Eating, Sleeping & Looking at Fish

When it comes to fish and other marine-life, I've got to admit I'm a bit of an anorak. I have been known to dazzle diners with a description of the lifestyle and behavioural habits of the contents of a dish of seafood pasta. For years I have put myself through some extremely uncomfortable trips on grubby little dive boats in search of great beasts. For me there's not a lot that beats a trip to a world-class aquarium.

The Oceanario in Lisbon has been on my must-see list for years. When my Portuguese friend Theresa told me there were plans to build a mega-aquarium for the 1998 World Expo, we vowed that I would visit Lisbon and we would go see the fishies. Life moved on and I forgot about it until 2006 when I took a long overdue trip to visit Theresa. From the airport I sent a 'lets do fish' text and she knew I meant sightseeing, not dinner.

Where is the Oceanario?

It's at the 1998 Expo site is on the outskirts of Lisbon. It's by the waterfront, not far from the spectacular new Vasco De Gama bridge. The Oceanario is set amongst acres of picnicking families and kids playing in the park. To one side the cable car whizzes along the waterfront. You can get the metro out to the park - there's lots of transport infrastructure put in place for the Expo. You have no excuse not to go.

The Oceanario was of major symbolic importance for the Expo. Lisbon's history and glory is closely associated with the sea and the Oceanario is a tribute to the Portuguese love of and relationship with the sea. It's a large square building set in the middle of a pond - how appropriate - linked to the main 'land' by a devious two-way double-decker bridge. Visitors go up to the building along the upper deck and when they finish, come back down the lower deck.

Prices

On this Sunday afternoon in May, at around 3 pm the line for tickets wasn't long. We paid €10.50 Euros per adult which seemed like good value although there are special family deals for 24 Euros that almost tempted me to borrow a couple of kids in order to get better value. But then remembered the time I took a friend's kids to The Blue Planet in Ellesmere Port and came quickly to my senses with a shudder.

The Layout

Most big aquariums tease you with little displays, often of different environments. They build up your sense of excitement with a few starfish and little guppy things. And then just when you can't imagine it can get better WHAM they throw the BIG TANK in front of you, often with a moving walkway and a tunnel through the tank before delivering you dazed and overwhelmed out into the shop to part with all your money.

Not in Lisbon. This is an aquarium that doesn't need to tease and play games - it knows it's got a stunning display and it doesn't need any gimmickry.

The Open Ocean

You walk in to the building and there, right in front of you with no preamble, no trailer, no tease, is the main event. 5000 cubic meters of salt water representing the Open Ocean. Its a colossus of a tank bursting with sharks, rays, barracuda et al - truly the big boys of the sea including manta rays, my personal favourites. I'm assuming that most of these are plankton or small fish eaters because I can't see how they'd all live peacefully together - I can't imagine a feeding frenzy of murderous fish going down too well with the Lisbon parents and school groups. However, when I think about it further, maybe that's why there are no little fish in the tank. Once the shock of the Open Ocean tank had started to subside, my next thought was 'how do you follow that?' And that's where the surprises start.

The Coastal Zones

The top layer of the aquarium has a terrestrial theme. The lower layer is the underwater zone. At the corners of the aquarium are 4 sub-environments representing different coastal 'zones'. The first of these is the North Atlantic Ocean which is characterised by puffins, auks and murres. BIRDS? You are thinking to yourselves, what are they doing there? And that's the unique wonderful thing about the Oceanario; it's not just fish. I was completely wowed by the puffins and teed off by their constant movement which meant I couldn't get a photo without a blur - there's a strict no flash policy.

Next stop - the Antarctic Ocean - complete with big lumps of snow and ice andwait for it. PENGUINS. No pun intended but how cool is that? Lots of pretty little Magellan penguins happily living and breeding in Lisbon. The set up gives the birds lots of little nooks and crannies to hide in if the crowds get annoying. All the penguins have little tags on their wings - I did wonder if this was to prevent penguin-napping. I can just picture myself leaving the aquarium and the buzzers going off. The security guards asking to see in my bag as I fake surprise 'Gosh, how did he get in there?' and then having to put back my aquarium-lifting goodies.

On to the Pacific Ocean and the stars of the show; two very noisy and entertaining sea otters. The lady is named after a famous Fado singer (yep, that's famous as in 'world famous in all of Portugal) and the fella is called Eusebio after the rather more famous footballer. Eusebio is a sea otter with a lot of attitude and a lot to say for himself. He'll perform acrobatics for the cameras for hours whilst his 'wife' pops up now and then to shake her head at his showing off. They are about a meter long, squeak a lot, scratch their tummies and rub their noses. Bless.

How do you follow that? Off to the Tropical Indian Ocean. A bit of a disappointment at first sight but then if you listen carefully and get your eyes tuned there are beautiful song birds in the lush trees. For me the fish in this area aren't so exciting as they are quite standard fare in many of the best dive locations but the birds are wonderful.

Downstairs

On the lower level, your visit starts to get a bit more crowded because there are lots of smaller tanks illustrating different aspects of the underwater world. Because many of these displays are viewable from only one side, there can be a bit of pushing and shoving to get a good view. Good thing my elbows are nice and sharp because I wasn't planning on missing out on anything. Surprisingly, most of the kids in the place were very well behaved - certainly better than I've seen elsewhere but maybe that's partly because the adults are behaving like big kids themselves. You can see the kids looking at each other and raising their eyebrows - Look at mum pulling faces at the fish how sad is that.

Downstairs you can also see the water below each of the four coastal zones so if you wait you can see the puffins, penguins and sea otters diving.

The side tanks include: Rocky Habitat, flatfish, schooling fish, jellies, fish from the Azores (well it is Portugal and the islands are a bit special), anemones and coastal animals, sea dragons and sea horses, a giant octopus, deep water fish, gobies, wolfeels, corals, poisonous fish, angler fish, illuminescent fishes and jellies, and so on and so on. I think you get the idea. There are a lot of different fish. I love most of them.

All the way around both layers, you keep being drawn back to the central open ocean tank. It doesn't seem to matter how many times you look at it, there's always something new to see.

So do I recommend it?

Go on, I'll give you three guesses, but you won't need two of them. Of course I do. This is a place I waited nearly 10 years to see so it could so easily have been a disappointment.

Is it worth 10.50 Euros? Absolutely. I'd gladly sell my house and all its contents to go and hang out at the Oceanario. Apparently kids can take their sleeping bags and go for sleepovers - how jealous am I?

What else can you do at the Expo site?

Who cares? There are lots of fish. What more do you need?
OK. There are also bars and restaurants, a casino, a big shopping centre, a cable car, gardens, picnic sites, an exhibition hall oh and loads of other cool stuff. But if you ask me, it's all about the fish.

When I was a child my confectionery tastes leaned towards towering heaps of chocolate, whipped cream and nuts. I would inevitably plump (appropriate word that) for the biggest, naughtiest cake in the shop; the one you didn't know whether to eat or climb.

But as I've got older and - questionably - more sophisticated, I've come to see that there's little in life that beats a really good custard tart in any of its many manifestations. As an ex-fatty I am, like an alcoholic, only ever one or two tarts away from heading back down the slippery slope of over-indulgence.

Most of the time the battle with temptation is one I win. But there's always one good excuse to succumb. This is the 'travelling in a foreign country, don't like to say 'no' for fear of giving offence' gambit and, within the rules of diplomacy, you have to grin and swallow.

In May 2006 my husband and I went to Lisbon and stay with my friend Theresa, whom I met many moons ago in a youth hostel in Stockholm. As she whizzed us around all over the place she insisted that the highlight of the weekend would be a trip to the Antiga Casa dos Pasteis de Belem - or, to translate roughly, the Old Tart House of Belem. As we drove back and forth she would point out of the window at an unprepossessing little shop with a blue and white awning and a very long queue outside and murmur in hushed tones about the delights still to come.

~So Where is This Remarkable Shop?~

Belem is the river-side area at the heart of the tourist map of Lisbon. It has the Monastery of Jeronimos and several state museums just along the road. On the other side of the road is a lovely park with cheap restaurants and a MacDonalds on the corner - small irrelevant fact, McDonalds in Portugal does soup! On a Sunday morning there is a big flea market just across from the shop. Further along the coast, a few minutes walk is the Monument to the Discoveries. Pass the Cultural Centre of Belem and head down the road and you will reach the defensive Belem Tower overlooking the waterside.

In short - with all these attractions, there are plenty of excuses to make sure you find yourself within sniffing distance of the Antiga Casa.

~Take Care~

Crossing the road in front of the shop whilst thinking about tarts could be dangerous to your health. The traffic is shocking and you will need your wits about you.

~The Casa Itself~

The building is a rabbit warren of rooms, mostly tiled in traditional Lisbon blue and white. There must be a dozen different rooms, each filled to bursting with little tables and chairs and consumers paying homage to their Pasteis over a coffee. Even if you are planning to take away, be sure to have a wander around and look at the building. Everyone is so busy stuffing their faces that they won't wonder what you are up to.

Back in the entrance hall, there is a shiny old counter and display cupboards full of goodies. Most of the people standing three or four deep at the counter are there for just one thing - a pack (or better still several packs) of custard tarts. These are sold still warm in a cardboard tube containing six tarts. You will also get a small pack of icing sugar and another of cinnamon.

I'm sorry that I can't tell you what these little delights cost - my friend was deeply offended that we should even consider to offer to pay for something so important. I suspect that they would probably cost somewhere between 2 and 3 Euros for a pack of 6 but quite honestly, if they charged 10 times that you'd still want to buy them.

~Eating them~

Walk out of the shop - stop thinking about the tarts, you need to pay attention to that traffic again. Cross over to the park and find a bench.

Slide open the end of the box and pull out the first two tarts. They will be sitting face to face, still warm and inviting. The tarts are approximately two and a half inches in diameter and one in depth. The golden brown pastry is the flakiest I have ever seen. The skin on the custard will be blackened in places and golden in other. Take a good sniff.

Open up the sachets of cinnamon and icing sugar. If the wind is blowing, check which way before you cover yourself in powder (yep, I ended up wearing most of it). Sprinkle them on top and then sink your teeth in.

A local will probably put one away in 3 or 4 bites. I stretched mine out to a dozen or so nibbles. The custard was sweet, creamy and smooth. The flakes of pastry melt in your mouth and the grateful sparrows will take any crumbs you miss.

The nuns in the kitchens at the nearby Jeronimos Monastery allegedly developed the recipe for these tarts more than 200 years ago. It seems in Portugal that a life of religious devotion has its little compensations - a bit like the monks elsewhere with their Benedictine and Belgian beers. It is alleged that only 4 people know the secret recipe for these tarts.

~So how good are they?~

I've worked in the bakery industry for the last 5 years or so and I have had great excuses to travel the world and eat the local speciality cakes and pastries in every different continent. Each was claimed by the locals to be the best cake in the known universe but I actually believe that in the case of the Pasteis de Belem, I can stop my search and die happy knowing I really have had the ultimate custard tart.

If these were served up every day, it might even be worth forsaking all other worldly vices and joining the monastery.

~Recommendation~

If you went to Lisbon and it rained all weekend and you had a nasty hotel and a thug mugged you for your camera, it would still be a great visit to Lisbon if you had a box of Pasteis de Belem

The Hilton Vilamoura As Cascatas Golf Resort and Spa is an enigma of a hotel – inside it's a stylish five star resort; from the outside it looks like it was designed by Disney. It's not the type of place you'd usually go to for business - for one thing there's nothing around here with which to do business. The company I used to work for held its 2008 annual business meeting in Portugal last February and despite there being no possible logical business justification for the destination, 100 people were shipped off to Faro and on to the Hilton Vilamoura.

Vilamoura is roughly a 20-30 minute drive from Faro airport and the Hilton is on the outer edges of Vilamoura - a good mile or two from the Marina. From what I could make out, if you don't sail or don't play golf there's not a lot of reason to come here. Equally if you are younger than retirement age, you'll also be in a minority in February.

When we drew up outside I think we all suppressed a bit of a giggle. There are fairy-tale turrets and trimmings, bizarre arches and an overall sense that the building just doesn't look 'serious'. Walking into the lobby we were impressed. Stretching upwards for several storeys, it was spacious and light with plenty of cushion-laden sofas with a long check in counter down one side and some shops along the other side. Ahead of us were glass elevators through which we could see the waterfall and pools beyond. The check-in process was absurd. Considering that the hotel was fully briefed about what time everyone would arrive and how many people to expect, nothing was ready for us and just two people were dealing with the check-in.

~The Rooms~
The rooms are of a splendid standard. The outside of the hotel might look like a joke but the bedrooms are deadly serious, stylish and highly functional. All of the furnishings are in a light wood - and it really is wood, not just MDF or chipboard; this stuff is built to last and in a hotel that really matters. Nothing says 'down-market' louder than chipped particleboard.

The bathroom was so stylish I wanted to take it home with me. The room used glass walls around the bathroom which means - somewhat bizarrely - that if you wanted to lie in the bath and watch the TV (which is in the main part of the room) - you can do just that. And the sound is even piped into the bathroom for you. If you are of a more modest disposition don't worry - there are curtains that can be drawn around the glass walls. The toilet, bidet and shower are behind a separate frosted glass door - leaving the sink and bath area free. The sink was one of those retro porcelain sinks that stands on a marble topped wash stand. The marble used throughout the hotel was stunning. Sensibly they've stuck with stone-effect tiling on the floors which is largely non-slip but the wall tiles are top-grade marble.

Moving from the bathroom to the main part of the room there was a large wardrobe with a full sized iron and ironing board, plenty of hangers, a few drawers and a room safe. Beside the wardrobe was a case stand, then a dresser with the flat screen TV on top and the coffee and tea tray inside. The clever mini-bar somehow knows what you've had and sneaks off to tell the hotel so the goodies will appear on your bill automatically and then next to that there was a good sized work with a large mirror above which came in handy as the bathroom make-up mirror had a faulty light.

The bed was large and wonderfully comfortable bed with lots of pillows and a pleasant neutral coloured throw that matched the curtains. There were two bedside tables and a comfy armchair as well as a small coffee table. But for a Brit in February the nicest thing was to pull back the curtains, open the French doors and go out and sit on the balcony in the sunshine.

Someone put a lot of thought into this room and without exception all the colleagues I spoke with really liked their accommodation.

~Other Facilities~

I mentioned the spa already although I didn't use it. However, one of my German colleagues told me that for design, she'd put it in the top three of the many spas she has visited but she felt that the facilities were rather disappointing. There are apparently 6 different swimming pools on the site and I think I saw perhaps 4 of them but as I'm not an early riser, I didn't use any. It struck me that during high season the number of sun-beds would have been entirely inadequate in the pool area. There's also a golf course and apparently Vilamoura is considered to be "the golf capital of Portugal" (according to the hotel brochure). I saw one of the courses which was very green and had lots of trees - yep, that's utterly vague, isn't it. If you are into such things, there's also a 'golf simulator' but I hesitate to even imagine what simulated golf entails.

~Restaurants and Bars~

We ate in the Moscado restaurant for breakfast and lunch. I made it to breakfast only the once and the choice available was excellent. Our daily buffet lunches were outstanding and far surpassed the food at restaurants we visited outside the hotel in the evenings although the food for our gala dinner on the last night was absolutely awful. The Hilton can't really take the blame for that as I believe we gave them the recipes.

Lunch in the Moscado on our first day was poor. They clearly weren't expecting so many of us, the service was really slow and some of the portions were tiny. The main course Caesar salad for Euro14-16 (depending on whether there were prawns or chicken on top) was so tiny that people were left wondering where the rest of it was. By contrast, I had a large bowl of penne Napolitano for just €5 which stunned everyone. A main course for that price in a five star hotel seemed somehow entirely wrong. There are a couple of other restaurants on site although I suspect not all were open at this time of year.

The Rubi Bar is large and very pleasant. At one end of the room there's a stove-type fire that people seemed willing to fight to get near to in the evenings. I went to the bar just the once and there was a really good guitarist singing in the corner and there was plenty of space. Drinks prices were fair - the cocktails were all €8.50 and beers and wines were much cheaper. The other nice thing about the bar was that it opens onto a wide balcony with lots of outdoor seating.

~Toilets ~

Oh I know it's going to sound odd but the toilets throughout the hotel were beautiful and highly technical. When you walk in, the lights sense your presence and come on. The sinks are frosted glass with complicated on-off switches that we failed to tame. The only disappointment was that in the toilets in the basement, some of the doors didn't fit properly and the locks were very stiff.

~Conference facilities~

The thing that mattered most for us was whether this was a good conference venue. We had the main conference room in the basement (level -2) which was a perfect size for 100 delegates. The décor was nice with stunning light fittings on the ceiling and nice walnut-effect wall coverings. The temperature was never right - usually too cold rather than too hot - but I'm not sure if it's ever possible to please everyone. Outside the conference room there's a large concourse where we had coffees and snacks every day and this opens out onto the terrace outside. We had access to 6 different meeting rooms, all of which were nicely decorated and pleasant.

~Service~

One day I was standing on the terrace thinking about where to take a photograph from. As I reached into my bag to get my camera, a young waiter LEAPT through the fire doors brandishing a packet of matches for me. He had guessed I was looking in my bag for cigarettes and wanted to get to me before I had to look for a lighter. You've got to admire that sort of attention to detail.

~Summing Up~

For an off-season conference venue, this was a great choice. As a place to have a holiday it's probably great if that's the kind of holiday you want - golf, more golf and a bit of golf in between - but it's not for me. It's not a place I'd ever consider having a holiday but I enjoyed my time there a lot.

The last time I stayed in a hotel in small-town Portugal was nearly 20 years ago in the out-of-the-way north-eastern town of Braganca. It was a tiny hotel with a room so small you had to walk over the bed to get to the window and every evening the restaurant would fill up with men in blue overalls, drinking the local hooch, smoking cigarettes out of the corner of their mouths and waiting to see the latest Brazilian soap operas on the TV that was constantly on in the corner of the room. I loved it - the atmosphere, not the men in the overalls! So that was the image I had in my mind when I set off to Santo Tirso with a booking for the Hotel Cidnay. It was going to cost me around Euro70 for the night so I was expecting something pretty basic. I certainly didn't expect a stylish chic hotel that looked like it was straight out of the pages of Elle Deco.

~Where is it?~

The most important thing to know if you are considering this hotel is that it isn't in Porto - it's actually in the town of Santo Tirso, a small industrial town about half an hour north of Porto. I would imagine you'd probably only go there for business or because you knew someone local. Wikipedia tells me the population is 14,000 and it has a football team but if there are any tourist attractions, wikipedia hasn't heard about them.

I took a taxi from Porto airport which cost me just over €30 and took about 20 minutes. My flight had been delayed and by the time I arrived it was past 11pm on a Sunday evening and there wasn't a soul on the streets.

~Check-In~

Passing through glass doors I found myself in a rather stylish reception with a long dark-wood counter to the right-hand side and a seating area with coffee tables and a small library. The colours were in shades of brown and cream and there were two large floor lamps with dark brown shades and there was lots of marble and other decorative stone. I was checked in quickly and politely by the night manager who took a photocopy of my passport and handed me a room key and gave me instructions to take the lift to floor minus 2. 'Oh hell', I thought, 'sounds like they've put me in the basement' and it was only the next day that I realised that the hotel was on a hillside and the top floor was the ground floor (if you follow my thinking). Stepping out of the lift I found an art gallery to one side and an enclosed atrium-style garden with fountain to the other. I walked round the plants and the fountain, admired the arty painted tiling on the walls and found my room which was 221.

~The Room~

It seems as if pretty much all the rooms I've stayed in recently have been laid out in very similar ways and the only thing that differs is the colour scheme. Whilst the Cidnay's public rooms appeared to have been decorated by an expensive designer, the bedrooms were not so stylish and I suspected they might be undergoing a two-phase upgrade in which the public rooms were done first and perhaps the bedrooms will follow. That's not to say that there was anything wrong with the room, just that it wasn't decorated to the same standard as the rest of the hotel.

Entering the room, I found wardrobes along the right hand wall which contained a mini-bar and a good-sized safe-box as well as extra blankets and pillows. The bathroom was to the left side and then the main bedroom area opened up in front of me. The carpets were light green in colour and the curtains had wide stripes of light green and a gingery orange; not offensive but not particularly memorable. There were prints of sailing ships on two of the walls - again, nothing very special. All the woodwork was in a light wood and there was a suitcase stand that merged into a sideboard/desk (with no chair?) which also held the rather large flat-screen TV. At the end of the room, next to the French doors, were two small chairs and a coffee table. The bed had bedside tables to each side with lamps, telephone etc. The bed itself was a large double with a 'pillow menu' (as if I was going to call up housekeeping at midnight on a Sunday to demand a different pillow), sheets and blankets and a nice crisp white quilted cover. I sometimes judge a room by how many of the contents I'd like to take home with me and this room scored on the bedspread and the TV.

The bathroom had a bath with a shower over, a loo and bidet and a large spacious sink area with a big mirror but no make-up or shaving mirror. The washstand and most of the tiling was made of cream-coloured travertine marble - the real stuff, not a tiled copy! The shower had good water-pressure and the toiletries that were provided were good enough for me to slip them in my wash bag - 'artisan' soap that looked like someone tipped a bowl of muesli into the mixer and good sized bottles of nice-smelling shampoo, shower gel and body lotion. I long ago gave up emptying the 'amenity tray' in hotel bathrooms and now I only take the toiletries if they are quite special.

Do you recall the magic words 'French doors' earlier in the review? Yes, I had a balcony - yippee. You can't help but feel a bit like you are on holiday if you get a room with a balcony (or maybe that's just me). It was small and overlooked a small courtyard but if I stood near the edge, there was a fantastic view of the hills in front of the hotel. There was no furniture on the balcony though, but I suppose you could take the arm-chairs out of the room if you wanted to sit outside. When I woke on the Monday morning, I was amazed to find that it was raining so my plan to sit out first thing was cancelled.

~Breakfast~
I don't generally do hotel breakfasts but since I knew I'd want to write about the hotel, I thought I'd better go and check out the restaurant and I am glad that I did. The large room was decorated in dark woods with lots of neutral shades in the carpets and furnishings. A classic Italian 'Elle Deco' look (I had a subscription to the magazine for many years and it taught me to spot expensive stuff). Many of the tables were laid out for lunch with sparkling silver-ware and glasses and with row upon row of pink water glasses. The buffet had a great selection of foods - cereals, breads and cakes, fruit, hot food, cheese and hams, yoghurts, juices and coffees; just about everything you could think of. But the spectacular thing about the restaurant is not the food; it's the view. All along one end of the restaurant there's a long window with a panoramic view of the mist-covered hills and vineyards outside the hotel. I had a table in the middle of the room because all the viewing tables had already been filled with people gawping out of the windows at the view.

~What else?~

I went back to my room to pack and then grabbed my camera to take some pictures of the hotel. There's a lovely outdoor terrace with great views that must be nice on a sunny evening, and a bar with stylish sofas and artistically arranged cushions and flowers. There are meeting and conference rooms but I didn't have a chance to look. On the -1 floor, there's a games room with a snooker table and on -2, you'll find the art gallery I mentioned before. There's a gym somewhere but I didn't check it out.

~Check-Out~

This was easy and quick but then it was a Monday morning so I can't say it would always be so simple. My room was €69.50 which also included the breakfast and I felt this was excellent value - if I'd paid my own money rather than my company's, then I'd have felt it was money well spent. I can only imagine that the factory I was visiting may have negotiated a special rate although perhaps there's not a lot of demand for a four-star hotel in Santo Tirso. I just wish I could have stayed longer but fortunately I'm pretty sure that it won't be my only visit.

~Where is it?~

The VIP Arts is just a short walk from the waterfront area of the Parque das Nacoes (or Park of Nations - apologies to any Portuguese readers as I've lost several accents off the true spelling) which was built up for the world Expo in 1998. This is one of my favourite areas of the city and is a great place to stroll around, have a drink, something to eat and do a bit of people watching. It's also the home of the Oceanarium which I consider to be the best aquarium that I've ever visited. If you are familiar with the Olympic Port in Barcelona, it's a bit like that but slightly less pretentious.

The hotel is a few blocks back from the waterfront and a block or two from the bus station and a block from the underground. The airport is just 2 miles away but the downside, if you want to be in the city centre, is that the historic area is about 6 miles away so you'll not be able to walk to the sites. The underground would apparently take you about 25 minutes but taxis in the city are still very good value and cheaper than most other European capitals. You'd be most likely to find yourself in this area if you were visiting an exhibition or conference at the Parque das Nacoes conference venue.

~ First Impressions~

This is a hotel that makes you go 'Wow' and then makes you laugh. It's a bit like a grown up primary school with a graffiti-style tiled mural outside the hotel and with a lobby that's full of what look like over-sized nursery chairs. It's a place that exudes a mix of style and humour touched with a teensy hint of trying a bit too hard. I'm guessing it was probably built for the Expo as a lot of the styling is quite late-90s.

I found the lobby quite impressive with its polished grey concrete walls, funky seating and the atrium-style double height ceilings reaching up above the mezzanine. Checking other reviews I've been able to find, opinion seems to be polarised about whether the lobby is bleak and ugly or self-consciously trendy. I think I'm in the latter camp although the giant painting on the wall of the lobby looked like it had been done by a five year old.

~Check-In~

With 300 rooms, I suppose we shouldn't have been surprised that the check-in was quite busy but at 11 at night I was surprised there were still so many people checking in. The receptionist took my passport details and my credit card and checked whether I wanted a non-smoking room and then gave me my key and sent me to the lifts nearby. I was on the second floor - not high enough, sadly, to benefit from the views which are apparently spectacular on the upper floors. I also was neither on the side that faces the river and the Expo Park nor the side that faces the city. Instead I had a bizarre view of a slightly grubby pond with the words "FRESH DRINK" spelled out in high letters.

Getting out of the lift, the corridor to the rooms was really weird with a couple of funky chairs placed in front of a gravel garden with a little bridge over it. Why? I have no idea but it's a good thing I don't travel with my cats because it would have made a spectacular litter tray.

~The Room~

My lasting impression of the room is one of 'ginger-ness' - it was really rather an orange room. The walls were thankfully in cream but the bedspread was orange and cream squares, the floors were of gingery-red wood laminate (OK, I confess, I got down and had a really good look to check it wasn't real wood) and the door and wardrobes were in a similar gingery-red wood. The curtains were orange as was the valance on the bed - I thought I might have fallen asleep and woken up inside a giant dream-like tangerine. Some nice touches included the creamy-yellow leather-look bedhead and matching arm-chair, which of course had a gingery wooden coffee table.

The bed was a king size with small gingery wooden bedside tables on either side and on the opposite side of the room to the bed there was a teeny work desk with cream leather-look chair, a small TV standing on top of the minibar, a weird clothes stand that I rather doubt every gets used, and a suitcase stand.

The bathroom was decorated to a high standard in what would typically be called black granite (although the geologists amongst you might wince at the use of that term and recognise that most black granite is actually gabbro or dolerite but don't try asking for that in the kitchen worktop shop). It was a pretty stylish if rather impractical bathroom. There was a shaving/make up mirror but the fixture was dodgy and you could only use it by crouching down or huddling over. It had one of those basins that sit on top of the worktop which I rather like but I think they are going out of fashion very rapidly - at least they hadn't gone with the green frosted glass Philippe Starck basins that started the trend and now look really dated as well as really impractical. Only a hotel or someone with full-time staff to run around wiping them clean, should ever consider a glass sink. There was a loo and a bidet and a bath with a shower over it. The shower power was great, but only once I was standing in the bath did I realise that the towel rail was so high up that I could barely reach it. I'm 5 foot 8 and most Portuguese ladies are pretty titchy - some of the men too - so I think sooner or later some poor soul will be found bleeding to death in the bath after slipping trying to get the towels.

When it was time to go to bed I spent several minutes going round the room looking for all the switches to turn all the lights off - it took many attempts and a master switch would have made life a lot easier.

~Breakfast~

I love Portuguese hotels - they are inexpensive and they usually include breakfast, unlike Spanish hotels which are much more pricey and typically charge so much for breakfast that you'd need to still be there eating at lunch time to have got your money's worth. I went down to check out what was on offer and was dazzled by an Eiffel tower made of some kind of food stuff and a Portuguese flag which appeared to have been made out of hundreds and thousands. After seeing that, the food could only be ordinary in comparison.

There was plenty of choice but I only had 10 minutes to guzzle some juice, give up on my overly bitter coffee and grab some bread and cheese.

~A Minor Gripe~
So why did I have so little time for breakfast? Well largely because the lifts in the hotel were absolutely rubbish. A fourteen storey, 300-room hotel cannot get by on just two lifts. It took me nearly 5 minutes to get a lift from the second floor to the mezzanine. After breakfast I decided that if the lifts were as bad going back up again, then I'd take the stairs but I couldn't find them which was worrying because I'd checked where they should be (always be prepared for fire!) and I still couldn't find them. There was a third lift that was not working but it took 5 minutes each time I wanted to go anywhere and consequently I was late checking out and kept the people I was travelling with waiting. I understood why there were two fancy little chairs next to the lift - obviously for anyone who couldn't stand up long enough waiting for them to come.

~The Good News~

The room was just Euro85 for bed and breakfast which for a place that was stylish and well equipped, seemed like a pretty good deal to me. Whether I'd use it again would depend on why I was in Lisbon. For tourism I'd go somewhere more central (or kip on the floor of my friend Teresa's apartment) but for work it was OK because it was on the right side of town for the office I was visiting.

It must have been spectacular a few years ago when everything was still new and sparkly and it's not doing bad roughly ten years later but the owners really need to watch that the décor doesn't get too dated because the standard of the competition is really high and they could easily get left behind.