Advertisement
Published: February 4th 2009
Edit Blog Post
AAE Bourbon House
A first rate hostel AAE Hostel
It's turned cold again. Not very cold, but cold enough for me to feel like sitting here instead of walking around in the wind. So I'm spending the day working on a new watercolor and, in between washes, updating everybody on the accommodations I've found through Hostels.com (a web site you want to know about).
AAE Bourbon House is on the corner of Annunciation and Felicity, which puts it just outside the Lower Garden District and within a few blocks of Magazine Street and St. Charles. This is a good location since you can pick up the streetcar on St. Charles or the bus on Magazine. It's also an easy walk to the Warehouse District, which is being turned into the new Arts District. You can hoof it to the French Quarter during the day and take the streetcar back from Canal at night until 2:00 AM. It's not a good idea to walk southeast of the Pontchartrain Expressway (Highway 90) after dark. So anyway...about AAE Bourbon House: it's a first rate hostel.
Now, when I say "first rate hostel," I know what you're thinking. The image is typically of clambering up a creaking stair with
AAE Bourbon House 2
Humble enough from the outside, quite nice on the inside. treads designed for the feet of leprechauns, past shifty Latvian backpackers who are x-raying your pockets for anything they can snatch when you take the awkward turn at the landing, to a rickety bunk on the ninth floor filled with Scandinavian skateboarders and their incomprehensible love for playing euro dance music so loud you wish you could turn up the volume on the traffic noise outside. You're very fortunate if there's one water closet for your floor and rolling in clover if the two foot square shower basin in the corner works (even then, the only way to keep your towel dry is to hang it on the doorknob out in the hallway). There will be ill-mannered Japanese teenagers camped out in the common room with their eyes attached to laptops while they bang away on Yahoo instant messenger for days on end; but at least they'll refuse to talk to you - consider it a blessing. The "barbecue area" turns out to be an aluminum hibachi perched on a collapsing balcony, the "laundry" is a plastic tub under the kitchen sink, and "secure luggage storage" means a three sided shed in the alley. The kitchen would embarrass a tugboat
AAE Bourbon House 3
The courtyard. Reese and his guys are always adding on; by Mardi Gras they plan on having an overhanging balcony facing the interior courtyard. galley, the "game room" is a broken foosball table, and the linen looks like it was last used by Tutankhamen. When it comes to hostels, you have to remind yourself what you're paying and adjust you expectations accordingly.
By that standard, however, , AAE Bourbon House is positively decadent. For one thing, it's clean. I mean really clean. Clean like you'd like your house to be. The staff is friendly and the showers are (halleluiah) full size stalls with real shower heads and (hosanna) real hot water. The Scandinavian skateboarders were there, of course, but they were of the friendly kind, not the brooding edgy kind. Reese, the owner, has coffee, pancake batter, and a hot griddle ready every morning for self-serve breakfast. The place is actually "as advertised." Who would have thought?
Advertisement
Tot: 0.101s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 9; qc: 52; dbt: 0.049s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
matt
non-member comment
homely planet guide
this guy is a genius, this "chris" person.