Review: Terrace Backpackers Hostel in Cordoba, Spain
February 8, 2010 | David FerrisIt doesn’t take much to put together a satisfactory hostel. What a wonder then, that so many miss the mark. Nor is it necessary to overdo it with backpacker-ish gimmicks. Terrace Backpackers Hostel (full name: The Terrace Backpackers Pension Pilar del Potro) in the southern Spanish city of Cordoba follows the Iberian habit of keeping it simple and comfortable.
The pension's brightly painted, surprisingly functional kitchen.
The pension is housed in a narrow building on a pretty street along the Guadalquivir River. A tiny reception area staffed round-the-clock leads upwards to the rooms and beyond to a pleasant rooftop terrace (hence the name) and small but adequately equipped kitchen. Really, they deserve credit for the condition of the kitchen, something whose presence in hostels I greatly appreciate, even if I don’t use it. Three Korean girls were cooking a delicious-smelling dinner there, so at least someone was taking advantage. The adjacent terrace is also a huge draw, replete with well-worn but comfortable deck furniture and a view of the clay rooftops of this ancient Andalusian city. Terrace Backpackers Hostel also boasts a cozy common area that during my stay was unused but is probably busier during the high season.
The rooms themselves are well-lit, freshly painted, and typically spartan, which is to say, everything you need and not much extra you would want (but that’s the essence of hosteling, right?). Is the fear of caving-in bunkbeds a classifiable phobia? It crosses my mind every time I sleep in one, regardless of how sturdy they appear to be. One curiosity about our room: it was clean and up-to-date, but the brightly colored painting scheme of the walls was imitative of Picasso’s “Guernica.” Should tormented, cubist horses be reconstituted in playful orange and yellows on a hostel wall? Hmm, probably not.
Eh, it’s hardly a source of complaint for a professionally run hostel that appears to do everything right – that even has not one but several functioning computers with free Internet! At around 15 euro for a dorm bed, I wouldn’t think twice about going back.
