Bonjoia Apartments

We booked two nights here and left after the first night. The smell of mould that greeted us in the apartment did not go away even after the little windows were left open for several hours during the time we were in the city centre. We returned to be eaten alive by dozens of mosquitoes. You have a choice - you suffocate or you are food for insects. Take your pick. There are mould stains in the bathroom and the living room. This is a ground floor premises, with two little windows - simply not enough to get the musty, mouldy smell out.

I wrote a polite and courteous message to the owner after we left, explaining the appalling experience we had and asking for my money back for the second night. This was ignored. I contacted the Booking.com customer service team (they promise to respond within 24 hours) but I only got a formulaic reply several days later. The reply was a copy-paste error meant for another customer about a property I never stayed at. The other big misrepresentation is parking and accessing the place by car. It is a tiny little cobblestone lane, on a steep hillside and you simply do not want to be driving there nor blocking the tight little square with your own vehicle where the locals might find every square foot of space precious. Driving to this property is NOT recommended. This property is not somewhere I deem habitable for humans in its present form and keeping it on this platform is a disservice to the reputation of Booking.com

Away from the crowd.

Hard to find! No parking outside the apartment!

The place is well-equipped and has everything you may need at a decent price. I travel by car so the location is good in terms of parking, right behind the beautiful Quinta de Bonjoia and after spending the day in the busy city, it's nice to return to a quiet suburban place. If you are a walker, you can reach downtown within an hour by following the Parque Oriental greenway down to the boulevard along the river Douro. The metro is close by and is easy, too.

The place has no charm. It's essentially a windowless, sparsely decorated basement suite: you have to open the front door to know what the weather is like, but in summer it may not matter because there's a nice sitting area with a view in front of the apartment. The living room has ugly, bright cafetaria-like halogen lights. When I travel, I prefer to book with privately owned places rather than hotels, primarily for the 'ambience locale' but also to meet with local people, but in the six days I stayed here, I never saw anybody at all which surprised me. I concluded that this place is a strictly no-nonsense commercial rental, but again, you may like it that way - this is my personal opinion and most of us spend the day in downtown Porto anyways so perhaps it's not so important in the end.

All the facilities were satisfactory.

The room was terribly cold. Only because of this reason I am putting a low score. Except this, everything was pleasant.

The place was not clean - the plates and most of the equipment was dirty, the sink in the bathroom had stains.