Hotel Review: The Art Porto

Porto is such a vibrant and lively city, packed full of art, great food and historic buildings. We stayed at the Art Porto, which was a small apartment in the heart of the city. If Porto wasn’t so hilly, everything would have been easily walkable, but because there were a lot of up-hills, we used Bolt to get around quite a lot. It was a cheap and easy way to get from place to place without tiring ourselves out!

The location:

I loved the location. It was close to a small supermarket, and like I said before, everything was pretty walkable. The apartment was up a few flights of stairs (there wasn’t a lift if you’re thinking about accessibility), and there wasn’t any noise that I could hear from passers-by or neighbours during the night.

The only thing that freaked me out a little was that in the middle of the second night, there was a weird beeping noise that seemed to be coming from just outside the apartment, but I couldn’t place it at all.

Overall though it felt safe and secure and it was exactly the place I needed to be in, to explore the city.

The rooms:

The room was almost a mini apartment. It had a little kitchenette, a toilet and shower room, a table to eat at and twin beds. It could have been really lovely, and it was in the end…

The only issue we had was with the cleanliness of the place. When we arrived the towels were DIRTY. They were white towels with black on them, and one even had a footprint on it! In the bathroom, there was hair on the back of the door and in the shower. In the kitchenette, there were crumbs on the floor. It just looked like it had been cleaned REALLY poorly, with little to no attention to details, or what guests would want.

It was also quite annoying to only have one key as I went with my brother and we weren’t spending our days together as we wanted to do different things!

Customer service:

I couldn’t fault the customer service. The owners were so communicative before and during the trip and were really helpful.

We ended up landing early. Using Bolt rather than public transport meant that we were in central Porto way before we had expected to be. We grabbed lunch at a local market and texted the owners to ask if we could come a little earlier. Within about 10 minutes they answered back with an estimated time of arrival and we were able to check in early at no extra cost.

We used WhatsApp during the trip to keep in touch. When I raised the issue of the towels and the cleanliness of the apartment it was fixed the next day. They replaced the towels and re-cleaned the apartment.

They also kept in touch throughout the trip to make sure everything was ok.

The price:

Three nights at ‘The Art Porto’ in January was £360. This was one of the cheaper options in Porto for this specific area. Most of the bigger hotels were a lot more expensive, as were the AirBnB’s.

It was a really great choice for what we wanted and for being close to all of the places that we wanted to explore in Porto and beyond.

Things to consider:

• It’s in a fantastic location and really close to everything that you might want to visit (or do-able by Bolt).

• It was a nice apartment, but the towels and room were dirty when we visited. We were told that the laundrette sometimes has issues with towels catching on the machinery etc. However, it did seem more like dirt.

• It’s one of the cheaper places to stay in Porto if you’re just after somewhere central to sleep.

How to book:

Like most of my stays, I booked through booking.com. You can find the link to this property here.