Pinheiros da Balaia Villas

We've been coming here once or twice a year for around 10 years, and keep loving it. The villas are a good size, and it's kid-friendly, with a park on site and two swimming pools.

The staff are friendly and the cleaners come every day. The villas are modern, apartment-style, spacious, and have what you'd need for self-catering, although you have to pay to hire quite a few household items and utensils. Wi-Fi and TV channels are good. The pool is small but clean, and the pool bar serves lots of different food throughout the day. There's also a small shop at reception with snacks, water and a few essentials. Getting around is the downside if you want to go out each day. Restaurants, shops and The strip are quite far unless you drive. It's a 25-minute uphill walk to the shops and Aldi supermarket, 35 minutes to the strip and 45 minutes to the beach at a moderate pace. It's fine if you mostly plan to stay on site, less suited to daily outings. We marked it down because of the location and the ants in our apartment, mostly downstairs around the kitchen. We asked for spray, but it had to be used several times a day, and we ended up hardly using the kitchen. More should be done to keep the ants away.

We had a great time over our nine nights at Pinheiros da Balaia. Our two-bedroom villa had a private garage and roof terrace, plus one bathroom and a toilet downstairs. The cleaners came daily and changed the towels. The pool area was good, and the restaurant and bar staff were really friendly and helpful.

We still have three days left, but the cockroaches have already made us want to leave. We found six in the upstairs bathroom. At night, whenever we turn on the light, there's one there, which makes it scary to use. Ants show up too, though they're less of a surprise after the cockroaches. There was also a strong sewage smell from the ground-floor bathroom spreading into the living room, which made it unpleasant. The dishwasher is old and difficult to use, and the washing machine is extremely loud and vibrates heavily. We're on day six in room F. There are some good points: the daily cleaning is reliable, with rubbish taken out, fresh towels and the bedding tidied. The pool is spacious and enjoyable, and the kiosk and small restaurant are handy. The garden has good barbecue facilities, and it's very convenient to have parking directly connected to the resort room. Albufeira is lovely, but even if I come back, I wouldn't stay at this property again.