The apartment and the room are as tastefully furnished as the pictures suggest – mostly retro interior that shall reflect a „better“ (earlier) time. Alexandra was very friendly and motivated to show us places we need to visit or restaurants we need to eat at. However the sheer number of recommendations and the many, rarely justified, superlatives („extremely delicious“ and so on) made orientation not that much easier. But to give a positive example: the tapas bar À Bolina was truly great.
The reasons that justify three stars in my opinion are:
(1) There is quite lot of black mold at the walls. Not just in the bathroom which would be just normal in Portugal but also in the room. Which is – may it be a common problem – not healthy and given the other Portuguese Airbnbs we had: preventable. (Minus one star)
(2) There is currently construction work going on in and outside of the building starting around 8. Loud hammer drills made it hard to sleep after that time, which we hoped for outside of our daily work routine back home. Since the host was aware of the construction work I cannot see why there wasn‘t any note. But given there would have been I would of course not have booked which might be a possible reason. Since the walls are also thin, the doors loud and not all guests as attentive as the „house rules“ let us hope for – often until after 1 in the morning – sleep was a bit restricted. (Minus one star)
Some minor notes that have not affected my rating: The fancy style of the apartment comes at costs of functionality. The window in the bathroom cannot be closed and in general the apartment gets still too cold at the end of March (compared to other Portuguese Airbnbs of course). The electronic heater helps heating the room but not the rest. The light in the kitchen is very dim, the only knife has seen better days, not everything works. Cooking was difficult.
Given that there is obvious room to improve I cannot see why the walls will soon be painted. It would be much better to invest in resolving those problems that really affect an enjoyable stay rather than „cosmetic“ issues.
There is a huge inflation of 5-star reviews on Airbnb which make it very hard to separate the good from the okay and from the superb. We can certainly tell that not everything can be as „super awesome“ as it may seem at first glance. Given all that we had great days in Porto and the upsides of the apartment are definitely there. Alexandra is(!) a caring host.