Albergues vs Private Rooms: Which Is Right for You?

Short answer: you may not have to choose - even inside one trip. In the spring of 2019, months before I met the two German brothers I now walk with, I walked the Camino Frances from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Burgos with my two daughters. Most nights we slept two different ways: my daughters in an albergue, myself in a private room down the trail but in the same town. They would not have traded their bunks for anything. Neither would I. This post is what that trip - and eight more caminos since - taught us about the albergue-versus-room question.

Everything in this post comes from our own caminos - our stage notes, our bookings and our photos. If we did not walk it or live it, it is not in here.

One trail, two caminos

The arrangement was not planned at first - it just worked out that way. Nothing was booked ahead - we walked into each town and sorted it out. The girls chose albergues every chance they got, and I am glad they did. What they got from the bunk rooms was exactly what a private room cannot give you:

• Their peers. A dormitory full of walkers their own age, from everywhere, going their way
• The cooking. Albergue kitchens, shared shopping, big improvised meals - half the social life of the Camino happens over a stove
• The fun. They made their own friends, fast, the way you do when you share a room and a washing line

And I made my own friends - mostly while walking, and definitely at supper and in the evenings, when every pilgrim in town ends up at a table somewhere - and then the two worlds kept colliding, happily. We met each other's friends. We often walked together, and often walked separately, a kilometre apart on the same trail, each of us inside our own little moving village. Every evening the villages merged in the same town square.

My side had its good points too: a door that locks, a bathroom of my own, sleep with nobody else's snoring in it. Mostly I took hotels and pensions. Occasionally a monastery - where the nuns, among their other kindnesses to pilgrims, took in my laundry and gave it back clean, which felt like a small miracle somewhere around day ten. And a couple of nights on that trip I slept in an albergue myself, planned - partly to share the girls' world, partly to remember what it was. I enjoyed my comforts. I also enjoyed those nights. And some nights there was no split at all - the three of us shared an apartment. At Burgos we left the trail and spent a week in Lisbon and Portugal being tourists - no boots, no beds to choose at all.

What the two beds cost

The money is the simplest part of the equation. A municipal or parish albergue bunk runs roughly 6 to 12 EUR, some by donation; a private albergue bunk roughly 12 to 18. A decent private room in a trail town runs roughly 45 to 75 EUR a night - call it 25 to 40 EUR each for two sharing, and less again split three ways, as the brothers' rooms often are. Over a two-week camino, albergues every night might cost you 150 EUR; private rooms, 400 to 500 a head. Over five weeks, the gap becomes the price of another trip. Nobody should wave that away - for a young pilgrim walking long, the albergue is not a compromise, it is what makes the trip possible.

What each bed gives you - the honest ledger

Sleep belongs to the private room, and at our age you need a good night's sleep for the next day's walk. Company belongs to the albergue - the communal table is the Camino's living room, and the brothers find our company at lunch and on the trail instead, knowing some nights we miss the other kind. Certainty can belong to either: a booked room ends the bed race, but a first-come albergue in a quiet month asks nothing of you at all. Freedom belongs to whoever books least - which brings us to the thing people get wrong about us.

We do not book it all in advance

People imagine the private-room pilgrims with a spreadsheet and every night fixed before the flight. Some do. The Camino Brothers mostly do not: we book during the hike - that evening's room from the trail, or a day or two out - keeping just enough certainty to walk relaxed and just enough slack to change our minds (that is what we did in post 1, when we left the Norte and switched to the Frances). And on the 2019 trip we booked nothing ahead at all - the two ways of sleeping just became the pattern as we went. Three styles, all legitimate - every night fixed, a day or two ahead, or walk in and see. Pick the one that lets you sleep at night, in every sense.

The brothers run the gamut

And it is not just private rooms. Since 2019 we have slept in apartments more often than anything, but also in a castle above the Rhine, a university dormitory in San Sebastian, a log cabin over the river at Kestert, a tent the night before Santiago, pensions, and casas rurales in the hills. What mattered was not the kind of place. We wanted a door that closed, a bed we could find from the trail that day, and a table to sit at in the evening. If you stick to one kind of bed, you miss the good parts of the others.

The honest summary

My daughters picked the albergue, and it was right for them. I picked the private room, and it was right for me. You do not have to pick one way for everybody. We walked the same trail, sometimes apart, and met in the same town every night with different stories. It worked for all of us. These days the brothers sleep in hotel rooms or apartments, or an occasional castle. We book them a day or two ahead. Choose based on your age, your budget and the kind of evenings you want. If the people with you pick something different, let them. Buen camino, whichever bed you land in.