Rita was very welcoming and showed us around when we arrived. The house is absolutely great, loads of room and space to hangout and generally lovely. The kitchen is great to cook in and there are plenty of pots, pans and knives (which always seem to be limited in other places). The pool is lovely and there is plenty of sun. We had quite a few bbq's and it was great hanging around.
You do get mosquitos in the area so worth bringing something to get rid of them. We didn't have a car which possibly made things a little more difficult but we made good use of the shop at the end of the road (very convenient - good wine, good bread, ice-cream) and did one taxi run to the supermarket which was helpfully organised by Rita. We walked into Sintra one day which was both a lovely walk and a pretty steep climb and we managed to get a bus from outside the shop into Sintra and also experimented with the bus from the main road. It's doable but a car would probably make things easier.