OTF - Porto Centro

After a day exploring the city, it was lovely to return to somewhere quiet and calm. Most of Porto is walkable from here, and the metro hub nearby connects to the airport and downtown. There are supermarkets, small convenience stores, and family-run restaurants around too. The traditional house has been renovated to a modern, high standard. It's clean, quiet, comfortable, and very well equipped. The owner or manager lives on site and keeps everything running to a high standard. I'd stay here again.

It's a handy central base for exploring Porto, with everything you need nearby and plenty within walking distance. The bed was firm but comfortable, so we slept well. The TV didn't really work, but after days exploring, we were too tired to mind. One thing to know when leaving: don't put the keys on the table inside the apartment. We did, and someone had locked the building's front door, leaving us stuck in the lobby and stairwell. We nearly missed our flight, and had to knock on the other apartments until a man kindly lent us his key. In the morning, leave your keys in the lock on the outside of the apartment door.

A convenient place, with the airport metro arriving nearby and the city center about a 15-minute walk away. We had a nice, modern apartment on the top floor. Everything was clean, the bed was comfortable, and the bathroom was good. There was a coffee machine with capsules, tea filters, sugar, and a bottle of water.

We were shocked by how different the duplex was from what we'd expected. It was advertised as having two bedrooms and two bathrooms, but really it was a shared room over two levels with five beds. There's only one door in the large apartment, downstairs in the bathroom. The supposed bedroom on that floor was separated from the kitchen and common room by chipboard sheets, which did nothing for soundproofing, and there was no real privacy elsewhere. Upstairs, under a sloping ceiling, a huge bathroom had two couches. The details in the listing weren't complete, and these were the worst two nights of our Europe trip. The location wasn't bad, and there was free parking, but that was about it. Cleanliness was questionable. The smell of toilet cleaner doesn't mean a place is clean, the upstairs shower badly needed cleaning, and the towels were unpleasant, gray and faded from washing. It seemed like they might be washed at home, not at a high temperature. We could hear everything happening in the upstairs hallway, and the neighbors' toilet flush rattled loudly. When we complained, the owner, who had seemed pleasant, said she had no problem sleeping in the toilet and we could leave if we didn't like it. We would have left, but they wouldn't refund us. Whenever she ran out of arguments, she claimed her English was poor and she couldn't understand. After our argument, they added information and photos to Booking.com. We'll post our own photos and a comment there too.