel room in which too many bunks look taken go to the receptionist and don't just move someone's stuff around which we did the night before in hostel 639 when all 8 beds loked taken but only 6 people we're staying there.
and also never use more beds than you pay for!!! we always paid for 2 although we we're sleeping in the same bed. we used the other one for our stuff read more