No disrespect to the hotel industry: staying in a hotel room, especially when there is someone nice with you, can be exciting and sexy. Staying in a hotel room on your own, though, can be exceedingly sad, boring and unsexy.
Unfortunately, I’ve experienced more of the latter type of hotel stopover (a squalid hotel room in Addis Ababa as the occupants on the other side of the thin walls went at it like gangbusters being a particular abject experience that lingers in the mind). It makes paying a wad of cash for a lonely night even more galling. So thank goodness for hostels, which today are a far cry from the stereotype of being dirty, creepy, dangerous and only suitable for travelling students who don’t mind roughing it and whose youthful immune systems can handle the grime and bacteria.
At my favourite hostel in Seville (it has a rooftop bar and veranda that any budding nightclub owner would kill for) I got chatting with a Brit who had just arrived from Tel Aviv, where he works in IT.
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