I wish I could write a more complimentary review, but our recent stay in this hotel was not as hassle-free as it should have been.
First off, one doesn't want to believe what they say about the "hard-nosed" people of Porto in Lisbon, but it was noticeable that this hotel's reception staff were polite but not friendly. They were also over-loaded: on Friday morning after breakfast there was one receptionist on duty, with no fewer than six guests needing her attention.
The desk was unable to supply us with an international adaptor plug on request - the only one on hand was 'broken'.
Do hotel owners and architects ever stay in hotels?
Our bathroom had a ledge over the drain in the shower, but no soap rack. That meant putting things like bath gel and shampoo down on the floor and having to bend down whenever something was needed. That's O.K. when you're twelve or twenty, but at my age that's starting to be an uncomfortable imposition. Needless to say, it was useless to use the soap in the shower. It quickly washed away to a slim flake which fell on the floor and disappeared under the drain cover.
There was nowhere to hang up your used bath towels. The two hooks side by side next to the door accommodated a pair of dressing gowns. Needless to say, we moved the gowns to less elegant quarters and hung our towels up in their places.
Air conditioning is not a luxury when you have a bedroom in the eaves of an old building and the outside temperature is 31 degrees Celsius. But some genius had set our air conditioner on an incomprehensible program. It worked - fitfully - on our first night, but then failed. We made two appeals for help to reception without seeing any improvement, and eventually demanded - and waited an hour for - a visit from maintenance. The technician's tinkerings gave us two hours of relief, but then the unit simply stopped working. This was a major irritation.
I don't think we'll stay at the Carris Porto Ribeiro again, which is a pity. It is an attractive hotel, and could be extremely comfortable with very little effort by management and owners.