Keeping to our budget, we've privately hired "Villas" in France, Italy and Spain within the past five years. And we've been pretty happy with how we've done. However "Duas Vistas" is the first one to match up to what we really hoped a holiday villa would be (without breaking the bank). "Wow!" was to be heard as we were being shown around the place on arrival.

Firstly the beautifully maintained grounds: private off-road car parking, planted borders all around, a sloped lawn (great for playing boules!), a fish pond (covered), a large pool area with diving board and pool-side shower, lots of loungers with parasols (at least 4 of each), great BBQ facilities. A large covered porch/deck/dining area with a hammock leads through double glass doors to the lower ground floor which is setup to have everything you need for a day lounging by the pool within a few paces. It's a very large studio type room with a kitchenette (incl fridge and microwave), a corner couch with TV and a really top quality heavy pool table (bigger than a pub pool table with snooker size balls) with cues and chalk. Of course, there is also full toilet/shower facilities off this room.

The upper two floors of the house are more conventional but great nonetheless, the kitchen has a kettle! there's a huge balcony off the master bedroom and the 'dining balcony' has access from the main living room area and the main kitchen. A nice bonus was the USB3 socket on the living room Samsung TV which allowed us to plug in a portable drive. It played everything we had flawlessly.

Other mentionables: the garden, porch and balconies all face south, so great sun. Looking south in the distance you can see Palacio Pena in Sintra and west, the sea at Ericeira. Also, we didn't have to spend the first 15 minutes of pool time every day using the net to remove bugs etc from the pool as we've had to do in other places (I'll put this down to the agreeable influence of the nearby Atlantic).

Overall and without doubt, the best holiday accommodation we've been lucky enough to enjoy.