Low rating: Not clean and overpriced.
We decided to move to Porto after spending one month in Lisbon working digitally and we booked this apartment for a few reasons, the location, space and facilities such as washing machine cooking etc.
Firstly, overall I would rate this apartment a 2/5 and it was really disappointing for the high price that we paid. Our train from Lisbon was delayed so we did not arrive in Porto until after 5.30pm, we had good communication from host prior to the stay regarding what time we would check in. We were suppose to check in at 3 and it ended up after 5.30pm. We alerted the host that we were around 1 hour from apartment to give enough notice to collect the keys and get checked in. We were told the apartment was not ready even though we were delayed. The cleaner was still cleaning so as we arrived (yes it’s very close to train station and we walked up). We were very quickly greeted and given the keys and the host left straight away.
We were provided with no information on the apartment, where anything was or any information booklet. As we travel a lot we use Airbnb very regularly so we expected an information booklet at least but nothing. So honestly it wasn’t a great ‘check-in’ experience.
Anyways, the apartment was very comfortable and there was a lot of fantastic facilities, such as coffee machine, lots of cutlery/glasses/plates, dishwasher, shower, 2 bathrooms. It was beautiful. However, we soon noticed that the apartment wasn’t cleaned that well, as we were finding random bugs/ants/hair/dust throughout the apartment. It was clearly a very quick ‘turn-over’ of change of beds and towels and that was it. The apartment definitely was not cleaned properly.
The smell of sewage from the toilets was very noticeable from both bathrooms/washing machine/shower from the first day. This was really awful and we had to constantly bleach the toilet to try get rid of the smell. We still couldn’t get rid of it too well but we had to bleach it every day to make it bare-able to live in.
The building is lovely and we felt very safe in the neighbourhood, however with a lot of luggage there is no lift in the building so it may not be ideal with anyone with mobility issues. We also slept super well and there was plenty of storage for our clothes and the Wifi worked well for us working from home.
Now onto the big negative and why this apartment is being rated low. We knew this apartment was not cleaned properly and hasn’t been for a long time so we had to buy a-lot of cleaning products as there was none left, not even a brush and we were staying for 3 weeks. We asked for fresh bedsheets and more towels and this was fine as we got them under the sofa bed. Wouldn’t be ideal for 4 people though if you needed to use the sofa bed as the drying facilities for clothes wasn’t great.
The bins were small and we were cautious the apartment wasn’t too clean so we constantly threw out the bins, however one morning we woke up and there was an infestation of ants. We immediately blamed ourselves if we left some food out etc but no, there was no food on any benches everything was in the fridge. The ants were coming from the wall of the apartment.
There clearly is a nest of ants within the cracks of the apartment walls and we could see where they were coming from. This totally down rated this apartment. We called the host and ‘no cleaners were available’. We had to go to the super markets and buy over €30 worth of ant products/cleaning again to get rid of these ants. We had to clean this ourselves and the apartment smelt awful for 3-4 days as we tried to get rid of the ants ourselves, the host was not very helpful.
We had a day trip booked for wine tasting and we couldn’t enjoy it that much as we were nervous about going back to the uncleaned apartment. The host called round and put some product around the kitchen to get rid of the ants and yes they cleared up within a few days however, there was still ants for days. We would have left the apartment the morning of the ant infestation but with only 5 days until we left we couldn’t find anywhere else that would suit our work.
With all of this in mind, this apartment is not clean. There is an ant nest within the cracks in the wall going out to the balcony and this would need to be sorted before someone else would stay. I really hope this is sorted with the sewage/cleaning before anyone else would have to go through firstly the cost of buying your own cleaning products, and inconvenience when you are there to explore Porto not spend time cleaning up.