Hostile at the Hostel

As mentioned on my previous post, not everything went perfectly during our trip to Italy. While you'll get a full list of what dumb asses we were soon, I thought I'd share one lesson we learned:

Staying in an eight person hostel bedroom to save money is NOT worth it.

Originally, we had the same philosophy of our accommodations as a yo-yo dieter: indulge and then starve. We would splurge on beautiful rooms for the first part of the trip and then, to pinch a few pennies, we would stay in an eight person dorm for two nights.

Now, the first six days of the trip we stayed in some wonderful places:

Night one and two in Rome were spent here:

Then, Siena, where we stayed here:

Florence had a romantic room and terrace:

Venice's room looked like this:

with a view of this:

We were living large!

Then, we got to night seven and dreaded moving to our hostel. After shlepping our suitcases to the hostel, though, we were surprised, however, to find that it was clean, comfy, and colorful! We met the owners, an American hippie couple, who have thoughtfully decorated with bright artwork, supply homemade soaps, and even have a cafe in the morning where people can "pay what they can". Score! we thought. This won't be so bad after all!

Little did we know that our worst night's sleep would not be caused by the actual hostel...

Then, we met our roomies, most who were from Switzerland. For the purposes of the story, we will refer to the three men as Hans (Swiss guy), Deiter (Swiss guy), and Beard (creepy guy from Milan with three inch beard who stared all the time). There were also three women.

Here's how our night went:

11:00- Lights are supposed to be out. Hans is still reading with the clip on light, which is pointed in my direction. Trying to sleep with this on is kind of like trying to relax under an interrogation lamp.
11:30- Lights actually go out.
11:35- Beard started breathing heavily.
11:40 Beard starts snoring at a weed wacker volume.
12:00- I get up to grab my ear plugs. Deiter starts to join Beard in snoring.
12:15- I realize earplugs will not work because A. I can still hear snoring and B. I'm a side sleeper and they are getting pushed too far into ear, jabbing my ear drum.
12:30: Hans starts snoring too. Am I on Punked?
1:00- Dan is flopping around, making mattress squeak. I give a little nudge with my foot through one of the holes in the springs.
1:15- Dan falls asleep and is f@*&ing snoring! I karate kick the mattress above me, he snuffles, sighs, rolls over, and continues to snore.
1:30- I try to cover head with pillow.
1:35- I consider smothering all four guys with pillow. What would an Italian prison be like?
1:40- Wasted Italians outside on busy street start screaming songs at top of their lungs and shatter glass bottles. Mama mia!
NOTE: I found out the next morning that one of the girls had opened a window, which is why we got so much noise from outside.
2:30- Things have slightly quieted down. I doze off for about half an hour. Am awoken by...
3:00- THE FREAKIN' STREET SWEEPER WHIRRING AWAY OUTSIDE!!
3:15- Beard wakes up, leaves room.
3:25- Beard returns, smelling like smoke, and takes five minutes of tossing and turning on the creaky mattress to get comfortable. TAKE YOUR TIME, BUDDY.
3:30- Deiter leaves room and inadvertently slams door on way out.
3:35: Hans is rustling in bag. I think he's eating a granola bar. Who can't wait until the morning to eat??
3:40- Eee eee eee ee- that's creaky springs. Dan is awake and flopping back and forth above me. I can hear him sighing, indignant at the two men still snoring. Pot, meet kettle.
4:00- I try my iPod. Coldplay, usually so soothing, has a back-up orchestra of snoring and, now, one of the girls blowing her nose at elephant trumpet volume. Kill me. Kill me now.
4:30- I join all the noise with my whimpering.
5:00- Dan stalks out of room in a huff.
5:05- I join him on the couch downstairs in the cafe, where we are giddy with exhaustion, holding each other and cracking up at both of our murderous thoughts. We toy with revenge plots (let's torture them by fake snoring tomorrow night as loud as we possibly can!) but then settle down and try to sleep.
5:25- Can't sleep. We decide to take our showers.
6:20- We leave for breakfast.
1:00 p.m.- Hours later, I nod off listening to an audio tour in the Vatican museum until Dan nudges me sharply.
3:00 p.m.- After Vatican museum and St. Peter's Basilica, we scour the city for cheap rooms, finding twin beds at a place that usually rents to train conductors. We can't get money back for second night in hostel, which we pre-paid for.

In closing:

Savings by staying a night in a hostel? NONE.


Stay tuned for more travel fun coming soon!