Does travelling in luxury compromise your travelling experiences?

I had a peculiar thought the other day while idly surfing the internet to get me out of the UK, I wonder what kind of holiday I would have based in city hostels?

Maybe I was just feeling nostalgic after coming across a couple of Polaroid pictures from my trip to Prague six years ago, but the thought stuck with me and I questioned my boyfriend Matt about it later on in the evening.

“Shall we travel around Europe for a bit just staying in hostels to keep the cost down?”

“Er… No.”

“Why not?”

“Because now we’re in our mid twenties and have more money, surely it’s best for everyone if we just had a nice hotel room with a nice bathroom and bit of privacy?”

He makes a very good point. I had forgotten about some of the horror bathrooms throughout my time hostel hopping. There was the ant covered shower in Hervey Bay, Australia that required shoes for showering, the cockroach infested hostel in Cairns, the shared bathroom for about 20 people in Prague, the coldest room in the world in Amsterdam.

Although these places were cheap and served a purpose in keeping you warm(ish), dry and offering you a place to clean, what made them a great experience was the people that you met while drinking in the lobby or the bar. Whether it was the crazy socialist German in Prague or the Brazilian guys wearing thongs in Amsterdam who had to carry me to bed one night, it was the people we met that had made the trip.

While roughing it in Australia my friend and I went on a 4×4 safari around Fraser Island. There were two other 4×4’s in our group and we made sure that we all stuck together, all 30 of us. There were English, American, Swedish, Dutch, Irish, Welsh and Israelis all camping together which made for some fantastic conversations. The more the beer and wine flowed, the more surreal the evening became. At one point one of the Swedish guys went hunting for dingoes armed with an axe and a glow stick, he was gone for about an hour after coming back covered in glow stick juice and two axes.

Since then I have grown up, I have got a proper job, a flat with Matt and am constantly thinking about electricity bills and council tax. We can afford decent holidays in semi-luxury resorts with spas and posh gardens. However, in the back of my mind roughing it around hotels and campsites on strange sandy islands still constitutes a holiday. I even feel slightly guilty about looking at all inclusive resorts even though I know I can get out and explore the area.

I suppose it all comes back down to the fact that I believe that by going on ‘grown up’ holidays I won’t meet the characters I met in my teens and who I had a brilliant laugh with. This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy holidays now I’m in my mid 20’s, but we’re in between that stage of getting away from it all and doing nothing and wanting to party every night. Essentially I think I’m becoming too old and want to experience the party atmosphere of my youth, but in reality now I have dinner and three glasses of wine and want to go to bed.

It’s a bit tough going on holiday as a young couple to get chatting to anybody as you’re usually surrounded by groups of friends and families. We once overheard a middle aged couple talking about us in a hotel in the Cotswolds saying that we ‘were a bit too young’. What at 24? Give me a break.

I’ll admit it, I miss my travelling sense and I feel guilty for losing the will to go travelling whenever I want, and most of all I’m scared I’ll turn into one of these people who visit the same resort year after year and don’t experience anything else.