HostelBloggers’ beady little eyes recently fell on this tempting proposition: a stay at a castle in Bologna.
Castello di Galeazza is what Butlins would be if it had been conceived by Lord Byron. You pay for your bed for the night (in a room complete with frescoes) and they throw in meals, too.
But where they differ from most places is in the extensive library that’s put at the guests’ disposal. The whole operation has basically been set up to allow travelers to get away and get some good reading done, in one of the most breathtakingly idyllic settings imaginable.
It’s not necessarily going to make any lists of cheap hostels from around the world any time soon (although having said that, at €50 a night all-inclusive, it’s actually a pretty good deal). But that’s hardly the point - it’s a castle in Italy for goodness sake!
The whole thing sounds almost preposterously civilized: we can picture ourselves now, sitting in the hazy autumn sunshine somewhere in the surrounding ten acres of woodland, a good book propped up on our chest…
Ultimately, Castello di Galeazza is far from your average hostel in Italy; in fact, it’s like nowhere else we’ve ever come across. Flashpacking really doesn’t even begin to cover it - this is a whole new model of hostelling altogether: highbrow hostels, perhaps…
Ever fancied living out those childhood dreams and playing Tarzan of the Jungle for real?
Ok, so we can’t really help with the upbringing amongst apes, or supply a modern day Jane Porter, for that matter… But there are a fair few treehouse hostels out there that we can draw to your attention!
Take HavaSu Village in Antalya, Turkey. (Weirdly, one of a number of treehouse hostels in Turkey.) Here you can hide away the treetops looking out on the lush Turkish countryside by day, before gazing upwards at a brilliant blanket of stars by night.
As for swinging from the vines: let’s not get ahead of ourselves. And besides, even Tarzan had to take it easy sometimes…
Prague is home to Franza Kafka, the composer, Dvorak, Milos Forman and the filmmaker and animator, Jan Svankmajer, as well as a host of other prominent artists, musicians, writers and thinkers.
So it’s hardly surprising, really, that, amongst the dazzling array of Art Nouveau buildings and twiddly Baroque finery, the city’s still a hotbed of creative activity.
The above is a video made by Sir Toby’s Hostel in Prague, and in HostelBloggers’ opinion, it’s pretty damn fine.
One of the things that impressed HostelBloggers on our recent trip was the artistic qualities of a few of the hostels we visited.
These days, it seems that if you don’t have a rash of swanky design features, a flash mural or two, or a series of artfully composed shots of former guests, you’re just not trying hard enough…
Anyway, here’s a handful of the more arty hostels in Dublin and Edinburgh that inspired us:
So it was that, feeling a little delicate, we left Dublin and made our weary way across the Irish Sea to Edinburgh. And if we thought it was going to get any easier on the old liver, then we were in for a bit of a rude awakening.
We were staying at Caledonian Backpackers, and having found it easily enough (being just off Princes Street) and checking in with a really friendly Canadian girl, we headed upstairs. Dumping our bags, we made for their bar - just for a quick one, though.
Several hours of riotously drunken pool later, we staggered up to bed.
Edinburgh’s a pretty hard-living sort of place. But just let it be said - for the record - that Caledonian Backpackers has got one of the hardest drinking vibes, not just of any Edinburgh hostel, but of any backpackers’ hostel that HostelBloggers have ever rolled into. And for that alone we absolutely loved it.
Ping. It’s the sound of a Google alert last week. This one’s not your average day-to-day alert, though. Neve Black runs a blog called ‘Neve Black’s Black and Blue Erotica’ of a somewhat, um, sexual nature. However, she also seems to be something of traveler and (naturally) a HostelBookers fan, too. Anyway, in last week’s post (entitled Hostel Hookers and more) she suggests we change our name to ‘Hostel Hookers’.
We can’t say we’re seriously considering such a radical change to what we do… But Neve - ‘Hostel Hookers’? Doesn’t ‘HookerBookers’ have a far better ring to it?!?!
Keep us posted on how you get along in Florence, by the way!
Ping. It’s the sound of a Google alert last week. This one’s not your average day-to-day alert, though. Neve Black runs a blog called ‘Neve Black’s Black and Blue Erotica’ of a somewhat, um, sexual nature. However, she also seems to be something of traveler and (naturally) a HostelBookers fan, too. Anyway, in last week’s post (entitled 
