I thought the staff was friendly and helpful. And the bartenders take you out to local spots and to the Acropolis at night. Which is amazing! Super great location. Breakfast was ok. My room had a balcony which was quite enjoyable. Some of the rooms didn't lock the best, but lockers were provided. Great people and 50 euro cent ozone shots.

Pros:

Close to the Acropolis. Great view if you just walk a few blocks down.

Can walk to almost anything from the hostel. Good sight-seeing base.

Great Staff- very very friendly and very helpful

Great place to meet others

Easy to get to.



Cons:

One bathroom for several people. Some may find bathroom not that clean. May find yourself waiting some times.

Certain rooms are just pretty much not locked. So anyone can come in and out of rooms. Some people may not like that aspect but there are lockers.

So-so: Breakfast was alright, nothing to write home about.

Overall, as a solo traveller, it is a great place to meet new people, and offers a great spot to travel from to sight-see. Staff are awesome. But the shared bathrooms are so-so, not the most pleasant.

My friend and I stayed for three nights at Athens Backpackers in the beginning of June. It was decent for the first night- bed were fine, room of 6 people was good, the staff were friendly. Breakfast was mediocre.

However, after our second day of touring Athens, we came back to our room and as I was about to sit on my bunk I noticed a tiny brown bug crawling on the top of my blue blanket. I was like if that's a bedbug this is Not Good. (I didn't really even know at that point if there really was such a thing as Bedbugs. Silly me.)

After squishing it and looking at it's shape (and noticing that it squished full of blood) and then matching it to the picture of an adult bedbug on google that the front desk pulled up, the guy at the front went into damage control.

And I realize that bed bugs are not the worst thing to happen travelling, but if you happen to SEE one crawling on your bed in the late afternoon- well, I've found out through extensive research (after bringing bedbugs back home to two different houses in america) that that it is a clear indication of an infestation.

The front desk said they would take care of it immediately by moving us to new beds and they even said use our internet for free and have a few drinks tonight at the rooftop bar on us tonight. I was like, okay whatever. At that point I didn't even have a clue what bedbugs entail. I figured move to a new bed and it's all fine.

What actually happened was they couldn't find new beds for us bc they were all booked up. Then we felt bad asking for free internet because after talking to us for a little while the guy seemed impatient and irritated at our questions about how serious are bedbugs? How do you get rid of them? and things like that. He was like - they're reallyy hard to get rid of but we bug bomb our rooms and the one you squished was probably just a loner who crawled out of another person's suitcase.

Which might have been true BUT we were like well, can we wash our clothes for free in case the bugs are in our suitcases? And after doing two loads everyone started to get pretty rude.. .saying things like, "how come you have so much laundry?" and "aren't you finished already?" It's not like we were going to wash a few things and then assume the rest of our clothes didnt have bugs in them! I remember saying "Well, i just don't want to risk bringing them back to the states with me because knowing me that's exactly what would happen." Which is EXACTLY what happened. Two houses at $1800 EACH to be treated by exterminators. Treating bedbugs cost more than my entire 2-week trip. Keep that in mind.

And the guy just laughed and said something like oh that's ridiculous. ALL the while he keeps WINKING at me after every other sentence. As if him being flirty would shut me. I might be only 21, but if I have questions I would like to get an answer.

Anyways.. we decided to ask for a refund- bc we're paying the hostel for a clean bed to sleep in and they couldn't provide us that
The manager came and was like oh im so sorry but mangement can't and blah blah blah if you're really unhappy go stay somewhere else (at that point it was 9pm at night). The manager was also like it probably wasn't even our bedbugs- we treat our rooms with bug bombs. I found out later that the majority of exterminators and pest control companies agree that this is not a sufficient treatment.

Also, another important detail to add is that the guy who was talking with us- the winking one- kept doing his best to "shh" me from talking about the bedbugs when other people in the hostel were walking around. When he saw my friend and I looking at this website, he quietly mouthed something like "you wouldn't write about "this problem" about us, would you?" Out of shock I could only nod and turn my head back to the computer screen. My friend was speechless.

We went to Ios and then came back for one more night to finish our laundry before leaving Athens. It would be unfair not to mention that there were definitely some geniunely nice, helpful and apologetic employees who were like man, that sucks (about the bedbugs). But other than that we got a baddd vibe when we were trying to deal with a problem of bedbugs that the hostel created for us. NOT what you wanna do when you're traveling...

I never got to actually stay in this Hostel, as they were full when I tried to book it, but the staff there adopted me and took very good care of me. My friend's plane was delayed, so we used the hostel as a "message center" to keep in contact. The staff took messages for us and helped us to even meet there, even though we were staying someplace else. The staff invited us up to their guest only bar and we made friends with many of the people staying there. All of the people staying at the hostel seemed very happy with the staff and conditions of the rooms. At one point a staff member rushed out into the street to yell at a cab driver dropping of a girl who was trying to overcharge her for the airport fare. They look out for their guests, offer plenty of inexpensive tours, and give you plenty of advice on activities in Athens and beyond. It's a hostel, so if you can't handle a hair in the shower, people walking into your group room late at night, or cheap "hostel breakfast" then get a hotel. But this was the best hostel for service that we stayed in in all of Europe.

Thanks Bob and the crew at Athen's Backpackers!