Hostel SPUS Ládví

Hostel Spus Ladvi is located in a very nice, upscale neighborhood with lots of pensions, restaurants, a cinema, and a supermarket. This hostel has a split personality. It does some things very well, and other aspects are substandard. Check-in at this hostel is polite but lackluster. We were charged for our room and given a key with no information provided on the hostel's facilities, the neighborhood, things to do in Prague, or indeed, even the number of our hostel room. Toward the end of our stay, we did notice some brochures about Prague tucked away in a hard-to-spot corner of the lobby, but if this is your first visit to Prague -- unless you are a very independent traveler -- you may wish to try a hostel with better services. Also, some of the staff speak only Czech.

The common areas include the lobby, the kitchen, and the clubhouse. The lobby is a small, open area with one computer for free internet access. The time limit for computer usage is one hour, which seems too long for a place with only one computer and a lot of people waiting to use it. During our five-day stay, we noticed that most of the guests tended to use the entire hour. The location of the computer, just in front of the entrance door, means that you will be subjected to cold drafts as people come and go, and as smokers stand smoking in the doorway with the door wide open.

The kitchen is a tiny hole, just big enough for one person. There is a fridge, a two-burner cook top, and a microwave but no oven. There are plenty of cups, plates, pots, and pans. Corkscrews are hard to come by -- we had to borrow one from from other guests or from one of the staff on duty. The clubhouse is a lovely room which is underused. Downstairs is a long table suitable for eating, and a bookshelf with a handful of books. A spiral staircase takes you to the skylighted loft which houses a few sofas and couches. The room is very light with lots of big windows, and would make a good place to hang out and chat with friends. There are small security lockers in the reception area for storing valuables, and these come with a hefty key deposit. If you are traveling with a laptop, you can store it in a closet that is only accessible by the hostel staff.

Signs in the lobby announce the hostel's rules. "Please don't smoke in our hostel." We saw the receptionists smoking in the hostel and there is an ashtray full of butts on the computer table. Another sign proclaims, "Please be quiet after 10 p.m. If you should decide to pay no attention to this rule, we will call the police." We complained to the front desk on one occasion of extreme noise going on in the next room in the wee hours, and they did not call the police, but they did get the people to quiet down.

The carpeted dorm rooms themselves are quite cramped, but give the illusion of space because the three sets of bunk beds are set off by two freestanding beds. We recommend avoiding the freestanding beds for sleeping, however. We slept on one for three excruciating nights. Not only was the bed hard as a rock, but there was a hole in one side of the mattress (to let your hip sink down and avoid the bruised hips that you experience after sleeping on the other side of the bed?). This, as you can imagine, led to horrible backaches. After the third night, our companion was able to move to one of the bunk beds, which was perfectly comfortable.

The dorm rooms are extremely clean, as are the bathrooms, but there is a price to pay for this. Check-out time is at 9:30 a.m., and the staff begins cleaning the rooms and vacuuming the corridors at about this time, regardless of whether anyone is sleeping in the room or not. To be fair, we never saw them vacuuming a dorm room at this time. Some other disadvantages of the dorms are that there are no reading lights, and no storage lockers. Also, the rooms are kept very hot. Some people seemed to like that. We found it hard to sleep, but after being there for a while, we found that we could adjust the heat by turning a knob on one of the two or three radiators in the room. The radiators also came in handy for drying hand-washed clothes.

The biggest negative aspect of this hostel is one that could be solved very easily, but the hostel has not seen fit to do so, and that is -- there is only one key for each of the dorm rooms, and the doors lock automatically when shut. This means that you have to leave the door open when you go to the bathroom or the kitchen, possibly leaving your sleeping roommates and their possessions vulnerable to intruders. You also must coordinate very carefully with your roommates, some of whom you may never see, the location of the key at all times. Needless to say, this is impossible, and leads to people knocking on the door at all times of the night, and it is almost impossible to get a good night's sleep here because of it. If it weren't for this extreme nuisance, the Spus Ladvi would be an extraordinarily good value.

To get there from either of the train stations or from the Florenc bus station, take the Metro Line C (red line) in the direction of Ladvi. Get off at the Ladvi station which is the last stop in that direction. When you come up the stairs from the Ladvi metro station, you will find yourself between a cluster of stores and a busy street. Walk toward the busy street. As you look across the street, the large, yellow building that you see is not the hostel. Turn to your left and walk down to the first zebra crossing. Cross the street and proceed down the sidewalk to your left. At the corner, keep going straight and cross the street. You will be standing right in front of the hostel. If you notice a faint odor of raw sewage, you will know that you are in the right place. Don't worry, the smell fades away as you approach the door of the hostel.

-- Recensione esclusiva Hostelz.com