I stayed here for a month while I did a language course and the apartment suited me very well, not least because of its wonderful location.
Pros
Catarina is a perfect host: quick to respond to messages and very solicitous.
It’s an ideal base for exploring Lisbon: the apt is 10 mins’ walk from the Botanical Gardens and the delights of the Principe Real neighbourhood, 15 mins from Estrela (where you’ll find the brilliant Fernando Pessoa Museum, the Jardim da Estrela, the Basilica da Estrela and the very pretty British Cemetery), 20 mins from Chiado, the Bairro Alto and Rossio station (for trains to Sintra), 25 mins from the Gulbenkian Museum, 15 mins from São Bento (where the National Assembly is) and Santa Catarina, and 30 mins from Cais de Sodre (for trains to Belém, Estoril and Cascais), the TimeOut Market, the Praça do Comércio and the waterfront.
If you’re footsore, or need to get to the airport (max 30 mins, with one change), Rato metro station is 2 mins away.
As well as being in easy reach of the main tourist attractions, the apartment is in a charming residential area, a stone’s throw from a lovely garden (the Jardim das Amoreiras, bordered on one side by the aqueduct) with its children’s playground and kiosk where people sit out late into the evening, more than one excellent restaurant – I particularly recommend Águas Livres, which is between Pingo Doce and the gardens – and the charming Bar Procópio.
The kitchen has all the appliances you might need for a long stay – mini-oven with grill, electric hob, toaster, microwave, kettle and coffee machine – and comes stocked with the basics for cooking.
Laundry is easy: there’s a washing machine, and the partially covered patio has a clothesline and rack.
The bed and sofa bed are very comfortable.
The patio – which is at basement level and gets hardly any direct sun – is a nice place to eat breakfast, have a cup of coffee or work.
The apartment was perfectly cool when the temperature outside was in the high 20s.
The wi-fi and shower are good.
Cons
The layout is a little strange, in that the first thing you see as you come in from the street is the bed, which is a metre or two from the front door, screened from the front window by a pull-down linen blind. The window at the front has bars, so there’s no security issue if you have the window open, but it does mean that you hear the dustbin collectors when they come to empty the bins at midnight and people chatting as they walk home late at night.
Because the apt is long and thin, with just one window by the front door and French windows at the other end onto a subterranean patio, it’s pretty dark. On the plus side, this means it stays cool in summer.
This is a studio apartment and the bathroom is carved out of the middle of what is a long, fairly narrow space. It has no outside window and is not at all soundproof.
It was perfect for me as a single person and for the weekends when I had a friend to stay on the sofa bed, but I can’t imagine it accommodating 3 or 4 people comfortably, except maybe a couple with young children.