It is going to be tough, writing a balanced review for this hostel: you have been warned. I stayed at Palmer’s Lodge Swiss Cottage for a week and a half in December 2019. Overall, I had a pretty bad stay, but I still think it’s probably a pretty good hostel (if things go right for you).
The Good
The showers are divine. They have excellent water pressure and aren’t on a timer or some kind of system where you have to push a button every 30 seconds to keep the water running.
The internet was fast on my phone. It was so good to be able to watch videos and video chat with my mother without the picture continually stopping and starting.
Location: while Swiss Cottage is a fair way out from the centre of London, it’s still within transport zone 2 and is conveniently on the Jubilee Line (easy connections to anywhere in town). The hostel is a short walk from the tube station with a Tesco Express on the way and a variety of other shops (including McDonalds) just across the road.
The Booking Fiasco
This is where it gets rough. There was a mix up with my booking. I booked several months in advance to ensure that I would be able to get exactly what I needed. Between then and my arrival, they changed what many of the rooms were used for, resulting in the room that I had booked (6-bed female dorm) no longer existing.
So they put me in an 8-bed female dorm; by the time I checked-in and found out, there was no way to put me in a smaller dorm. The guy I spoke to arranged for me to receive free breakfasts throughout my stay instead – very nice but didn’t actually help the problem.
Anyway, about half-way through my stay I had a midnight breakdown (full on shaking, head under the pillow, etc.). In the morning, I went down to reception and told the lady there that I wasn’t coping; she managed to put me in an emergency private room off a back stairwell. It was tiny (little more than a cupboard with a bed in it) but it was quiet, and I was able to struggle through the cold that I came down with the next day without worrying about disturbing anyone.
Conclusion
I appreciate that the staff did everything they could to help me enjoy my stay. However, it was still pretty awful. I believe all these problems could have been avoided if they had gotten in touch with me when they first changed the rooms. At that point, they might still have had a bed in a smaller dorm that I could have been put in, or failing that, I could have booked somewhere else that suited me better.
