Clean, colorful, close enough to the center, buffet breakfast plus free snacks practically 24/7, all for €22 a day. You can do much worse than Hostel Gallo d’Oro.
♥
I’ll be honest and say outright that the deciding factor for my booking Hostel Gallo d’Oro was a comment I read somewhere — perhaps at Booking.com, where it has a 9.1 rating, or in TripAdvisor, where it’s 4.5 out of 5 — that said the hostel also offered free snacks till around 5 PM, in addition to a generous breakfast. Free food is always the way to my cheap, little heart 😀 and Hostel Gallo d’Oro did not disappoint.
.
.
The girl who checked me in could have been a bit more hospitable — she gave off the air that she was only working there so she could stay there for free…which was actually probably the case, but still — and it would have been nice to have curtains around the beds for a bit of privacy. Otherwise, I can’t really think of anything bad to say about the hostel. (The rest of the staff were nice, by the way.)
.
.
I stayed in a 4-bed female dorm room, which was still empty when I checked in so I got to choose the lower bunk of the bed near the window. In any case, I was the only one in the room the first night I was there. Afterwards, there was a whole cycle of people coming and going: an Iranian, a Mexican, three Koreans, and a girl who more or less made it clear she wasn’t interested in even the most minimum of pleasantries. There were 4 lockers (you have to bring your own lock), pegs for hanging coats, the table you see in the photo, a luggage rack that I didn’t use, and a small bedside table by the window that I happily claimed for my entire 5-night stay.
Hostel Gallo d’Oro actually has two wings, both located on the first — that is to say, second 🙂 — floor of a building in Via Cavour. One wing housed reception, the kitchen and dining area, luggage storage, and a bunch of rooms. My room was in the other wing. Although the food was always served in the main wing, ours also had a mini-kitchen with a microwave, an electric kettle, and other essentials, plus a single table and chair which I never saw anyone using. The bathroom was clean and colorful and large: there were 3 toilets and 4 shower stalls (if I remember correctly) plus large mirrors, hair dryers, and eternally refilled soap. (Our room also had eternally refilled lotion — it’s these little things that mean a lot.)
And of course food means a lot!
.
.
.
.
Hostel Gallo d’ Oro
- Address: Via Cavour 104, San Marco – Santissima Annunziata, 50129 Florence, Italy
- From the Firenze Santa Maria Novella train station: Take Bus 17 from the Stazione Valfonda bus stop and alight at the Venezia stop. The hostel is only 300 meters away.
- To Firenze SMN: Take Bus 1 from the Sant’Anna stop right across the road from Hostel Gallo d’Oro.
.
.
.
loved it, Great pictures!
Thank you! 🙂
great post and I loved the pictures!
thank you.
The hostel looks nice and clean. The food that’s included is also very helpful when traveling. I’ve never stayed at a hostel before and I may be too old to stay in one now haha!
Omg, your comment is so timely because my parents (who are both over 60 years old) have just stayed in a hostel for the first time ever. We actually stayed in two hostels in Australia, one in Sydney and the other in the Blue Mountains, and my parents loved both places.
I think you just have to be selective with the hostels you stay in, like me, personally, I don’t think I can stand staying in those party hostels where people are constantly loud and behaving awfully and there’s always someone retching in the bathroom in the wee hours because they’ve had too much to drink. For one, my eyes would get tired from constantly rolling. 😀 I try to read as many reviews at Booking.com and TripAdvisor before booking a place so I can sort of get a feel of the hostel and see if it’s something I might hate.