Vacationing at the... Monastery?

I get several daily newsletters, most of which get a very short skim over before going straight to the trash. Every once in awhile something will grab my attention, and every once in a long while I think it might be itneresting enough to someone else I figure I'll post about it. (Which by the number of my posts that derive from such articles, you might correctly deduce I get quite a large number of such daily mailings.)

This article
offers up monasteries as an alternative to youth hostels for a European vacation on a tight budget. Eileen Barish has put together several travel books on finding monasteries open to traveling visitors, regardless of religious background, with an average cost of $20 or 30 a night. Apparently Europeans have been vacationing in this manner for years, and I must admit I'm rather intrigued by the idea.