Hotel Paulista

Hotel Paulista is a simple, dependable place for a short visit to Porto. The rooms were clean and practical, and having a lift was handy. It's nothing fancy and doesn't offer many extras, but it covered what I needed without any trouble. The location was very good and made getting around the city easy.

I paid 270 for a room for four, with parking (30eur) and four self-service breakfasts (10eur each) included. The room I got was great, and the man at the front desk was the sweetest. The location is the best. LOVE IT. I'd love to stay here every time I come to Porto.

We had a good time here. The downtown location is great, and the price felt normal for that area. Our room was clean, though a little narrow. The woman at reception spoke English, while the man didn't.

We stayed July 16-19. At first, room 305 looked fine, and I checked for bed bugs without seeing any. After about half an hour lying down for a nap, bugs started coming out from behind the headboard and the wall light switch. There were large adults, small ones, and babies on the wall, bed, headboard, and me. I panicked and tried to get out quickly, so the photos and video I took aren't great quality. The daytime staff, two women, were kind, apologetic, and very helpful. They moved me to a room on the other side of the hotel and let me use their washer and dryer for my clothes. Other staff gave me mixed responses: one said they'd shut the room and called an exterminator who confirmed the bugs, though given the other behavior I'm skeptical that the exterminator was actually called. Someone else rudely denied there were any bugs, despite the photos and video and other staff acknowledging them. After looking into bed bugs, I noticed what seemed like signs of a long-term infestation in the room, including black marks above the headboard that I understand to be bed bug waste. It's hard to believe the hotel didn't know. Worse, the hotel marked me as a "no show" on the booking platform, so I couldn't leave a review there. I hadn't realized that could happen. I found another review here mentioning something similar after the fact, so it seems like a pattern, and may explain why other reviews don't mention bed bugs. I attached the evidence I had to try to keep this review from being taken down too: a photo of the key with the hotel's name and room number, a booking site email screenshot, and the bug photos and video. I normally photograph the key because I carry only the small key part and need to remember the room number. I'd caution people about staying here. In my experience, there were bed bugs, and the hotel was deceptive and made it harder for an unhappy customer to leave a review. AVOID! BED BUGS!