Abrigos do Castelo | House in Amarante, Porto District

Positive: The apartment sparkled and was very comfortable. The host was very helpful and friendly. Quite a beautiful place in a very quiet and friendly small village.

Negative: N/A

Positive: Very clean, views are sweet, there are pots and pans to use. There are very nice modern touches throughout. The owner has worked hard to update Apartments where the surroundings clearly made this difficult. The space is small, but well-planned. Owner fit a REAL full size shower into that bathroom, which is amazing. Beds are comfortable. They are listed as one large bed and one sofa bed. Actually, there are 2 identically-sized beds, one upstairs and one downstairs. (They are a bit small, definitely smaller than a queen. My husband switched to the single bed that we thankfully requested because we were told one bed was a sofa bed-- and we weren't sure our teens would fit on that!)

Negative: I ran into an issue with booking.com and the owner of this rental did not handle it well. Booking.com automatically canceled our reservation 2 days before payment was due. Booking staff apologized profusely and promised they would take care of it. 2 days and many on-hold phone calls later, they said they "couldn't find" reservation and I would need to start it all from the beginning. Annoying, but I tried to do this. The price increased by 14 Euro. (No surprise -- 4+ weeks had passed since I had reserved this rental!!) The owner knew everything that happened. He knew exactly that it was booking.com's mistake. I requested a refund of the additional 14 euro (minus any additional amount booking.com might charge the owner for that increase). Rather than leaving a nice envelope behind with the difference, he simply said that the increase wasn't his fault, so he would not be refunding me (Wow! Almost as if he thought we wouldn't notice that increase was given to him!) 🤣 So long story short, the owner did not do the classy thing, but the "cheating" thing. (I am not lowering his score, even though I should.) I will mention a couple things that should be corrected in the house. (My husband is a handyman and he was dying to fix these things, but didn't have his tools.) The front door scrapes the floor, which makes quite a lot of noise when opening or closing it. The toilet lid is very loose and makes clanking sounds when you use it. (This would not be a problem except there is only one toilet; if you use it while people in the living room are trying to sleep, you will definitely wake them up, as there is only a small, thin door between the bathroom and the living room, and there's plenty of gap under the door as well.) The door to the community room (top floor) scrapes the floor terribly when you try to open it. Needs adjusting. Much of the terrace area used is used up with a hot tub-- that you are not allowed to use.

Positive: Well refurbished studio with kitchen and bathroom. In the middle of historic small village with great view to surrounding mountains.

Negative: Parking was not so clear, but given it's a small village we figured out.