Hostels Ireland: The Only Comprehensive, Unofficial, Opinionated Guide

I purchased this book among many others to prepare for a 2 week trip to Ireland and since we were staying in hostels every night, this book became our bible. Combined with the Lets Go Ireland book, we had pretty much everything we needed to get around. It would have been nice to have more complete addresses for the hostels or perhaps better instruction on how to get to each one, but I suppose it cant have everything. We kept this book with us at all times and consulted it every time we got into a new town. We found the descriptions to be fairly accurate and came to rely on it quite a great deal. This book is a great buy if you plan to hostel your way through Ireland.

The second edition continues in the fine tradition of the first.Ireland, like New Zealand and unlike the UK, has a lot of private backpacker hostels as well as the official Youth Hostels.So a seasoned traveler needs a guide like this and not just the YHA handbook.Commercial Web sites on hostels often rave about the huge "free" breckfasts some may offer, but omit to mention a hostel has no self catering kitchen. So you have the added cost of having to eat dinner out.This book is really good on saying what the catering facilities are like.Places like Dublin, Galway and Belfast have a LOT of hostels and picking one that is not a dud or miles from the pubs is important.This guide sifts through all the hostels of the big cities and gives a few hot picks on the best of the bunch.In the above 3 mentioned cities in my experience of staying there,the picks were spot on.

Paul Karr has done his homework and he receives an A+ for the information in his Hostels Ireland book. My wife and I spent 7 weeks treking Ireland summer '99 and found his book to be invaluable. The information was clear, concise and accurate. Things change and so do hostels and some hostels he recommended we liked better than others. But we did not stay any where we disliked or felt the information in the book had misled us. Hostel Ireland was our bible and served us well. It was our "Lonely Planet" for where to stay. He did a great job and I'm looking forward to any future editions.

I leave for Ireland in 10 days for a 2 week stay. This book was invaluable in planning my trip and I'm sure has cut down on the expenses. I was able to read it in one night and quickly scanning the reviews was made simple by clever icons giving each hostel the thumbs up, thumbs done, a cleanliness factor, party index, and general brief review.

Paul Karr offers a comprehensive, honest, regional survey of the best hostels in Ireland. I had the opportunity to stay in four of them recently and I disagree with the ratings that he presents, espe cially in the section "Paul's Picks". Both the Old School House Hostel in Dun Laoghaire and the Bru Hostel on Inisheer Island were average, uninspired hostels, adequate, but certainly not worthy of special attention. I did, however, stay in 2 other hostels which were rated "thumbs up" and found them to be wonderful - clean, friendly, spacious and fun. They are the Old Mill Hostel in Westport and the Aille River Hostel in Doolin. I would not have had the pleasure of staying in either of these without the help of this book. Thanks, Paul!