We had a great time at Joana’s apartment. The location can’t be beat. It’s next to a nice park and many of the restaurants we wanted to go to (A Cevicheria and Atalho Real) were right around the block. The apartment is really cutely decorated and very clean like a hotel would be with all the cooking supplies necessary if you wanted to prepare a meal. The balcony is great and even though they’re doing construction across the street, the noise didn’t bother us and it was nice to hang out on and get fresh air. Having a 2nd bathroom was wonderful and really helped us parallelize getting ready for the day/evening.
Some things to note: it’s a fairly high walkup but nothing you should be concerned about if you’re planning on walking this very hilly city. The second bedroom I’d say is 90% bed and 10% room — a bit hard to navigate around, and I think having two large suitcases would be tough/annoying to deal with, but it worked for me and the bed was comfortable. The car service that Joana offered under her umbrella of services is about twice as expensive as an Uber from the airport so we decided to Uber back instead. Lastly, although there’s a washer, there is no dryer since everyone air drys their clothes — we did a batch of laundry the night before checkout but had to find a proper laundromat to dry the clothes properly the next morning. Again, these are just some notes, not any bad marks.
While the place itself was lovely and clean, I’m deducting a star for the check-in/check-out process. 3 hours before our arrival, I was in contact with our driver from the airport (who Joana hired) and told him our flight would be late by at least an hour. When we got in, we had to pay a 20€ late check-in fee even though we were late by only 20 minutes (no fee for check-in from 3pm to 8pm, 20€ euros after 8pm). We sucked it up because it was written out clearly in the terms, not a big issue. The night before checkout however Joana asked if we could possibly check out early the next day, before 10:00am. I informed her we could not. Around 9:45am that morning, we were informed that we could take our time but they’d be bringing in the next guest’s bags. Around 10:45am, a cleaning crew came in to get started and we rushed out so as not to get in their way.
For us, while it ended up not being a big deal, it kind of rubbed me the wrong way that we were shuffled out before checkout to make way for new guests who likely paid for early check-in. Combine that with the late check-in fee for reasons that were out of our hands and it just made the process feel a little cold.
That said, again, everything else about the flat was wonderful and I'd definitely stay here again.