Located practically in the middle of Madison, HI-Madison Hostel is actually quite nice place to stay. Capitol Square is about two blocks away and just around it most attractions of city center. Badger/Greyhound Bus Depot is walking distance away as well. Hostel has very good instructions on their web page (madisonhostel.org) how to reach hostel with various means of transportation.
The hostel itself may not look like much from the outside -- just a small, bit older building. However, inside is one of the cleanest hostels anywhere. It is quite small but still surprisingly big considering how it looks from outside. It has kind of cozy and relaxed feeling without actually being a party hostel. That is being taken care of by the restaurant located just outside of hostel in the same building.
Downstairs there is a common room with free internet access, small library, info about local attractions, and other basic necessities associated with hostelling. Upstairs has couple of sleeping rooms, kitchen, and eating area. One of the curious features of the hostel is that some of the rooms are located in the back of the building at the first floor. However to get into these rooms you have to first go to second floor and use another set of stairs to get back to ground level. One of these back sleeping rooms has the biggest toilet/shower room ever seen in a hostel. It is bigger than some sleeping rooms in more commercial hostels.
There are a few drawbacks to this hostel. The biggest one is they have an odd policy of requiring you to remove your shoes in the hostel. They say it's to "protect the floors", but the floors are cheap linoleum tiles that will look exactly the same in 50 years regardless. Don't walk around barefoot or in socks unless you want to catch/spread athlete's foot, always at least where your shower sandals (flip-flops). They also have an early checkout of 10 AM (a later checkout of 11 or noon would be more reasonable), and then they have a lengthy lock-out from 11 AM to 5 PM. They also don't provide wifi for their guests, despite having a computer and with internet access.
If you have a car, there are only a couple of spots belonging to the hostel that you can pay a small fee to use, but if those are full (as they often are) your choices close to the hostel are limited to parking metered spots or a parking garage. Here's a tip: If you don't mind walking a little, there is free parking in the residential/industrial areas starting about 4 blocks north of the hostel.
Overall HI-Madison is certainly one of the better hostels around -- clean and safe environment, friendly staff, and relaxed atmosphere leave a very good feeling about the place.
-- Exclusive Hostelz.com Review
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