Arden Street House - Dunedin

Backpackers? You just can’t beat them.

Keep your 2, 3, 4 and even 5 star sanitised vacuums and leave me to the reality and humanity of the semi-precious gems that are the backpackers hostels, hotels and congregation points for us strange breed of people who actually enjoy meeting people, having a laugh and living our lives with the most likeable compadres on the face of earth.

Even if they do speak a completely different lingo, eat strange looking food (but tasty enough when you would gladly nibble the jock strap off a sweaty gorilla), and even if they seem to have this ability to be in control of their life; that is the most annoying bit! (By the way that is no reference to the nationality of those I have spent much of my time with, but to the fact that they are ’YOUNG’ and with youth comes an outlook that so many of us old fogies dismiss as the product of hormones, innate irresponsibility and the lack of good parenting.

Anyway, that’s for another time so let me stick to the point, these places are gems!

But like all gems the best, rarest by definition and most unforgettable usually lie outwith the normal trail of either the streets of our plodding feet, or the back doubles and lanes of our imagination. Let‘s be honest here, finding a black diamond in a coalfield is not just the result of it being there, but possibly that it was put there deliberately for only the most astute, the most persistent or possibly the most lucky to pick it up, put it in their pocket and on the most dreich of days to brighten up their hours by taking it back out and polishing the memories till they gleam again.

Walk, drive, cycle, or taxi along the North Road in Dunedin and just after you have passed the Botanical Gardens, you will come to a road to your right, signposted Glendining Street, with a subsidiary sign pointing the way to Arden Street!

You won’t see many goats there; it’s probably a bit too steep! But what you will encounter is people with back packs; those coming down with a smile and those going up with an expectation.

Well when you get to the top you’ll find that this is where smile meets expectation.

Joyce runs the ship, young Jules is her helper and technical expert - he provides the internet access, a genuine 12 meg transfer rate. The best I have come across.

But from the moment of your arrival to the second of your departure you just feel in that hackneyed phrase ‘at home’.

Of course it’s a business, but it is a business run for you by people who understand you, the space that you need, and also when a wee conversation is just the thing to be getting along with.

It is also NOT a hotel! But is a refuge from external as well our own occasionally self-inflicted madness.

The bare facts of what is offered is on the website www.ardenstreethouse.co.nz, but what isn’t there is just how much you’ll think nostalgically of that hill, of the absence of goats and of the welcome.

People make experiences and Joyce is a person who makes her place an experience.

Everywhere I’ve been there have been one or possibly two places that have stood out. People know what I think of the Armchair in Cape Town and the Base in Brisbane. They haven’t heard yet among many others about the Happy Hippopotamus in Durban or the Green Elephant in Cape Town. They will soon! They haven’t heard either about some of the less than recommended experiences. Again they will soon but……when in Dunedin, for me anyway, I’ll be staying at the GarDUN of EDIN- ArdenSt House.

Matt - Who stayed there 13th January 2010 to 16th January 2010 and was sorry that he couldn’t have taken it with him.