Palmers Lodge Swiss Cottage, London (edit listing)

A good inexpensive hostel with comfortable dorm bed and room near unde

I stayed in this hostel for one night and had a good night's sleep. Stayed in 10-bed dorm. Very comfy bed, wooden bunk beds. Carpet on floor in room and corridors. Shared bathrooms at end of each corridor. Several toilet stalls, 3 showers, 2-3 sinks, soap and hand dryer in bathroom. Very clean. Room is clean, sheets on bed with blanket. heading throught the hostel. Slow lift/elevator to all floors, including underground pub/bar. Pub serves food until 9-10 pm. 24-hour reception. Walk from Swiss Cottage Underground or Finchley Road Underground stations. Roughly 5-minute walk. Hostel just off College Crescent Road.

Would stay again. 10 bed dorm 12 per night. Breakfast 5.90 extra.

Generally good

Good -- Location and helpfulness of staff. Supermarkets abound nearby, easy access to public transportation. Not so good -- dorms too small for the number of people. Dining area "picnic benches" very uncomfortable for an adult. Best suited to 10-year-olds. Self-catering kitchen is a joke -- tiny, ill (if at all) equipped. No dishes, no utensils, frigs overflowing, paltry space for storing goods. One of the worst I've seen of late. In competition with the in-house bar/snack bar explains a lot, but it's not as one might expect of a hostel of this size.

Best hostel in London I've stayed

Like every hostel in London this one too is completely overpriced (50 Euros for a 6 bed dorm. Seriously?), but among outrageous options this is the best. The location is good if not great (4-5 minutes to the Tube station and another couple of minutes to get into the main part of the city). The house is very nice, by far the best I've seen, and the beds are comparatively comfortable and non-creaking. They also have curtains which is a benefit when you want to sleep. The staff I was in contact with were friendly and helpful. Also there are lockers below the beds, so bring a lock and use it at all times.

Cool room

The room I stayed in was cool, 21 female dorm, had curtains on every bed for your privacy, and a place to store your valuables. My suitcase couldnt fit in this place like it did in my other hostel so I put all that I wanted locked up in the box by my bed, my suitcase at the bottom. My bed was one of the ones that had the lock box beside not under the bed so I couldn't try to slide my suitcase under the bed. There was air conditioning but it was to loud apparently so we kept it off, I never heard it on. It was on low so the small room that it was contained in wqs cooler, and there were two fans by the door so those beds were cool. My bed wasn't bad but definitely not cool, could have complained and made my roommates move at least one of the fans but I'm too polite. Front desk staff said things matter of factly without further explanation, but I'm sure if I pushed they would have described it more. Great place to stay, would highly recommend it, very clean. They clean the bathrooms and showers a lot so it is wonderfully clean!

Palmers Lodges - Swiss Cottage is a clean, easily accessible hostel with most of the amenities a backpacker or traveler needs. Unfortunately, it is one of the less social hostels that we've seen and improvements could be made to the rooms' setup to better promote meeting other travelers.

The Location

Palmers Lodges - Swiss Cottage is located close to the Swiss Cottage underground station. It is easy to access from most of London because the Tube is quick and easy to use. However, it is not a great location if you plan on partying late, because the Tube trains stop running around midnight, and the Palmers Lodge is in a more residential area.

Rooms and Bathrooms

We stayed in the eighteen-bed dorm room, which was actually a tall room divided into two levels with a subfloor halfway up the room. This means that some people may need to climb a set of stairs to get to their beds. It also means that the beds are single beds rather than bunk beds, which is nice. The beds are all outfitted with curtains on all sides, so you have privacy when sleeping. Strangely, the curtains are fixed and cannot easily be kept open. There is a bar located in the basement that has an outdoor seating area, which is right next to the room we stayed in, so there is some noise late into the night. There are two very large lockers underneath each bed, which can be used to store fairly large suitcases. You must use your own lock.

The bathrooms are very clean and there are many bathrooms throughout the hostel. There are plentiful showers. One downside is that the showers are on a very short delay, so you have to constantly hold the button or keep hitting the button over and over when showering. The delay is very, very short, so it can get fairly annoying.

Common Spaces

There is a very large lounge with plenty of sitting space and computers for use. There is free tea provided and free Wi-Fi throughout the building. The hostel is not very social, as the seating is set up in a way such that people tend to sit apart from each other. Socialization in the rooms is also difficult due to the curtains. You can never tell if anyone is in the room trying to sleep because sleepers and empty beds alike look the same to you when walking into the room. Thus, there is very little talking in the rooms and most people whisper if they have to talk.

Summary

If you know what to expect, Palmers Lodges can be an excellent choice for someone looking for a clean, friendly, and safe hostel.

Fairly good, but some quibbles

The Palmer's Lodge is a pretty comfortable hostel with a slew of amenities and lots of beds and is located close to a tube station. Unfortunately, it falls short in a few ways. My room was right by the outdoor seating area for the bar, and it was very loud at night on the weekends. The bathrooms are far away from many of the rooms and the showers, while they say should stay on for 30 seconds, actually stay on for about 2 seconds, so you have to shower while holding the button down all the time. You can only connect one device to the wifi using your password that you're given, so you have to constantly log in over and over if you have a phone and a laptop. On the other hand, the facilities are clean and the rooms are secure. The beds and lockers are good quality. It is a fairly antisocial hostel, as the beds have curtains on them and you can never tell if someone is trying to sleep in the room. Thus, people don't really talk in the rooms, or if they have to, just whisper. The common areas are comfortable, but again, people seem to keep to themselves.

Time Spent Limited

I didn't spend a lot of time at Palmers. The accommodations were fine. I liked having a curtain around the bed and a bed light to put on in order to navigate in the dark when others were asleep. I probably ought to have stayed in a room that held less than 14 females to avoid the nuisances of having to share space. The showers and bathrooms were clean. Breakfast was simple (toast, croissants, tea, coffee). The common area was usually busy at night, which meant there weren't enough working outlets to plug in electronics. The help at the desk was wonderful. They were friendly and tried to help out to the best of their ability. The location of Palmers is convenient. It is a two minute walk from the Underground. One can walk to Primrose Hill, Hyde Park, and Regent from Palmers rather than taking a bus, the Underground. If flying in from Heathrow, the total time spent on the Underground was about 1 hr to reach Palmers.

A hostel of character rather than characters.

This is about the 11th hostel I've stayed in London and it's definitely one of the best (though I've yet to find a great hostel in London). It's an interesting place with a lot of nice, well-thought-out touches. I tend to put hostels into 4 categories -- the nice but often dull, the chain hostels, the independent backpackers, and the ropey but interesting'. The very best are always one of the latter two and have reviews varying wildly from 5 stars to 1. Palmers Lodge is a nice but dull, but to call it dull would be a little harsh. It's no party hostel but if you head to the bar there are a few comfy seats where you can sit around and chat to fellow travelers. The busiest room is the lounge upstairs. While it's nice there was virtually no conversation going on in there all weekend. The hostel location is good though. The tube is close by and although there's not a great deal in the immediate area it is close to some great suburbs in London -- It's a nice walk over Primrose Hill to Camden town, via Chalk Farm tube. This will give you a good feel for north London -- The dorms are 3 high but have curtains and feel private. The higher beds also have shelves for storing belongings overnight and the lockers for bags are a reasonable size. There are lots of showers and the place in general is very clean, though closing bathrooms for cleaning before checkout times is not particularly clever. It could be great but they would benefit from organising social activities in the lounge area. Something free or cheap each night which would bring people together to socialise more. The biggest negative for this hostel was the lack of plugs for charging phones. Unless you're in the bottom bunk there just isn't anywhere to charge them and with the reliance we have on our phones nowadays they need to address this. Every night I was sat on a bench on the stairs because it was the only accessible plug. With being in a public place you can't just leave you phone to charge so you have to sit with it. I would stay here again but other hostels may be better. 4 stars for a London hostel, but compared to hostels in other cities I'd give it 3.5.