A change of pace now – the holiday was booked as two halves with an initial busy period and the a couple of quieter days at the end at what was hoped would be a sunny and warm location just along the coast from Ponta Delgada at Lagoa.
To put it mildly it was not in our usual price bracket but we hoped for a couple of days of indulgence.
We stayed in the first hotel in the morning and took a light lunch as the weather was not as good as the previous couple of days. Then a taxi to our destination.
It is a boutique hotel (nine rooms) and on being shown around I suppose the most striking aspect was the need to book the use of the jacuzzi. I accept that I would not want to share with others – but with that number of rooms booking it was a little much. We were also given a mobile phone so that we can contact the hotel team at any time (they are not on site overnight) and I can see the H&S side as positive – but do we really need another mobile phone? I largely left it in the bedroom until it woke us overnight as the battery went flat.
I have been known to arrive in a bedroom and sit down on the bed and ask politely if I need to unpack or not and probably should have done that. There is no door to the bathroom area – merely net-like curtains to pull across. I recall a hotel room in India where there was a glass wall between bathroom and bedroom – but that at least had a blind which could be lowered to obscure the indecencies – here there was no real separation which given the potential smells as well as sounds was unwelcome. Somehow I suspect we are not the target market.
For a boutique hotel room I would like a comfortable sofa or similar to lie along and read a book – there are two rather hard units in corners which are neither long enough on which to lie or short enough to provide a back rest whilst feet are on the floor. During the day it lacks natural light. At night some of the windows are unobscured so to my mind it is too light – almost impossible to conceive mentally but here physically obvious. There is a small window to the outside street with no blind and it is largely the only natural light. So we have a room which is too dark in the day and too light at night and with no comfortable seating.
If we had been outside throughout our stay as we were largely on the Thursday on the sunbeds then the room might have been less irksome but on Friday as it rained all day it was more oppressive and containing. The weather no-one can control but it was not possible to be comfortable.
We ate in the hotel on both Wednesday and Friday nights. Our first choices on the first night were the items we really wanted and the food is excellent. However our second choices on the Friday evening were good in terms of the quality of the items – we both had a deconstructed curry – but I am not sure the execution quite matched the underlying product quality.
On the Thursday evening we went out to find a local restaurant but the external visage of the two we found were not ideal. We dined in the second (given that there were only the two to find) and in reality the hotel needs the support of some slightly better restaurants – Jackie’s shrimp curry here was a somewhat odd pink colour and the shrimps were undercooked.
It will not be receiving a rave review, but I will not name it as that is a little unfair.