Post by WillTravel on May 27, 2004 14:01:24 GMT -5
Everyone has heard of nightmare places to stay while traveling (fortunately, knock on wood, this hasn't happened to me yet). I thought this excerpt from this article in the Georgia Straight, a local Vancouver paper, was painfully funny. The author had decided to book a Harlem hostel for her NYC trip to save money:
The top floor was clothed in a greenish-yellow light, the kind filmmakers use to paint death row. Hallways lined with small metal slatted doors, from which echoed a strange combination of baseball-game announcers and Kathy Lee Gifford gossip, were making me wish I had stayed home.
But slowly, shoulders slumped and hands shaking, I approached my door.
Inside the narrow cement cell was a mangy mattress. Stained deplorably and covered in plastic as if that were in some way supposed to mask the blood, the linen-free rectangular monstrosity sagged in the middle and smelled of urine. Atop it, a broken wooden desk chair almost entirely obscured the view of the kind of window one would die trying to fit through during an escape attempt.
www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=2710
I suspect she didn't carefully research and read the reviews! Anyway, it did make me wonder if anyone had ideas for good budget places to stay in NYC.
I haven't been there and I don't know when I can go, but I want to be ready when the time comes. Actually the airfare from Vancouver is exceptionally cheap at the moment, but with my July trip already planned, I'd prefer to save the money.
The top floor was clothed in a greenish-yellow light, the kind filmmakers use to paint death row. Hallways lined with small metal slatted doors, from which echoed a strange combination of baseball-game announcers and Kathy Lee Gifford gossip, were making me wish I had stayed home.
But slowly, shoulders slumped and hands shaking, I approached my door.
Inside the narrow cement cell was a mangy mattress. Stained deplorably and covered in plastic as if that were in some way supposed to mask the blood, the linen-free rectangular monstrosity sagged in the middle and smelled of urine. Atop it, a broken wooden desk chair almost entirely obscured the view of the kind of window one would die trying to fit through during an escape attempt.
www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=2710
I suspect she didn't carefully research and read the reviews! Anyway, it did make me wonder if anyone had ideas for good budget places to stay in NYC.
I haven't been there and I don't know when I can go, but I want to be ready when the time comes. Actually the airfare from Vancouver is exceptionally cheap at the moment, but with my July trip already planned, I'd prefer to save the money.