The Shipyard Angra

My wife and I have just finished three nights at the Shipyard Angra, and it was a very unpleasant stay. The temperature in the building was uncomfortably hot when we arrived. Although the website advertised air conditioning, the central system only ran on heat, so we couldn’t sleep comfortably any night. The shower in our first room, #106, was clogged and flooded the bathroom each time we used it. The hotel moved us to another room the next morning, which fixed the shower problem, but the heat continued for the rest of the visit. The included breakfast was disappointing too. The room temperature alone made the stay unacceptable. Based on our experience, I wouldn’t recommend Shipyard Angra.

This was the last of three hotels on our island-hopping trip. The rooms are spacious, with a pleasant sitting area and a balcony furnished with two loungers. We had eight people across three rooms, and the heat was a real problem. We were on the third floor in August, and the wall units barely cooled anything. I spent the first night tossing around on the couch because it was so warm. After we told the front desk, they brought us a fan. The next night we slept with the sliding door wide open to catch a breeze, hoping nobody would come in. Opening the skylights wasn't an option either, because a terrible smell came through them. It's a pretty hotel near the town center, but for a place only a few years old, the cooling should work better. They might have spent more on that instead of the skylights. I can't recommend staying here in hot weather, though it might be fine in cooler months.

There are some nice things here: the view, good materials, pleasant staff, and the rest of what you'd expect from a hotel in this category. But the details don't quite match the ambitious, modern impression. The fitness room has only three stations, and the AC struggles to cool all three sections. There's a stylish roof window right above the bed, next to noisy equipment on the roof. I also expected a pool after seeing a misleading photo on the website, so its absence was a big disappointment.

The heat made this our least enjoyable hotel during a 10-day vacation. Our top-floor room was unbearably warm even with the vents open, and we slept badly, which made it harder to enjoy our days out. They brought us a fan, and without it we probably would have changed hotels. The place is clean and new, and breakfast was decent, but the price felt far too high for how uncomfortable we were. Most of the front desk staff seemed indifferent to our comfort, and we felt like a burden despite how much we'd paid. One woman who brought the fan was the exception.