Sabbatical - remarks on hostels (traveling in the Azores)

After having toured a month in the Azores, my observation is that there seems to be quite a boom to create tourist accomodations. When walking around, you see little signes of "AL" on the houses which stands for Accomodation Local. 

Many are hostels or bed&breakfasts, but interestingly, they seem to gater to people with a bit more money and with many more demands than your average young backpackers. We stayed in quite a few, the best ones listed below (ordered by our dates, nothing else!):

• Joe's place in Pico (Madalena) 
• Mantaray Lodge in Faial (Horta)
• Facing Bay Hostel in Terceira (Porto da Vitoria)
  

In our rooms, we had a private bathroom, towels, etc. just like in a hotel. The bed linens were also of a very nice quality (much appreciated by me!!). And additionally, we were able to use a shared kitchen (a pic of Matt cooking at Mantaray Lodge while I'm chilling with a glas of wine :). There often were also laundry facilities which made travelling for a longer period of time very convenient.

We really liked these places! Maybe one factor was that we travelled outside of the main season, so fewer folks, but we also liked bumping into other travellers  in a very low-key way and share hints. 

Interetingly, many of these places were paying attention to their environmental engagement, for example, not promoting bottled water, making guests to recycle, and some even said to use environmentally friendly cleaning products. 

Hmm, a little remark about cleaning products. A smell that you cannot avoid in the Azores is bleach, there seems to be a serious overuse culture among the cleaning personel. You cannot avoid it when entering any type of accomodation from hotels to rural houses (sure it might account for enviromental damage of micro-cultures....).

And on top of bleach, there are often various notes of cockroach repellent, yack, with hues of humidity&mold. With such warm and humid year around temperature, there surely are many issues around. This is a hidden secret of Azores that one cannot read in travel guides ;)