The location of Sandra's home is perfect. It's really walkable to central Lisbon, as well as the alleys of Alfama. We enjoyed using it as a homebase for our Lisbon travels. If you have heavier luggage, there is an escalator at Escadinhas da Saúde 8 (to the left of Tram No 28). Coming up from here helps you avoid walking up a lot of steps from other alleyways.
The home has a lot of personality but there are a few details worth calling out:
- Our listing is for just 18A (the left door of the yellow house, not both doors). There is a separate listing for 18B (the right door). All interior shots were accurate.
- The single bathroom is downstairs, while both bedrooms are upstairs. Be careful walking down the stairs if you need to use the restroom in the middle of the night!
- The shower door only covers 3/4 of the shower entry. I didn't have issues with water splashing out, but if this might bother you, 18B looks like the shower door fully extends.
- I slept in the bedroom connected to the terrace. Each night, I got pretty bad bug bites (but my husband didn't, and neither did the couple in the other bedroom). If you are commonly bit by mosquitoes (like me), I recommend sleeping in the bedroom unconnected to the terrace.
These are all minor details. The only major issue we had was upon checkin. Unfortunately, Sandra was not in Lisbon during our trip so she was unable to meet us at the unit (like she did for some of the other reviewers) and was quite slow to respond to communication and questions. Unfortunately, we needed it. We had an issue with the key and lockbox, and needed assistance getting in. Sandra was very slow to respond, but once she realized there was a genuine issue, she became responsive and called a local colleague to help troubleshoot. Things could've gone more smoothly if she already had a local colleague oncall, that I could contact directly to troubleshoot. Having to go through her and wait for her response was slow and inefficient. We were there for a wedding and didn't have flexibility in our schedule to troubleshot errors. While it was really troublesome checking in, we eventually made it, and I hope we just an unlucky day, since so many other reviews are favorable.