Brown's Hostel

Dublin

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Address	90 Lower Gardiner Street, Dublin County Dublin, Ireland Map
Price	Dorms from €15 per person per night Check Current Prices by Date Here

Location/Contact

Details

Their Description

Features

Free Breakfast
Kitchen
Lockers
Lounge / Common space
Pool Table
Food/Restaurant
24 Hour Free Hot Showers
Air Conditioning
Washing Machine (laundry)
Travel information provided
Gameroom
Phones (public or in room)

The Hostelz.com Review

Very clean hostel, small kitchen facilities that do become crowded at mealtimes, a fantastic curved roof in the lower floors that reminds you of an aircraft hanger where the kitchen, recreation and TV rooms are. Pool table, plenty of tables and chairs in the common areas. Prices vary upon the size of the room. The lowest priced room had 20 beds and 2 toilets in the room – sheets are included free of charge but you need to pay a fee if you want a blanket.

The showers are segregated for men and women and a card is needed to enter each room of the hostel. Shower doors are cloth and there in no safe place to store your valuables whilst having a shower unless you pay for a security locker.

It's situated on Lower Gardiner Street, close to Dublin city centre and only a short walk to the Temple Bar area. One euro is charged per bag for luggage storage.

— Exclusive Hostelz.com Review

Ratings & Comments

1.9 Average from 19 Ratings

This is an open forum, and unlike other hostel guide websites we don't censor out the negative comments.
We can't validate the legitimacy of comments posted on this site—so take what you read here with a grain of salt.

Comment by Sonnie

May 2007

I'll state it blunt, as this place doesn't deserve much of my time. worst hostel in Europe. Go there only if you have no other choice.

Comment by Peter, UK

May 2007

Don't go! I nominate this hostel as the worst hostel ever! Terrible smell, dirty mattress, food under the bed, and extremely uninterested and bad-tempered staff. The room had plainly not been cleaned in weeks. Only go if you love dark, damp places.

Comment by appyguy, United States

April 2007

Never book a place sight unseen! If I would've seen this place I would've turned tail and run! It smells of dankness and death, most of the guy's toilets don't work, and the ones that do don't have toilet paper. Most of the dishes are gone from the kitchen. The bedrooms have no ventilation. The only redeeming features are the free cereal, the location, and the free internet. Also, the place looks much more run down than in the pictures. Do not stay here. I went to a hostel finder shop and they recommended it.

Comment by Courtney

March 2007

Don't stay here! I have stayed in many a hostel around the world and this has to be one of the dirtiest and smelly hostels. The bathrooms are disgusting, the rooms are filthy and smelly, the carpets are full of dirt, the kitchen was unhygienic, no hot water, and the staff could not care. Only stay here if you want to catch something!

Comment by fuma

February 2007

very, very, very, bad. the worst place i'd ever been in all my life.

Comment by claudio

February 2007

the worst place i'd ever been. it is dirty (both the dormitory and the bathroom), bad smelling, and if the staff is unfair the director is very rude. no paper in the toilet (except on the ground), very small kitchen. Twenty beds in a room and no windows is crazy. we arrived in the morning (10:30 a.m.) but they didn't show us the room before late evening, too late for finding a different place (it was friday and almost all places were full) and too late to get back the money for the second night (we should have asked for it twenty-four hours in advance). dublin is full of good places (i stayed in two other places) so there no point in staying at brown's, if not to expiate your own worst sins.

Comment by Alex

September 2006

I stayed in Browns Hostel for two nights. From the outside it looks allright, but this impression changes very quickly. The staff is unfriendly and speaks with such a strong dialect you cannot understand a word. The kitchen is small and dirty. I think nobody ever cleans it. We slept in a four-bed room without a single window! The card you need to enter the toilet stopped working so I had to recode it. When you enter the ladies toilet you first see many broken safes. After that there are six or seven toilets, one without a door and the other doors are damaged, so you cannot lock them. I will never come back again!

Comment by HaHaPePo

July 2006

This hostel is really bad. The showers and toilets are dirty. The environment looks very dark. And someone stolen my chicken legs inside the refrigerator.

Comment by helen k

July 2006

I stayed in this hostel last weekend with a group of seven of us. We stayed in a twelve-bed room and arrived pretty late (thanks to delayed flights) and unfortunately ended up crashing into a room full of sleeping people at two a.m. with all our stuff, to find people sleeping in our assigned beds. The card style door keys stop working when they feel like it, leaving you locked out of you room, wandering around until someone else tries to get in or you decide risking waking someone up inside. Had to get my card 're-scanned' over eight times in four days. Bit of a hassle. Kitchen at busy times is a nightmare. Nearly ended up in a fight with some belgian/french boy over a microwave. Fridges were packed, you need to prise the toaster handle down by wedging it with a spoon, and one of the ovens cooks all food to charcoal. Bathroom i didn't that was that bad. Hot showers are pretty much always available. None of the toilet door shut, and the shower curtains are barely there. Nowhere to put stuff to keep it dry when showeing either. But lots of mirrors, sinks, and loos. Apparently no alcohol is allowed in the common room areas. We drank every night and so did everyone else. Ignore the signs. Luggage storage was fine (if just a small cupboard wher eyou had to cram your stuff in to make it fit). It's in a good location, pretty central to city centre and links via trains and trams. Very hot for first night and a bit smelly, but we are all weary travellers, what do you expect? Basically, a budget place. Cheap and a bit nasty. Oh and the staff were pretty hopeless. Put it down to 'being a bit sleepy' after telling us we were only booked in for five beds not seven, and that we were only staying for two nights not three, and directed us the wrong way to the room. And i thought the bat cave of subterranean tunnels was pretty cool...

Comment by jackson

March 2006

The hostel from the outside looked ok. Sorry but that's as nice as it gets. Yes it's cheaper than the hotels in Dublin, but this is certainly why its cheaper. It's a smelly, scruffy, dump of a place. We stayed for one night and that was only cause we were drunk. It does seem to house homeless people, not a youth hostel as I would think. We stayed in the twenty-bedroom dorm, it had no windows so was rather smelly with twenty bodies squashed together. The water went off the next day -- you could not even brush your teeth, the staff didn't care, they just shrugged their shoulders. We asked for a refund and went to get another hotel. We would never ever want to stay in such a mess.

Comment by Laura

February 2006

This hostel was awful! The whole place seemed really dark, dirty and smelly and, from what i could see,was full of old tramps not travellers on a budget. We were staying in a room crammed with 10 bunks beds, no mirrors, no electric power points, nowhere to hang any clothes-not even anywhere to place your bag! (it just had to be dumped in the very small space between mine and the next bunk!) It took an age to locate the showers due to the fact they were down 3 flights of stairs, a good five minute walk!!! And when i got there wished i hadnt bothered with the journey. The showers were dirty and any privacy you may be able to grab was thanks to one flimsy little shower curtain!! Nice!! Bed linen wasnt even provided either, i mean i know im a student, but thats gota be a joke. The choice was either freeze or pay for a blanket and to be honest, after seeing the cleanliness of the place, i think i would have prefered to freeze then come into contact with a duvet from that place. Needless to say i didnt stick around to inspect the premisis any longer, after being a guest of Browns for aproximatly 30minutes i made i grab for my luggage and headed down about 9 flights of stairs to get a refund. I lost my money for the first nite but the thought of getting out of that hell hole rendered the 18 dollars I was about to loose inconsequential!!If i was goin to Dublin again for a weekend and every other hostel was full appart from Browns, I really think it would take to the streets, the company would probably be the same and i expect i'd go home with a few less diseases!!

Comment by Pat

September 2005

This place ought to be shut down. It is dirty, has a very rude staff and houses many drunkards from Eastern Europe! I can only describe it as a dangerous unsupervised dungeon. The reception staff are young and inexperienced, and the security staff are from India. I must acknowledge that the Indians demonstrate some sensibility in their communication; however, this is hampered by their fear of getting into trouble and losing their work permit status in Ireland. Ireland obviously has inherent problems with affording Indians easy access to work permits. They obviously fear that Indians will subsequently become too active in Irish politics, leading to the country becoming flooded with Indians. Nowadays, Irish authorities seem to prefer economic advantage over law and order. The recent fatal stabbing of a married woman in Naas, County Kildare will give credibility to my point of view. Brown's Hostel seem to have little regard for travelers who prefer a quiet and peaceful night sleep after paying exorbitant accommodation fees in a rain-drenched country. At a time when we see the American pop-culture playing itself out in New Orleans, a mentality that cherishes "less need, and more weed," I think that copycat Ireland is merely sitting on a time bomb, and our Brown's Hostel is more of a hindrance than a help in preserving and promoting the caring and friendly Ireland, as experienced by tourists through 1930s – 1980s! Brown's Hostel is not remotely representative of Irish culture or Irish decency!

Comment by Teague N Tara

June 2005

The bathrooms were ok... the showers were hot. It looks as if many people live here and some never shower or change their socks!! EWW!! Now for the rooms...they are ok if you like to sleep IN HELL!!! The rooms never went below 85F degrees and it was worse at night because all of the smelly people were sleeping in there; mind you that this room had no windows!! (We stayed in the 16-bed room because it was cheap) But I wouldn't do it again. Good points: security is good, good location, hot shower, breakfast was standard, one hour free Internet, good people at the desk. If not for sweating to death in my bedroom I would have given it another star.

Comment by AJ.

May 2005

I did not like this hostel. Staff weren't friendly at all. To me the place looked more like a shelter for homeless people than a hostel where you meet backpackers. The showers and toilets were located very far from the rooms, and just to take a shower we had to walk like 5 minutes. The showers looked dirty and in the toilet there wasn't toilet paper.

Comment by Anonymous

January 2005

Great receptionists — especially the guy from Romania! Beware of his jokes, though. We had the whole room all to ourselves, although it was absolutely freezing! The walls are very thin — take note if engaged in certain activities. There are lots of people staying here long-term.

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