Friends Hostel

Not too bad, don't forget it's just around 10 bucks per night
I was sharing a room with four to six people, bed is ok. a regular double decker, never sleep well but at least it's clean. Super tiny bathroom, not comfortable at all, anyway it gave me a hot water shower, so it's ok too. Pretty noisy because of the thin wall so don't expect you can get sleep before twelve. Definitely scary neighborhood, a crowd of hawker stays around the metro station day and night. Guys out there on your way selling ticket, cigarette, piss around, such a messy place. Night club round the street heads to moulin rouge. Not recommended for the people just want to enjoy a safe and romantic Paris holiday. Anyway I stayed there for a week alone and I was safe, lost nothing. The host is so far friendly in honest business and likely to help. It's alright for the backpacker looking for a cheap sleeping place and don't mind a bit adventure.

Worst Hostel ever!
The neighbourhood is very dangerous. We booked a mixed room for sixteen and we were outside the hostel in some garage. It was so cold, the heater was not working, there were no windows. There were triple beds, with no space. Someone stole a girl's laptop from the luggage room. Everybody can take everything he likes from this room. The bookings are a mess, you are supposed to change room every day! The staff was friendly, but few of them doesnt know any English. I dont recommend this hostel. I will never go back!

Great, authentic, and stylish
This hostel is just so great. You can meet a lot of people from everywhere there. The shower is en-suite. The beds are alright. It's just in front of the metro station, although it's not noisy. The staff is very nice and friendly, they don't mess around if you drink a bit too much. Nice neighborhood, you can buy cigarettes for less than in the tobacco shops in the street. The common room is glamour and the courtyard is gorgeous. I hope to get back there.

Only giving it a one because there's no zero rating!
Can't describe how awful this place is. Creepy, leering, rude staff. Horrible surroundings. Dangerous area. They also lost our booking. We were staying for three nights, and on our second morning at 9:30 a.m. the man from reception walked into our room without knocking and announced that we had to be out of the room in ten minutes to move to another one. We told him no, and that we'd pack our things and move in our own time -- I was just out of the shower and standing there in a towel at the time! Disgusting, dirty place. You have to hand in your key at reception when you go out, and when you come back in and ask for it they just hand it over without looking for I.D. -- they could give it to anyone! Just do yourself a favour and don't even consider this place.

The hostel itself was all right, nothing spectacular, but the neighborhood was terrible.

I felt like killing my friend who decided to book me at this awful place! I was horrified the minute I walked into the overcrowded and dangerous neighborhood. Keep in mind, that I was a young single woman traveling alone. I wouldn't recommend anyone stay here, especially women. Trust me. I was molested, harassed, and threatened by the locals every time i left the hostel, whether i was alone or not. The hostel was awful too! My door didn't lock and the ceiling caved in on my bed my second night staying there. I also seen mice. I was constantly hit on by the creepy aggressive bar man who worked there -- he even entered my room one night. Thank God, they're men in the room to chase him out. Naturally i wanted out of this place a lot sooner than my scheduled departure time. Despite these very serious and legitimate complaints, the workers were still rude with me and refused to give me a refund. they didn't even so much as apologize! After so much time i just couldn't take it anymore and left early. It was so bad that i didn't even care about losing the money. I just felt fortunate that i got out of there without anything serious happening to me. The only bright side was that i met some great fellow travelers there and I am still in touch with some of them. Hopefully things changed since i stayed there because this place was not only the worst hostel i ever stayed in, but it was downright dangerous. 100% true.

This place is the crappiest I've ever been.The staff is so rude, and really mean! Guys don't blow your money with this kind of whore house -- it really sucks, good thing I'm back home Spain. I gotta say that the hostel is pretty close to places like the Red Light district "Moulin Rouge" and the Sacre Cour, though, but besides that it's not worth! Seriously browse for something better than this. there are better places for sure!

The place is clean but smelly. I rented a four-bed room. The room is a bit cramp. There's no table or cupboard or anything for u to hang your clothes. And it is in a neighbourhood with a lot of weird looking characters around. I've seen police patrol the area quite a few times so presumably this is not a safe area. I've read from the other reviews that there's been quite a number of mess up booking and so am mentally prepared for it. Luckily there's no problem with my booking. There's two other group of people that's not so lucky. I heard one group complain on the first day and another group on the second day about mess up booking and wrong rooms. And the hostel has a policy of no refund. So beware!

This place was alright. There were trannies in the room, very disgusting but provided for some good belly laughs. I was offended by the bellhop because he was not a bellhop but a criminal that made off with my luggage. During the night i was molested by a humpbacked kid named rafiki but besides that it was nice and the food was delicious -- fit for kings.

This is a warning. do not book this "hostel." it is far far away from the nice pictures you see on this page. it is in fact in the worst ghetto i've ever seen! I've stayed only one night from the nights that where booked, booked a three-bed room where was four beds in but no cupboard. Very unfriendly and non-cooperative in any cases. Spend more money for a two-star hotel and save your health. This is no joke. They give no refunds in any cases.

Is the worst hostel that I've ever been. I've been travel around europe for along time and i've been in a really good hostel and in another not so good but without any doubt this is the worst. I slept in a dormitory and in a private room and i felt like in austwitz (where I was the last summer). All is dirty, old, and broke.The dorm door is impossible to close and then you have to leave your bag in a different room. You can't go up or go down from your bed if you don't use the bed of another person. You have one toilet for fourteen people. You have a kitchen in the hostel but all is broken in there. You can book whatever room you want but the always cancel this booked and give you another kind of room. They have a place to stay but only until ten p.m. -- after that you can go to a tv room only with five people or then you are invited to go to sleep like cincerella, is incredible that in a young hostel in which you want to know new people you have to go out or go to bed. The staff are really rude and haven't any professionality. If you want a cheap way to slepp this is not the best option.

January 2006. Oh how I wished I'd read these comments about Friends Hostel before staying here. I booked through hostels.com and left a critical review there. However, it was deleted after a couple of days, so the integrity of those reviews must be questioned. However, I am submitting this here as the other reviews seems to reflect correctly the experience I had. The location of Friends is good - just 6 mins walk from Gare du Nord and right next to Barbes Metro station on lines 2 and 4 which go everywhere you need to for a short visit. The street right outside the hostel IS dodgy with drug dealers but not too unsafe if you are streetwise - don't make eyecontact, keep walking etc. The area is a poorer inner city district but that makes it interesting in my opinion and you can buy things at normal prices, not tourist price. The golden rule that I have learned from Friends Hostel, is always insist on viewing the room BEFORE paying the money. I had booked the cheapest bed I could find in Paris (€14 per night) and I knew this was in a 14 bed dormitary. What I didn't expect was that the 7 bunk-beds that filled this room were no more than 20cm apart in what is shown in the web photographs at the Bar. The most number of beds in this room should have been 4 bunks, making the capacity 8. Reading some of the other reviews here, this room has clearly not been used as a Bar since at least 2003. You had to enter the bunk from the end as you could not get in the side and there was no room for your luggage. The one toilet/shower/washbasin in this room had no lock on the door. I opened the door one morning and found a girl stood there in just her underwear - nice for me, not for her! Yes folks, this is the notorious Room 13. Do not stay in this room. It is a fire risk. The hostel would be closed down in Britain, if only for the greedy overcrowding they have done in this room. Oh, and did I mention that it is reached directly off an outside courtyard, so it is cold and draughty in Winter. To be fair to the hostel staff, they seem to have sorted out the cleanliness issue mentioned in earlier posts. I believe the toilets were cleaned daily and they seemed to be on top of the rubbish. There was clearly still chaos with room swapping going on. Also the staff just walked into the dorm at 7 in the morning to check on bed occupancy etc. Yes, you do start to feel like a refugee or homeless bum. I got the impression those people who were in the smaller rooms had a better experience. I'm fairly certain one time I was at reception I saw a hooker and client trying to secure a double room. I think they were full on that day thankfully. Indeed, the hostel looks like a Brothel at night due to the huge amount of Neon signs attached. This suggests the management may well accept this "hourly" business. The location is not quite in the red light district, but only about 5 mins walk or 2 stops on the metro. At the end of the day if you want it cheap and are travelling ALONE then you can stay here. However, just walking around the surrounding streets I found much better small hotels charging only about €20 per person for a double room. What ever you do, AT NO COST MAKE A BOOKING FOR THE 14 MAN DORM, ROOM 13. You have been warned!

I think the warnings about the area being dangerous are over the top. For a handful of euros, and one of the cheapest hostels in Paris (for a twin room anyway), you are deluded if you are expecting views of the Eiffel Tower. There is no doubt the hostel is in a poor part of town, but Paris isn't all la la la and can can dancers and you get to see a slice of genuine Parisian life, away from postcards and Monet prints. There were guys selling drugs outside the hostel and folk begging for money but we never were hassled or felt intimidated. The Metro is a few paces away, as is Tati the great department store and plenty of cheap kebabs/food stores. Montmarte is a couple of blocks away and one of the best flea markets in Europe is a good and interesting walk north. As for the hostel, there was plenty heating, hot water and cleaning going on. We found the staff friendly and helpful. We took a two bed room, with a view of a brick wall and and an extractor fan from the kebab shop pumping grease into the air/room when window open. Worst however was the sagging springs on the beds which need chucking out, we slept with the mattresses on the floor to avoid back problems. Painting the rooms black and dark purple also seems questionable, small rooms could do with being brighter. I think a balanced view however is that there are probably far better hostels than Friends in Paris, and we wouldn't go back, but equally a poor and ethnically diverse neighbourhood showed us a side of Paris more real than that which we saw last time in an expensive hotel on the Ile St-Louis.

OK, this place isn't great, but I also didn't find it to be as miserably bad as some of the other people did on here. The neighborhood is very dodgy — the kebab place next door (which is great, by the way) is as far as I would walk by myself after dark. I stayed in one of the six-bed dorms, which was en suite, and overall not too bad. I met some people staying in the 14-bed room who had a completely different opinion, though. The kitchen smells a little funny, too. The courtyard (which is the only common area) is a decent social place, but closes at 10, or sometimes at midnight depending on who is working that night. On the plus side, the hostel is near Gare du Nord, which is convenient if you're chunneling. Also I was able to get a bed on only one day's notice (probably because of the bad reviews) in the summer, which was nice.

I traveled through Europe last month and this was one of the best hostels we stayed at. The staff there were wonderful. They ran out of space, so one night they let us stay in the TV room where they put extra beds down for us. And besides that, they were just generally very friendly and personable. The hostel is right across from the Metro as well, which is very convenient. Also, it is near inexpensive restaurants, clothing stores and Internet cafes. A few blocks away is the Basilique and the surrounding neighborhood — definitely worth checking out. I would certainly recommend staying here!!!