Hostel choices at Boston are limited and all of them are pricey. We ended up staying in HI Boston as recommended by my friend. Hostelling International (HI) is a worldwide recognized hostel and HI Boston is rated as a 2-stars accommodation on Google. But in my opinion, it deserves to be rated much higher.
We booked a 6 persons mixed dorm and I applaud how the design of the room enables each guest to enjoy maximum privacy. The room is I-shaped, with all 3 bunk beds and lockers on a side. Each bunk bed is separated by lockers. So, when I was on my bed, I could only see walls on both sides, locker at the head of the bed and window at the foot of the bed (we were fortunate enough to get the bunk bed at the end of the room and beside a tall window).
The locker located at the head of bed is slightly longer than the single bed. Finally after countless lockers at different museums and hostels, I found a locker that was wide and deep enough to fit my 28 inches duffel with ease. The locker is also very tall and equipped with bar and hooks for me to hang my clothes inside the locker. The back of the locker is a small cut in space that serves as "bedside cabin". There is 4 plugs or each bed located inside the open cabin so nobody needs to fight over for plugs to charge his electronic devices. There is also a headlight on the inner top side of the cabin for the convenience of all the night owls during the lights out hours.
There are 2 bathrooms located right beside each bedroom and I could tell whether a bathroom was occupied simply by looking at whether the lock on the door showed "vacant" or "occupied".
The kitchen is huge, equipped with all sorts of utensils, electric cooking devices and stoves that allows a lot of guests to cook and dine in at the same time. The awesome thing is guests do not need to wash their own plates. Service crews are available to keep the kitchen clean. Free breakfast is provided every morning too! We spent a lot of time in the kitchen eating breakfast or take-away food from restaurants nearby and sipping free coffee while we passed by a lazy afternoon.
The common area is of course, loaded up with all sort of awesomeness such as piano, pool table and mahjong. We still didn't not take advantage of all the community activities such as crew-organized free tours but we did play pool for 2 nights.
Another feature that made HI outstanding is its security. Guests have to use their room key cards to get pass the main door that separates the lobby and the common areas and basically all the other doors of each room, each stairway and elevator.
Overall, I would recommend this hostel to all the solo traveler and all those who don't mind paying more for a secured and convenient hostel.
Stay: 3 nights
Location: excellent, one block away from Chinatown and 5 minutes walk away from Boston Common
Staff: friendly and helpful
Facility: excellent and well-maintained
Overall rating: 10 out of 10
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