Are you sick and tired of paying Europe’s high hotel prices? Are you the kind of traveler who doesn’t spend a lot of time in your hotel room, stopping in only late at night after a long day of sightseeing, just to wash up and lay your head down? If so, then EuropeanHostels.com might be a good resource for you. With the current exchange rates, hostels represent a valuable and often overlooked option for Americans traveling to Europe. This site is not only a directory of youth hostels but includes 38 European city guides, written by site editors. You can sort the options by price, highest rating, distance to city center and find editor’s picks using Google Maps. FYI: Although hostels are often referred to as youth hostels, there is no age limit.
In this week’s Hong Kong story, I mention a massage parlour where my friend Natalie received a very unwelcome souvenir – bedbug bites. If you are concerned that your hotel might have them, you can log on to bedbugregistry.com to see if anyone has reported an incident. On the flip side, it’s a forum where you can do the right thing and alert fellow travelers to stay away from a particular property. Keep in mind that this site has limited users so another website to check or cross-reference is TripAdvisor.com.
