We stayed in Lybeer hostel, as recommended by the lovely Ali Short (who has never steered me wrong before and had a wonderful experience at this hostel, so I'm sure it was fantastic for her). We were talked up on the website, offering cheap rooms and 1 euro beer. We were jacked! However, right from square one, this hostel was a bust. Keep in mind, it was February which is the off-season for pretty much everywhere in Northern Europe. If it's not sunny and hot, why go, ya know? But alas, we were there.
At first I thought the man at reception was an Irish man (my favourite people on Earth), but it turns out the Flemish and Irish accents are very similar (it's all in the way they pronounce their 'ths' like 'Tree' instead of 'three'). Anyways, I digress. Due to availability we had different rooms at this hostel. 3 in one room, 2 in the other. Being the nice people we are, Jocelyn and I offered to go in the less-nice of the rooms (an 8-person dorm, as opposed to a 4-person dorm). We looked all around the room and all of the beds seemed to be taken. We contemplated this for a while, and looked around, determining that the shower in our room was also broken. We decided to take this up with the Irish (not Irish) man at the desk. We knew he'd understand.
Me - "Which beds are ours?"
Non-Irish - "We don't assign beds - just take one of the free ones"
Me- "They all seem to be taken"
Non-Irish - "REALLY?? Let me have a look."
Goes upstairs, comes back.
N-I - "You're right!! There isn't a bed for you!! That's a bit of a problem!" Big smile, relaxed tone.
Me - "Okay..."
N-I - "Let me sort this out for ya real quick."
And then he set us up with the mack-daddy honeymoon suite, right next to Alex, Heather & Victoria. Perfect! It had all worked out, right?
We were then informed by the others that two of the three showers on this floor were broken as well. Great. The washroom (a toilet in a small closet) door also didn't shut all the way. Lovely.
I think at this point we all thought about doing this....
 |
| Don't jump! |
We decided to call it what it was, and move on, so we headed downstairs for our 1 euro beer to get over our woes.
Us - "Where do we get beer?"
N-I - "Oh! That's a bit of a problem..." (here we go) "We actually ran out of beer, it was a busy weekend, you have to understand. You can go to the store and get some beer and drink it in the common room, if you want, but we close it up at 11pm" It is now approx 10:30pm. Great.
Us - "Is there anywhere around to get a beer?"
N-I - "Well it's Monday so...."
Us - "Not even a pub? We just want one beer!" (alcoholic Canadians that we are)
N-I - "Oh well Egg market has pubs." Gives us shoddy directions to a place I can't remember the real name of, but that I still call Egg market. (it's okay we found the coolest place in the world to have beer, more on that in the Bruges post).
Later that night, as we re-enter the hostel I hear
Random - "Is there no water in the vending machine?"
Non-Irish - "Oh! That's a bit of a problem..."
Jocelyn and I headed to our honeymoon suite (a room the size of a large walk-in closet with a double bed crammed in it) and FROZE to death all night as our window was letting in a fine February breeze. Real cute. Real impressed. I mean, you get what you pay for, but usually hostels are at least ventilated properly.
The shower experience in the one working shower was awesome as well. The drain was so clogged you were getting a really relaxing foot-soak as you washed the rest of you. It was pleasant!
The second night of our stay there we had the exact same conversation again about the beer. You'd think that he'd be a 12-er for us during the day, knowing how badly we wanted it, and make a little profit, but no, no beer round two.
During the second (and thankfully last) night of our stay we had the truly great experience of having the fire-alarm go off in the middle of the night. Wondering if it was our imaginations, our clock alarms, or what, Jocelyn and I rose up, looked at each other and prayed for our survival. Fortunately it went off right away (false alarm) but we resolved to wake up early and get the fuck out of this place!
The next morning at breakfast we had one final hurrah with Lybeer. The previous morning we had a nice, quaint breakfast of Salami, cheese and various bread and cereal products. Today we had, well nothing. Bread and buns. Limited spreads to put on them (nothing worse than being at a European hostel and not having Nutella), and some cheese. We asked if there was more salami, but well you see, that was a bit of a problem....
Sigh. Lybeer.
No comments:
Post a Comment