Hi all, heading to San Francisco in November/December and still tossing up with which hostel to stay at. Will be there for a good week or so, have been recommended the green tortoise but have also heard that fishermans wharf area is very touristy and sort of shitty. Have also been looking at the HI hostels in the city center and downtown and also the USA hostel. Any recommendations or advice would be much appreciated!
Hostels in San Francisco?
Madfrega on 20/09/2014 - 11:54
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How about Airbnb?
prefer hostels as i'll be travelling on my own and hope to meet other people! but thanks for the suggestion, i'm using airbnb for one night when i'm over there!
If you have a car the hostel in Marin county is fantastic.
no car :(
In my experience (a few years ago now so might have changed) a lot of the hostels in the USA are in pretty bad areas - security guards at the central Wash DC one for instance. Was a surprise after hostelling in Europe and Australia
decided on choosing usa hostels in san francisco (near union square) as i'm staying there in san diego too. am staying in hotels for most of my trip but can't afford to stay in them for the last 2 weeks as i'll be travelling on my own!
Seems you have already chosen USA Hostels, and that's a pretty good choice. I haven't stayed at the SF one but have stayed at their LA, SD and LV hostels and they were all great.
SF is very, VERY expensive for accommodation, I believe they have a lodging tax or something like that. Standard bed in a dorm room in a hostel seems to be US$50-$55. Crazy.My last time there I used vrbo.com (Vacation Rentals By Owner) and stayed in a beautiful self contained apartment with a better shower than at home! For us travelling as a couple it worked out about $10 a night more than sleeping in a dorm room with 6 other people.
I was thinking of writing a post about my recent USA trip and some tips / bargains, stay tuned (?).would love to hear some tips about usa traveling! am heading to new york, vegas, la, san fran, san diego, new orleans and some other places! thanks mate
Please do write that post Luxx!
We stayed in a come2sanfrancisco.com place in San Fran but there were 7 of us. My parents stayed at the green tortoise one night as they did a camping tour through them. They thought it was good- San Fran has great public transport so even if you don't like an area it's cheap to get somewhere else.
Just some hints for your trip- book Alcatraz night tour and climbing to the Statue of Liberty crown ASAP . These don't cost much but are limited experiences that you can't do if wait till you get there. Also if you want to catch a cable car get a tram to the middle of the line much less of a wait than starting at union station and you avoid a lot of crazy homeless people (the homeless in the us are on the whole polite but San Fran ones can be very in your face)
definitely need to plan your time with Alcatraz, they do indeed bookout and bring warm clothes lol
Go to Priceline.com, select the area you want to stay in, and bid. I have saved almost 30-35% of regular hotel prices using Priceline. Good Luck…!