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Originally Posted by reZolut
wow the pictures from italy sure bring me back. how much on average did a night ina hostel cost you? and did you already have your return flight booked or did you just decide to get it when you started getting low on cash or how did that work?
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Hostels during high season ranged from 18 - 25 euro a night. 25 is on the really high end for hostels. We stayed in a range of different sized rooms, ranging from 4 beds up to 22
. We stayed at mostly 'famous' and 'well known' hostels in the backpacking world so we overpaid but the environment, safety, cleanliness of them paid off. We booked our return flights in advance because my brother had a job commitment and it was just cheaper to commit.
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what did you do with your bags during the day? left them at the hostel or carried them around? what size pack did you take? have any pictures of it? if you were to make one major suggestion to someone who wants to do the same thing...what would it be?
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I had a pack that had a detachable day pack. I took that with me that had like my guide book, some water, first aid, etc. I left my passport credit cards either in the reception safe or in the room. Almost 75% of the hostels had safes or lockers built into the rooms so we'd usually leave them in there. You HAVE to guard your passport, credit card, money, ID with your life. Always have it locked in a safe or with reception. I heard to many stories about embassies and passports. The only real crime in European tourist cities is pickpocketing so we never brought out a lot of money and never even brought our passports or credit cards
The pack I traveled with was a Eagle Creek Transcontinental Journey. Its a BIG bag, too big for me. It was 5200 cu. in (85 liters). I'm an extremely light packer and from the pictures you can probably see that I wore just about 3 T shirts and 3 polo's the entire time. I wore one pair of shorts. My biggest tip would be don't over pack. When I was in Switzerland at my aunts, I sent home probably half my pack because it's not fun caring 35 pounds around strange, new cities.
You can see the pack under the table here.
The full pack - minus the day pack
Full pack and day pack
You don't need to worry about your full pack. It should only have dirty clothes in it. No one stole anything from me and didn't hear about peoples clothes getting stole. We had a bike chain + lock that we'd tie through our bag handle and attach it to the bed post or something. It was overkill but we never lost anything.