The flat is located in Lisbon city centre, next to the famous district of Alfama, the oldest part of the city. The furniture is tasteful with many devices in the kitchen: oven, washing machine, coffee machine, and refrigerator. A complete set of utensils are available as well as pots and pans. There is a television and many books, and some of them written in English. The terrace is fine (but read below) and large. No noise disturbed us during the stay. The area is well served by public transport including the famous tram 28E that we took from a terminus to the other. Beds are comfortable and there are extra blankets if you need them. Two bulbs were blown out from the beginning but there were other lamps in the house, so we did not ask the host to change them. These are the pleasant notes of our experience. To ensure the reader has all the information, let’s see the painful notes.
1) The hellish garage:
the name garage generally refers to an open or covered area on the road surface where cars can be parked. No garage in the strict sense of the term is an area on the top of a building or an area four floors underground. Moreover, it is widely assumed that the driver drives by themselves to the garage and stopped when the car is parked. Our called garage was at -4 level underground and you had to put the car in an elevator to park it. First there was a gate you had to overstep in order to enter a preliminary narrow and short room. Then, the first gate closed and another gate in front of the car opened thus permitting the driver to drive the car to an elevator that brought you and your car to the fourth floor underground where a third gate opened and you had to drive out and reach the garage. After a few seconds, the third gate got closed, the garage plunged into darkness and you had to park the car in the dark with the help of the lights of the car. My wife was frightened of this mechanism and to find herself in a garage worthy of a horror movie and preferred getting off the car before facing this hellish proof.
When the holder, or his son I think, introduced me to the elevator I asked him if the gate would stop if the car were still below it. He said “of course it would”. However, I exited from the garage and could not get on the road because there were two cars that were stationary in front of me. Meanwhile, the gate lowered and hit the rear of my car, scratching the body of the car, license plate included: 522 euros damage that I had to pay to the rental company. The hellish mechanism brought us to lose the willingness to take the car to go around. And when we had to, it was a bad stress.
Having said that, one can define “a garage” as they want but if the word means additional things (multiple gate, elevator, darkness) if you do not say that, you are cheating people. It would be enough to say: “garage with 3 gates and elevator, please take a torch before entering the garage” I would have never rented a flat with a “garage” like that.
2) The partial view
Another thing the host did not publish was the view. He published a partial photo of the view. From that photo you guess your view stretches from the house to the farther roofs of the city. That was not the case, instead on the left there was a grey cement wall that prevented you to see on your left. Again, one can have a flat to rent with a partial view of the city and with a grey wall on the left, but they have to say that. Please, publish a photo with the entire view and not only the fine part to attract guests.
3) Flush lavatory
The water did not fill again the flush lavatory after the services because a fundamental piece of plastic remained up and so closed the entrance of the water. The first time we had to remove the pottery cover on the top of the lavatory and pushed manually that piece of plastic to allow water to fill it up. After a few times, we removed the cover for the time being, and we had to push down that piece each time.
4) Shower
Shower: this is trivial if compared to the above three points. You could not find the right temperature of the water: the host suggested us to fully open the hot water tap and then to open slowly the cold water tap to find the right mix between the two streams. We did, but the right water came and went. However, in the end we managed to finish the shower.