Casas da Quinta de Cima

The farm setting is beautiful, and seeing the citrus trees full of fruit on arrival was a memorable first impression. One member of the breakfast team was especially kind and helpful, and gave us great local tips. Thank you for that. The rest of our stay at Casas da Quinta de Cima was very disappointing and far below what we expected from a boutique hotel. We arrived on March 1st, the reopening day after several months of renovation closures. We expected a cleaned and ready hotel, but our room didn’t seem fully prepared. There were cobwebs above the towel holders and visible dust on the wardrobes and mirrors. We were told that was normal because the hotel is on a farm and nature is all around, but we’ve stayed at more rural hotels that were much cleaner. One of the two pools wasn’t ready, and the water was green. Staff said it would be ready the next day, but it was still unusable when we left three days later. We also found several dead insects on the mattress when we checked the bed. They weren’t bedbugs, but still not something you want to find. The sheets and towels had visible yellow and brown stains and both needed replacing. We recorded everything with photos and timestamps. Handling these problems made things worse. No manager came to speak to us. Staff with limited English were sent to the room, and nobody really took responsibility. We had to check many things ourselves, then go to reception to get someone else to come and deal with it. This took nearly two hours on our arrival day, which was also my partner’s birthday. The hotel knew about the birthday in advance. Service only improved after we insisted, and the apology came very late. A bottle of sparkling wine was left in our room that evening as compensation, but my partner doesn’t drink alcohol. It may have been well meant, but felt like a generic gesture rather than thoughtful service. I’d also arranged flowers through the hotel as a birthday surprise, and those were prepared beautifully in advance, which I’m thankful for. But they were left in the room without a vase, and there wasn’t one available anywhere. We ended up using the champagne bucket to keep them in water. That could easily have been anticipated. The room looked quite vintage, which might have been nice, but it was dark and felt humid. The room and some public areas had a musty smell, likely from moisture. During a night of heavy rain, water came into the room because the front door wasn’t properly sealed, as shown in the picture. Small white bits of paint or plaster also kept falling from the ceiling, and we found them on our belongings each morning. Breakfast included a good range of regional farm products, which we appreciated. But quality control was lacking again: there were moldy raspberries, lipstick on a cup, and dried food on a fork. At the end of our stay, the manager asked for feedback, but nearly every point we raised got an explanation or counterargument instead of ownership. We felt strongly that, as guests, we were doing the quality checks that should have been the hotel management’s responsibility. We were offered two free nights if we came back on a sunny day later in the season, when the hotel was fully running. Basic standards and service shouldn’t depend on the weather or time of year.