Took me 3 hours to find a hostel in Lisbon that wasn't a party spot

I spent forever filtering through booking sites thinking 'quiet' meant actually quiet, but nope, ended up at one with a bar blasting music until 2am. Anyone else got a reliable way to suss out which hostels are chill vs. party-focused?

3 comments

3 Comments

taylor.reese24d ago

Yeah totally feel you on this, I've been burned so many times by "social atmosphere" meaning "we blast techno until sunrise." One thing that's worked for me is checking the hostel's Google Maps location reviews filtered by "nightlife" keyword - if people are complaining about noise in the reviews from 3 years ago, it's probably still the same. Also @emerym36 is spot on about the Instagram stories thing, I started doing that after my last disaster and it's been a game changer. Another trick is to look for hostels that advertise "coworking space" or "quiet hours after 10pm" in their amenities list, because if they're bold enough to put that in writing it means they actually enforce it. I've found that places calling themselves "boutique hostels" usually have curfews and noise policies compared to the standard party chains. Just make sure to read the fine print on those booking sites because some of them will say "quiet hours" but the fine print says 11pm to 7am which is still loud for half the night.

emerym3624d ago

Screamed when I read this because SAME. I booked a place in Lisbon last summer that had photos of a sunlit courtyard and reviews saying "social atmosphere" so I figured it was just friendly. Nope, it was a full on rave with a DJ in the basement every night until 4am. I finally found a chill spot by searching specifically for "digital nomad" hostels instead of "quiet hostels" because they usually have co-working spaces and enforce quiet hours after 10pm. Have you tried looking at the hostel's Instagram stories to see what they actually post at night?

west.richard24d ago

That Instagram story thing is actually genius, I never thought to check that. But have you found that digital nomad hostels sometimes swing too far in the other direction though? Like I stayed at one in Medellin that was so quiet you could hear a pin drop at 9pm, but then the co-working was full of people on calls all day so you couldn't actually work there either. I'm curious if that's just bad luck or if there's a sweet spot somewhere between rave and library.