We had a very bad experience, hope other guests will not experience the same. But first a bit about the apartment in general:
- The stairs up to the apartment are steep, narrow, dark and dusty; works fine, but would not recommend for the old or frail.
- Limited use of the kitchen, both because it is thinly equipped (half the pans do not work with the induction oven top, for instance) and because the electricity trips if you use two pans at once, or one pan and the stove. To be fair, it is normal in Lisbon that you can only use 2-3 electrical appliances at once, but even when we turned off AC, lights, and everything else, making even the simplest dinner tripped the electricity.
- generally, not very well equipped with the things we would normally expect in an airbnb; kitchen towels, hand soap, salt, pepper etc. But we were the first to stay there, so hopefully this will get better.
On the positive side, it is a new and fresh apartment with a great view. The location is good if you want to stay centrally in Alfama/the touristy area and it is close to the metro. It is not too noisy.
However, our main issue is that we got kicked out due to a leak downstairs. We understand that leaks can happen, so our issue is the way the host treated us; first sending a message late Saturday night saying we had to be out by Monday. Then finding out that they had actually not cancelled our stay, because that would mean a penalty for them, but they rather hoped we would accept it and be out of their way. Accepting it would mean us having to pay up to €3000 for a new place due to the short notice in the middle of the tourist season. Also, it turned out that the host had known about the leak for three months without doing anything, but was now panicking because the neighbors were threatening with legal actions. In the end, we moved out a week later (and a week before we were supposed to) because we got tired of spending hours every day arguing with the host and the host continuing to say that they would come in and start opening the floors and the pipes while we lived there. We appreciate that this was a difficult situation for the host too, and we do not think it is likely this will happen to new guests once they have fixed it, but the way the host handled this and treated us should be seen as a warning.