O Sítio do Areal

The apartment is spacious and it good to have a washing machine, although with cold, wet weather it was difficult to dry our clothes. The tv was very big.

The apartment had a strong smell of chemical cleaners. One of the lights in the kitchen was not working. I had to wash all of the cutlery, glasses and crockery before using it and clean the kitchen counters. I don’t believe that it’s wise to depend on guests to wash the dishes, etc and then to set their standards as one’s own. It was a huge problem for us to enter the building on arrival: firstly, the instructions were incomplete and unclear. Two of the building’s residents kindly tried to help us. We arrived after dark and it was really cold and windy, but we were eventually, after several messages and phone calls, sent a photo to show us a surf lock that was attached around a bush in a raised flower bed up the street!!! Crazy! Opening this to retrieve the apartment keys required that I lean over against the wall into the flower bed under the bush and stretch to reach the surf lock. Then I had to try to hold my mobile in one hand and turn the dials on the combination lock with the other hand and strain to see the numbers as there was a lot of reflection from my phone. I was icy cold and very annoyed by the time I’d retrieved the keys. The apartment is icy cold! There was one little oil heater in one of the bedrooms and an aircon in the lounge, but we had to stay bundled up in warm clothes for most of the time. It would be more pleasant to stay there in summer.