The room is bright and tidy, the bed is very comfortable and the en-suite toilet is good. And although there was technically nothing too wrong with our room at Manuel’s apartment, we did have some things that bothered us about our stay.
He sent us some helpful information to get us to the building, which we appreciate, but the communication ended after this point, we were given a 20 minute window to check-in because Manuel was busy with other appointments, despite providing regular updates on our arrival time after driving 4 hours from a village in Spain. Instead we were met at the apartment door by his son, who gave us the keys, logged us into the WiFi and left us to it for the whole weekend. And we didn’t hear a single word from Manuel for the rest of our 3 night stay in Porto (which we were disappointed with considering he prides himself on being sociable and helpful to his guests, this clearly is just something that looks good on his adverts rather than his actual ethos).
One thing to note about Manuel’s apartment is that his family do live at this property, and despite beautiful pictures of the lounge and city view, it’s unlikely you’ll feel welcome enough to sit down and enjoy these facilities. It sounds petty but his family had multiple moments of arguing very loudly, often first thing in the morning and also late at night! Saturday evening for example there was a full blown shouting argument at 12 o’clock at night as my girlfriend and I were trying to sleep.
All in all our stay here was fine, it was a good price, in a beautiful town, the room was good, no access to kitchen, no invitation to use the facilities, and as long as you don’t mind sharing with a family that don’t talk to you, argue loudly then you’ll be fine too, but don’t be fooled by Manuel’s spiel about being a turbo host and the man to meet in the town of Porto! You’ll be figuring this one out on your own!