When you are travelling on a budget (and let’s face it – who isn’t) and on your own, you will soon find out that the biggest obstacle is to find a place to stay. A place where you feel safe, where you can enter the bathroom without feeling the urge to clean it…
For me, it seems that with the years going by, I find myself longing for clean and quiet spaces. When I think about my first trips, I didn’t care much about anything. All I wanted was a bed in a reasonably clean hostel, no matter how many people I had to share my room with. On my trip last year, I struggled a lot with finding the right living arrangements. One option was choosing a hostel which I decided to do in New York City and Boston, my first stops on the trip.

In New York I lived in a nice little hostel in Chelsea. I had been staying in a hostel before, but it had been located further north in Manhattan and this time I wanted to be more in the South. To choose my hostel, I always use websites like hostelworld.com or I simply look for reviews on google. For me it is important to now what other people had been saying. The hostel in Chelsea was all in all ok, it was reasonably priced for a place in New York, the staff was nice and they offer smaller rooms and free breakfast. It is located in a quiet street with a lot of shops and cafés in walking distance.

In Boston I chose to stay in a youth hostel which so far has been my best experience in a hostel abroad. The youth hostel is located in the Theater District/ Chinatown, so most sights are in walking distance. Also, there is a Panera right next door 🙂 The hostel has been built only a few years ago, so everything is quite modern and new. The staff is nice and helpful as well and they offer a lot of activities like tours to a brewery or to museums.

All in all, I prefer staying in hostels over a hotel. It is good to catch up on sleep after a long flight in a hotel, but hostels are always more fun as you can meet so many people from so many different places!