Description: I'm sometimes a little apprehensive booking three-star hotels, because you can never be sure how good they actually are.
Fortunately, Guia Hotel is one of the good ones. We paid a reasonable US$65 per night for a twin room via
Octopus Travel, and were pleased that the hotel has all the facilities and amenities that a three-star hotel should have, and more. The bathrooms, for example, are very well-appointed: shower and bath with true hot water; a hair dryer; complimentary soap dishes apart from the complimentary soap and shampoo, complimentary combs apart from the complimentary shower caps; complimentary toothbrush cases apart from the complimentary travel toothbrush; and one thing that I think all hotels should have: a pull-out clothes line above the bathtub.
The bedrooms are of a good size and clean, the television has cable channels (no English channels, though, just Cantonese, Mandarin, and Portuguese), there are bedside switches and dimmers for the lights, and the rooms have balconies and views.
Although there is a restaurant with mahjong tables on the ground floor, our fifth floor bedroom (sixth floor in American English) was quiet; the only disturbance was some hammering in the next door room at around 10:30am one morning.
There is a moderately priced restaurant on the ground floor (around MOP$45 for a main dish; two main dishes are just right for three people to share) that is open from 7am to 10pm.
Guia Fortress is just a short walk up the hill from the hotel (note that the path to the fortress is steep, so wear walking shoes if you intend to visit it). However, the hotel is not extremely close to the city center, where most of the big casinos and colonial buildings are. One can either take a long stroll down Guia Hill to the center, or one can take the bus. There is a bus stop about 20 meters from the hotel entrance, along which bus numbers 6 and 28c pass. Note, however, that both these buses traverse a circular route so if you intend to ride a bus 6 or 28c back to the hotel, make sure that the bus is headed in the right direction. Finally, there is always the option of taking a taxi back and forth, which isn't too expensive if three or four of you are traveling as a group. From Casino Lisboa, the taxi ride to the hotel was around MOP$12; from the ferry station it was MOP$20. Going back to the ferry station, you can can take the free ferry shuttle from the hotel. At night, the hotel also offers free trips to Casino Lisboa and back, although we couldn't find the pick-up point for the return trip (it wasn't the same as the drop-off point).
I would definitely consider booking this hotel again if I came back to Macau, although I would also look into getting something for the same price in a slightly more central location.
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