London Backpackers!

On Sunday 26th June, me and my mate Charlie met up in London and headed to the London Backpackers Hostel in Hendon, which we had booked nearly 2 months in advance. Little did we know that for a few hours London Backpackers was what we were about to become. I had stayed at this hostel twice in the past, so had no worries about booking the place. On trying to check in to the place it turned out that they couldn’t find our booking, and on searching both my bank statements and the hostelworld website we had booked through there was nothing. It seemed that even though it had said at the time our booking was successful it wasn’t. Thinking that me and my mate 21 and 22 years old were  both now stranded in London, stressing about what we were going to do, you would have thought that the Hostel would have been slightly more polite with us. I am not someone who is just randomly going to turn up at a hostel insisting I had booked into the place if I hadn’t. The man on the reception was just plan rude and on the verge of calling me a liar. We ended up on Hendon Central tube station platform using the internet on our phone and calling our families to try and find somewhere to stay even if it was just for that night. Thankfully my parents found an Ibis at Wembley which they booked for one night on my credit card, and a very lovely woman on the platform explained that it would be quicker to get the bus than the tube especially on a Sunday. On arrival at the Hotel I enquired into if they had any room for the three nights after, luckily they had room up till Tuesday night, so we only had to find somewhere for the final night, which Charlie’s mum and uncle found a b&b in Paddington and were kind enough to pay for. After this whole experience I am never going to stay in a Hostel again, I was just lucky that it was a hostel within my own country and within a city I knew how to get about in. As i will never trust booking through Hostelworld again, and even if I did stay in a Hostel again it would certainly never be in the London Backpackers, they have certainly lost custom for life.