I followed some of the reviews of this hotel closely and decided that based on the bulk of the reviews (which were OK) it was safe to book a last minute easter-break holiday at Choro Mar.

WHAT A MISTAKE.

I cannot beleive that some people actually have gone back to this place, never mind year-on-year.

The apartments were extremely basic (grotty), and extremely old and tired. The apartments were meant to cater for 4-6 adults, but I fail to see how that could happen when there was only linen and crockery for 4, only adequate beds for 4. Not to mention that the "boiler" in the apartment ran out of water after 3 people having short showers, leaving anyone else to shower in cold water.

The apartments were meant to be self-catering, but on the cooker, the owners had disconnected 2 cooking rings (they say to prevent power surges, but I say to lower their costs - and increase restaurant takings), and the other 2 rings were faulty so it took 30 minutes to fry an egg.

The walls between all the apartments are paper thin, and allow you to hear EVERYTHING (and I mean everything) going on in the neighbouring rooms.

The staff on the surface seemed friendly, but every time you visited the bar, they chatted to each other in Portuguese and giggled at each other, barely hiding their contempt for the clientele and obviously taking the piss from their customers. The owners are only interested in making money from the customers, and showed this by only paying attention to the lager-louts who spend heavily at the bar. The final day of our stay showed an influx of even more yobs, who were greeted with open arms by the staff, and were met by a 20cents increase in the price of all drinks at the bar over the previous week's prices to meet the new unsuspecting clients. The "restaurant" food is worse than you would get from a burger van and is over double the price.

The bar area at night is a nightmare as they have 6 large-screen televisions all set to different stations showing football games, most with the sound on, and thay also play loud music over this. We could only tolerate this for a few minutes before noise induced migraines kicked-in

The Mini market is a joke, with almost no stock worth buying, and what stock there was being extortionately priced (e.g. £3.50 for a loaf of bread).

The hotel is in the middle of nowhere, and it is a 20 minute walk to the "strip" and at least 40 minutes to the beach. When walking to the "strip" you have to pass through a very dodgy housing estate of immigrants from Africa and South America, who congregate on corners and are extremely abusive and threatening to tourists.

As for Albufeira itself - what a dump. If you want to sunbathe all day and get pissed all night, then its the place for you. If however, you want to sightsee, visit clutural sights, and find family friendly parks/places then forget it. Albufeira is for the lager-louts and only for them. Walking around the Old-town and the Strip is a nightmare with restaurant hawkers constantly pestering you to visit their establishments, and with street-peddlars trying to sell you cheap watches and sunglasses (which are actually a front for selling drugs) on my first day, the first 5 peddlars all offered to sell me all sorts of substances. As I was there with my 2 young children, you can imagine this was a nightmare, and a bit alarming.

After reading the reviews on these apartments I am totally speechless how anyone could have one iota of praise for the Choro Mar Apartments.

We booked with Thomsons and never again will I use this travel agent, their customer service is a disgrace and how they could be marketing such a place as the Choro Mar beggers belief.
As soon as we pulled up outside the apartments my face dropped, it was like something you would see in a war zone, I did however hold back from moaning as I assumed the inside would be better. It was not.

We requested an apartment away from the bar, we where put directly above the bar, all be it 2 floors up. The kitchen was dirty, the stench coming from the bathroom was one of absolute disgust, I could only assume that they had a problem with their drainage, the same aroma was seeping through the plug hole in the kitchen sink, it was enough to make you go blind!

We ventured down to the ‘bar’ for a beer, the staff where extremely rude, dirty and only seemed to want to serve you if you had on a baseball cap or was sporting tattoos, eventually got a drink, sat down at dirty tables and left extremely swiftly.

For 2 nights we had loud music booming into our apartment, because of the smell we had to keep the doors and windows open, by this time I was reduced to tears and went to the reception and asked if we could change room, our request was met with a blunt we will see what we can do, we even phoned the 24 hour help line provided by Thomsons to be told that there was no one available!

We eventually moved apartments, again to one that smelt of raw sewerage! We ate there one night and was given pizza’s with green mould on their base. The crazy golf looks like it has not been used or cleaned for a decade, the swimming pool is a disgrace, the showers have stagnant green slime in them and the sun beds are all taken over by loud mouth beer swigging chavs, young and old! The staff have no concept of customer service and the night time entertainment is a joke, unless you like to see people wrecked out of their heads screaming down the microphone at karaoke and also at each other.

All in all the place is a dump and I would rather eat glass that ever ever go back to the Choro Mar Apartments.

Our family have been going to the Choromar now for 5 years and have had our best holidays there. The apartments are very spacious and clean (even the one bedroomed apartments are massive!). We heard about the Choromar from friends who have been going there for 14 years, yes 14 YEARS! and I think that says it all. I always said that I would not like to go back to the same place on holiday as it is never the same but my holidays to the Choromar have just got better and better. There is a 20 minute walk to all the bars and restaurants at the "strip" and a short taxi ride along to the Old Town where there is a large square where they lay on entertainment at the weekends.

Carlos, Saija, Graca and Manuel make you feel extremely welcome and have become good friends over the last 5 years. The bar has entertainment every night which includes karaoke about 3 times a week which goes down well the first and even the second time but can become a little tedious by the second week. There are two beaches nearby, one down at Praia da Oura and the other along at the Old Town (daily transport from reception).
My best holiday has to be 2004 spent at the Choromar where I had a "special" birthday. A few of us there on holiday (40 in total!) spent the day on a sailing boat which took us round the coast to a small bay. After going ashore we had sardines cooked by the crew all washed down with some bubbly and played beach games on the sand organised by Carlos. What a day! and what a 40th party!

this was our first holiday with our kids then 5 and 3 and it was the cleanest and best place for kids, the people who worked there were fantastic, such nice people i just love portugal and i will come back now my kids are 16 and 18,
have been many places after that but this place has always stuck in my mind
thank you chor o mar for a wonderful stay