Short: It’s a very clean hostel aboard a permanently moored sailing ship in Stockholm harbor. It’s a very large boat. The main office is separate and on the mainland. Do not forget to bring your keycard to the shower with you. Long: I was meeting a friend here and arrived later at night with only the address and name of the hostel. He didn’t answer his cell phone and had gone to sleep with earplugs in. Seeing a massive boat in the harbor, I honestly thought I was staying on a houseboat instead of something so large and official. I walked around the area looking at of the actual houseboats in the area and nothing looked like a hotel. Finally I realized this massive ship was the hostel. I walked to the main gangway and it was locked and guarded by a huge rod iron 360 spiked gate. So you can’t just walk aboard the boat. It was freezing outside and I honestly thought the main office or check-in was aboard the boat. Where else would it be? So I shimmied around the spiked gate with ice below me and was able to «illegally» board the boat. Get around the decks and everything is locked with key cards. Shit. So I double back and have no idea what to do. Eureka! The main office is actually on the mainland and I never thought to check there. Walk right in and the staff were expecting me. Wow — I hope they weren’t checking the security cameras. Got my key card and was all set. Got into the room. Was skyping my wife and decided to take a shower. Took out of my wallet what I thought was my keycard. Took a shower and returned to my room in a towel. Pull out my keycard. FFFUUUUUUUU. It’s my freaking metro card for the DC metro. Oh godammit. So I had the choice of maybe going outside in only a towel in the freezing winter and trying to get another keycard from the«front» office. Or I could wait around until anyone else in my room of 6 returned from going out at night. The other kids in the room came home at like 3am… not sure how that is even possible given how early Stockholm bars close. But I finally was able to sleep in my room after awkwardly handing out in the hallway for 3 hours.
Michaela B.
Place rating: 5 Stockholm, Sweden
I really enjoyed staying at the hostel. We stayed on the ship in a 6-person room and it was really quite comfy. The bathrooms and showers were communal as usual. They were really clean and very well maintained. The windows are little portholes so the rooms were pretty dark and not much view to the outside. That might be an issue if you get claustrophobic. The staff were so friendly and helpful. You saw all different kinds of people from 20 years old and up. Really affordable too especially if you have an STF membership. I definitely recommend this place(and any STF place for that matter) for an affordable place to stay in Stockholm.
Leela S.
Place rating: 4 Seattle, WA
Nice, clean hostel with a diverse mix of residents. You see both the young backpacker crowd and families with small children here. Definitely keeps conversations fresher and more interesting. We were a group of three, and got ourselves a private room on the first floor. We had no bathroom to ourselves, though, and in typical hostel fashion had to just walk down the hall to use the communal one. The bathrooms were clean, and I never had to wait. The room had one standalone twin bed and two bunked twin beds, all with very comfortable Ikea bedding. We stayed in the building on land, and not in the boat, so I don’t know how much the experience varies. Since Stockholm is expensive, we bought food from supermarkets and used the kitchen to cook most of our meals. We found the kitchen well-stocked and clean, and they even had an array of complimentary(well, leftover) spices for anyone to use. That definitely made life easier for us as students on a tight budget.
Ken M.
Place rating: 3 Ann Arbor, MI
A good traditional hostel, nicely clean and mellow. Good mix of people from twenty-somethings on up, plus a bunch of families. We stayed in a 4-bed room. The front desk staff is uneven, figure on a long wait if you get the wrong person; we had one wonderfully helpful and humorous person, and three almost pathologically unhelpful others. Even getting the key to the baggage room turned into a 5 minute wait with some of them; these three workers easily took a star or two off my rating. Most of the showers are on the 1st floor, up some stairs from the lobby; the higher floors each have one or two.(The one shower stall on the top floor is pretty beat, but tends not to have a line).
Horst K.
Place rating: 5 Hamburg
Wunderbar zentral in Stockholm, mit bester Sicht auf die Altstadt liegt die af Chapman und das dazugehörige Gebäude an Land. Unser Raum auf dem Schiff war sauber und zweckmäßig, die Toiletten und Duschen immer in sauberem Zustand. Das Frühstücksbuffett ist seinen Preis wert und sehr vielseitig. Das Personal ist sehr freundlich, man bekommt auch dort Busfahrscheine oder die Stockholm Card. Ich habe nichts zu kritisieren. Ach doch etwas: In der Gästeküche fehlten kleine Löffel, die lassen anscheinend zu viele Gäste mitgehen. Grrrrr.
V B.
Place rating: 4 Hamburg
Leider haben wir kein Bett mehr auf dem Schiff bekommen und waren deshalb im Mehrbettzimmer im Hauptgebäude untergebracht. Dort war es aber auch sehr schön und das Preis-Leistungsverhältnis stimmt auf jeden Fall. Unser Zimmer hatte desweiteren einen wunderschönen Blick auf Gamla Stan zu bieten. Das Einzige, was etwas genervt hat, war die schlauchförmige Gemeinschaftsküche, in der es nicht so einfach war, wenn alle gleichzeitig etwas zubereiten wollten. Nachtrag: Waren Mitte-Dezember nun auch nochmal auf dem Schiff. Meine Befürchtung, dass es kalt werden könnte, sind nicht eingetreten. Eher im Gegenteil. Die sanitären Anlagen dort sind sauber und neu und es hat uns dort ebenfalls sehr gut gefallen. Auch der Blick aus dem Speisesaal(der aber im Hauptgebäude ist) war wieder wunderbar. Der einzige Nachteil am Schiff: Leider kann man die Fenster nicht öffnen. Das wäre ganz schön gewesen.
HilRo
Place rating: 5 Berlin
Frühbuchen ist hier angesagt, da nur begrenzte Schlafmöglichkeiten auf dem schönen, alten Segelschiff vorhanden sind. Das Hauptgebäude der Jugendherberge liegt nur 20 Minuten Fußweg vom Hauptbahnhof entfernt und ist auf einer kleinen Insel gebaut. Das dazugehörige, sehr beliebte Segelschiff ankert vor der Insel und bietet seinen Gästen nicht nur so schon einen Panoramablick, sondern auch eine einzigartige Sicht auf das Schloss Stockholm.
