Looking for a place to stay over in Napoli for a few days, I ended up at Ostello Bella Napoli, near the port of Naples. It cost €20 per night, breakfast included, which isn’t in any way objectively cheap for what it was, but still one of the cheapest choices available compared to everything else.
The dormitory and the bathroom, I would not call them clean; neither would I call them awfully dirty, though; just averagely dirty.
The breakfast was fine for a hostel breakfast. But the tv playing in very high volume the most ear-insulting kind of American pop music every morning during breakfast time, was guaranteed to give you a good headache.
The worst thing about this hostel was that they don’t give you any sort of key to come through the three doors; which means that you need to ring the bell every time and, some times, wait a few minutes until the Camorra-apprentice-looking bloke who keeps the hostel decides to open. The bloke gets quite fidgety, too, about it and other things. You can see he’s always struggling to keep his temper cool. But I can understand him. If I was in his place -keeping a hostel all by myself, day and night- I would probably not be as calm as he.
Another very wrong thing about that hostel were the dodgy, pre-war elevators; which not only gave you the anxiety they might stop any moment, you getting stuck in that tiny space of theirs and facing the danger of a slow and torturous death out of suffocation, when they worked; but they, too, often did not work at all, obliging you to go up or down the seven floors on foot. There was a slot machine in their interior, apparently requiring a coin for the elevator to work, at random times only. That was a novelty. I’ve never seen before elevators with coin slots.
The best thing about this hostel was its location: in the heart of the city, right in front of the port, and a two min walk to Capolinea Sita Bus Station.
Overall, Hostel Bella Napoli was far from being a hostel one does not want to leave from. Though, it was still an ok choice for one who does not want to spend a fortune for a few days sojourn in Napoli. And I would possibly go there again next time I visit Naples.
