The Pocket Pillow House

Faro is exceptional, and this place is central and cheap. The location is brilliant, close to everything you’d want to do. But the rooms are terribly uncomfortable: the beds are lumpy, the interiors feel unfinished, and the tiny toilet added to each room is a joke. You can’t turn around in it, there’s no ventilation, and there’s nowhere for toiletries. The walls and doors are paper thin, so every sound carries and late arrivals or early risers can wake you, especially if they have children. The kitchen has an electric kettle, but tea bags weren’t replenished. Cleaning seemed inconsistent, since one day the place was swarming with ants. A shared toilet ran out of paper too, thank God there was a bidet.

It’s a cheap place with friendly service, and you can walk to central Faro in about 10 to 15 minutes. The rooms are fairly spacious, very basic, and the beds were acceptable. The bathrooms felt like an afterthought, small and poorly finished, though the showers were good. The WiFi wasn’t working during my stay, and they apologized for that.

It’s very good value and well placed, about five minutes on foot from the centre and close to both the train station and airport. The rooms can feel stuffy in summer, since there’s only a fan and no air conditioning.

The bed was a spring mattress with only a sheet between me and the coils. I woke up with spring-shaped marks on my back, and there wasn’t even a foam pad to soften it. The bathroom was odd too: there was one in the room, but it felt like everyone was sharing a single one down the hall, and I doubt I was the only one having that problem. My window wouldn’t shut, so bugs got into the room and I was bitten by something, even though I was only on the second floor. With it stuck open, I could hear traffic and pedestrians talking all night. The balcony light also stayed on the whole night, like I was under a spotlight. It’s a mystery to me how this place got three stars.