If you are considering staying at this apartment, you need to be aware of a few things.
To start off, the listing mentions that there are stairs, no elevators and that this unit is on the third floor. It is in fact on the 4th floor because in Portugal they call the ground floor zero not one. It has a steep and narrow spiral wood staircase that even without luggages is a work out in itself. My husband threw out his back bringing our luggage up. We all had to take breaks midway, even our avid gym goer. The only reason we didn’t check out the same night was that we didn’t have the strength to take the luggage back down however we did check out the next morning and gave up two additional nights of paid stay because we could not bear the heat nor the noise from the street.
The unit has no air conditioning. We stayed July 15-18 and the heat was unbearable. I almost passed out in the bathroom because there are no windows. It felt like a sauna. I contacted the host several times, once asking if he had more fans then again asking if the bathroom window opened. There was a window but it had a lock on it. I was told sorry no fans. The answer to the bathroom was if you’re not able to open it, then it doesn’t open.
Yes you are in the center of town which means loud music and crowd noise til morning and I don’t mean white noise. I had ear plugs in and still heard everything until about 3:30 am.
Lastly, the beds are basically thin mattresses laid on top of slats and the sofa in the family room is wire and extremely uncomfortable.
I messaged Air BNB the first night asking if we have any options. They didn’t respond til after we decided to forego the non-refundable payment we had paid and save our vacation by checking into a quiet, air conditioned hotel with an elevator. Air BnB ultimately investigated the situation and sided with the hosts saying everything I was unhappy about was in the listing. They credited us $200 to be used on a future stay.
In conclusion, the views are undeniably amazing in this apartment, however, if you have kids, value your sleep, don’t want leg cramps any time you have to leave the apartment, and don’t enjoy being uncomfortably hot, then you might enjoy this location because it is in the center of everything. However, I would not stay here again even if I was paid to do so.