This apartment has a stellar location on literally the front road running along the Douro River. It is a 5-minute walk max to the center of downtown, riverside Porto, and it boasts a lovely restaurant next door with a great wine selection and friendly service.
However, our stay was unsatisfactory for a number of reasons that seemed to not appear in any other reviews. The first: the cleanliness of the apartment. There was debris on the living room sofa, crumbs on the fridge’s inner shelves, corn under the living room armchair, and worst of all, mold in the bathroom shower and dirt in the corners of the bathroom floor. Miguel did apologize and explained that temps had cleaned the apartment, but his only remedy was to send another cleaning crew to the apartment, in the middle of our 48-hour stay, while we were out in Porto and had left our valuables in our rooms. This was very unsatisfactory.
Miguel himself was also not particularly welcoming. When we arrived, he yelled to us from outside the car to “come inside and get your keys” before disappearing and then re-emerging when we figured out (in the dark) which door was indeed the door to our apartment building. We carried our suitcases up 2 flights of stairs (there is no elevator - important to mention!). Once inside, Miguel was visibly in a hurry to leave, giving a brief explanation of the apartment to me (and not the other guests) before disappearing outside. He was relatively accessible via What’s app for parking information, though the information he provided was erroneous (my advice after much research - try to park outside the apartment and feed the meter, as the hours are only M-F, 9 - 7 PM, meaning evenings and weekends are free); a large car will be difficult to park in many of the less expensive and very narrow public parking garages. When we asked Miguel for restaurant recommendations for our first evening (as we were arriving jetlagged from Lisbon and hoping to eat quickly and sleep), he replied that we should check “on google.”
This apartment otherwise is functional. It lacks the charm of an apartment that has actually been lived in by someone invested in it. The decorations are sterile and the small details that make an apartment “nice to live in” and comfy are missing. This is clearly an apartment that was inexpensively furnished to temporarily house as many tourists as possible (and some of the local guides complained as much during our stay in Porto). Other minor details were also disappointing: there was no hand soap in the kitchen, nor body wash in the shower, but of course, those were the smallest of our concerns during our stay.
Overall, this apartment has an excellent location and gorgeous view. But its lack of cleanliness, the unfriendliness of its host, and its sterile and un-lived-in feel made for an unsatisfactory stay for our group. We hope this review will be helpful to future Airbnbers.