Bridge Over Blue Blue Waters

We stayed at a wonderfully cosy little place called the Bridge Street Inn. We had originally booked the last room available at $65 per night, which was above our budget, but we didn't want to be left room-less or pay exorbitant weekend prices for the mostly oceanfront hotels and decided to go with it. Later that day, the Inn called to inform us that another room had just been freed up and it would cost $54 instead. Aren't these people just lovely?! I mean, why would you bother to offer something cheaper when your guest had already agreed to pay for the more expensive room? But they bothered. And the gesture didn't go unappreciated.

Bridge Street Inn used to be an old Presbytarian Church, built in 1874. The owners bought it over in the 1990s and converted it into a hostel.

Bridge Street Inn - one of the hostels under the Hostelling International network.

Lovely blue and white colours of the inn.

Pots and pans for all to share!

The backyard for outdoor gatherings - when it's not so cold.

It has it's very own sandy beach for beach vollyball!

The cosy stone fireplace in the common lounge area provided a much welcomed source of warmth.

The house is dotted with eclectic furnishings from the owners' great-grandparents, like the old wooden Wilson tennis racket resting on the stairway. Carvings from Thailand and India, fabric from Nepal and dishes from Vietnam fill the remaining nooks and crannies, all amassed from the owners' backpacking trips to Southeast Asia.

Even the toilet seat covers were delightful! I wanna do this to my toilet at home now!

I explored all the bathrooms in the inn just to look at the interesting little knick knacks in there.

I thought this print titled "Doing the Inventory" was quite amusing. It was hanging in one of the bathrooms.

The Book Keeper - keeping up the books.

The owners are big on the sustainability drive and make many small contributions towards saving the earth in the way they run the hostel. Only biodegradable soaps are offered for guests' use. Laundry is line-dried - no dryers used. Guests are encouraged to bundle up in cold weather instead of turning on the heaters (sorry - we humans of tropical origin could not resist the charm of the heater.) Water recycling here is pretty innovative - the water used to wash your hands is channeled into the cistern and used to flush the toilet!

All the toilets have this strange little bowl sitting on the cistern lids...

... this is how it works to recycle water used from washing hands to flush the toilets afterwards. Not the other way round, mind you.

Our bedroom was a room within a room. It's located within a mixed dorm. The good thing is, the strange layout certainly seeks to promote interaction between strangers. There's no escaping talking to your neighbours when you have to squeeze past them in the tiny room 15 times a day.

Our room is a room within a room. The entrance is through a dorm with 3 beds.

The room can sleep 4 people - 2 on the double bed and another 2 on the bunks, but we had it all to ourselves. It was nicely furnished with quaint touches - a wooden ladder for a bedside shelf to place your belongings on, a stick with nails in it to hang your towels, etc. I thought it was lovely.

Our private room - 4 people fit well in it but it's only better when there's only the 2 of us!

It was nice chatting with fellow guests. Masami-san, a nice Hawaiian gentleman of Japanese descent living in Sacremento, gave us tips on what to see along the Pacific Coast Highway and recommended a lunch stop at the Nepenthe restaurant (see upcoming blog entry.) Another lady told us where we could see elephant seals on the beach along the way. People were from all over the world. A French guy and an American lady were exchanging reasons why the French didn't have a good impression of Americans and vice versa over breakfast. The best thing is - they both agreed that through traveling, they discovered that certain stereotypes don't hold water and the experience they had in each other's countries changed their perceptions for the better.

Hostels - where you meet people from all over the world.

Printed on a note stuck on the back of our bedroom door was this:

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness." - Mark Twain.

Need directions?

Now if everyone could just step out of their daily lives once in awhile to explore the universe beyond their doorstep, the world would be a better place.

YL

written by  DanYilin on April 3, 2009 from Cambria, United States
from the travel blog: go.
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