SLO Hostel Lyon les Pentes

SLO Hostel Lyon les Pentes (known on Booking.com as Away Hostel, and run by the same local SLO family that operates SLO Saxe in the 3rd arrondissement) sits in a 19th-century building on Rue Alsace-Loraine — genuinely in the Pentes, not adjacent to them. You walk out of the front door and you're two blocks from Rue Sainte-Catherine, the spine of Lyon's best bar circuit. Croix-Rousse metro (Line C) is at the top of the hill; Hôtel-de-Ville (Line A) is at the bottom; the Pentes themselves are the walkable middle where you want to be if you care about Lyon's nightlife.

The building is a 1890s silk-workers conversion — high ceilings, original tiled floors in common areas, new bunks and fresh paint in the rooms. Seventy beds across 4-bed, 6-bed and 8-bed mixed dorms plus a handful of private rooms. Bunks are wooden-frame with reading lights and under-bed lockers. Bathrooms are shared, with two per floor on the dorm levels.

The ground floor is the social hub: a bar that opens at 16:00 and runs until midnight (Friday/Saturday until 02:00), a shared kitchen where guests cook and eat dinner communally, and a lounge that doubles as the check-in. Reviewers consistently describe the bar as Lyon's best hostel bar — cheaper than the nearby pub circuit, louder and younger than The People across the hill. Bar crawls depart Fridays around 21:00 informally; staff will point you to tonight's rotation.

The one caveat: Pentes = uphill, and the streets between Alsace-Loraine and Rue Sainte-Catherine are stepped — you'll do stairs. Coming home drunk at 2am is cardio. Reviewers also flag occasional Friday-night noise leak into the 1st-floor dorms from the bar — ask for a 3rd-floor room if you want to sleep before 01:00.