Eduardo is a very nice host and met us at the apartment and graciously allowed us to drop off our luggage before check in so we could get started on our sight seeing. He gifted us with a bottle of water, some tea, a chocolate bar and 2 packages of crackers, which we very much appreciated. The apartment is located about 20 minutes from most of the tourist sites and about double that time to get to the river level for boat tours and the wine cellars and lots of cafes and restaurants. For the most part, we walked everywhere we went. The apartment is very clean and spacious and my wife liked the mauve and purple tones in the apartment. There is a half bathroom off the living room, which is a nice bonus. The TV had about 20 channels and a couple US channels. The kitchen had a small refrigerator (no freezer), a stove (hobs), a microwave, kettle and a coffee machine (host left us about 3 coffee pods for 2 night stay). The only staple provided was salt, so if you plan to cook you need to bring or buy the usual other staples such as pepper and oil. If not, there was a good restaurant for breakfast on the corner called Cafe Celia. There is no dish washer or clothes washer or air conditioner in the apartment. It was starting to get cool in Porto in October so we were fine without AC, but in the summer I imagine the apartment gets very hot without AC. You get used to AC when you live in Florida. The bed was softer than most of the beds we encountered in Portugal, but the pillows were too hard. The shower was tiny and the towels were hard and scratchy. Nonetheless the positives of this apartment greatly outweigh the negatives and we would stay again in this super clean and spacious apartment (except for the summer months).
*Just a touring tip - if you are thinking of taking a 50 minute 6 bridges cruise and the hop on hop off buses, we recommend that you buy a combo ticket where they sell tour bus tickets. If purchased individually, the bus tickets are 15€ and the 6 bridges river cruise is 15€; however, if you add the river cruise when you buy the bus ticket, the cost is only an extra 3€. You end up spending only 18€ per person for both, instead of the 30€ per person that we spent. The sellers of the river cruise don’t mention the combo ticket with the bus tour. Learn from our mistakes. We also bought tickets for the blue bus, but it appears that the red bus had more stops, covered more areas and had less wait time between buses. The blue buses were supposed to arrive at each stop every 30 minutes, but it actually took longer and there was no “timetable” to help you gauge wait times. The tour sellers tell you the 3 bus lines are all the same (blue, yellow and red), but they really aren’t the same, so do your homework.