Photo One: Windsor Youth Hostel.

The white building to the right contains the front desk, kitchen and dining room, day rooms, and some dorm rooms. In the brick building on the left are two large dorm rooms,
the self-catering kitchen, and the laundry.

Youth hostels cater mostly to college age people, but there are other people (like us) who were just traveling on the cheap, and lots of retired people just out seeing the countryside. They put people up mostly in same gender dorm style rooms with four to ten bunk beds each. Some hostels have "private" rooms of two to four for couples and families. Fortunately, all the ones we visited ban smoking except in the lounge/bar.

The only real inconvenience of staying in the hostels was that the bathing facilities were extremely basic. They all had shower stalls the size of a phone booth (or smaller)! Cleanliness was not a high priority in most of these places, and I had wished I had brought some shower shoes to wear while bathing. Although the hostel provides sheets, you are expected to provide your own towels. This is inconvenient because you can't dry them very easily while traveling.