Forte de São Francisco Hotel

The setting is what first grabs you: the location, pool and conversion of the old building are incredible to look at. The Wi-Fi coverage was good, but it had no password, capped out at 20Mbps and exposed devices on the network, including their IP and MAC addresses and activity. I’d use a VPN the whole time, or stick to a phone’s shared 5G signal. The restaurant roof outside many upstairs rooms in the converted building is run-down, and its air conditioning makes a loud hum until 10pm, then starts up again at 6am. You can hear it around the pool as well. The public carpets badly need cleaning. Outside our room they smelled of sick, and the stains were obvious. We stayed in a double premium room in the converted building. It seemed barely changed in 30 years despite an alleged extensive renovation six years ago. The light brown stucco walls looked straight out of the 80s. The shower was a hose attached to the bath taps and needed cleaning. The flat-pack, Ikea-style furniture was falling apart. The bed was very hard, which I can manage, though plenty of people might not. The hairdryer was the one-star-hotel kind and overheated after 30 seconds. Because of the plumbing layout, hot water came out of the cold tap. Breakfast was only okay. The machine coffee was the worst I’ve tasted in 40 years, and the first press even came out mixed with chocolate. The orange juice was barely flavored water, not even orange-colored. One day the pastries were undercooked, and the orange segments were dry and curling, clearly left out for at least two days. It feels like the hotel is coasting on its history as a converted fort, while day-to-day it runs like a two-star hotel struggling to balance the books. I expect it to get gradually worse. I also stayed at the competitor, Castelo de Chaves, which is leagues better as a hotel in almost every way. It really depends what you want from your stay.