I unfortunately have to leave a 1 star review for Filipe’s apartment (and my first bad review ever on this platform) due to our experience being so terrible that we had to check out of the apartment early.
Having seen the beautiful apartment photos, read the great reviews and noted its listing as an Airbnb “super host”, we were excited for our stay in a traditional Portuguese house in a cool, multicultural part of Lisbon.
Filipe was great in terms of communication and help with checking us in virtually.
However, we had disturbed and sleepless nights for the duration of our stay, and were woken fully at 5am each morning by loud banging and talking that sounded like someone was in the apartment with us. After 2 days we felt pretty miserable & exhausted and were not able to properly enjoy the delights of stunning Lisbon.
Whilst this listing does make mention of the thin walls, I would not describe myself especially sensitive to noise, having backpacked the world and lived in central London all of my life. We did not feel we could stay and, to his credit, Filipe let us check out (after another 24 hours) and refunded us for the last two days. We booked a similarly priced but more centrally located hotel, where we ended up feeling a million times happier & rested.
However, our third and final night was the worst by far. We were awoken again at 5am by extremely loud banging which sounded like someone was kicking a door down, and frankly were scared that ours would be next.
From correspondence with Filipe we learned that the apartments above are used by an association that houses victims of domestic abuse, refugees and people being rehabilitated into society. (He informed us to call the police if we had trouble with them). Whilst a great cause, personally I wish I had known that information before making my non-refundable booking, as this information coupled with the detail about very thin walls would have meant that I would never in a million years have booked this apartment for our holiday.
The noise was one thing, but feeling scared & unsafe felt quite another.