I chose the Residencial Princesa more out of necessity than anything else. It suited my budget and had a single room available. I booked it without thinking to much about it because I was fairly sure that if I left it any longer the room would probably be booked by someone else. I knew nothing of the area it was in and despite finding it on the map I was not at all sure how far away it was from downtown Lisbon (where I seem to spend a lot of my time).

I took a taxi from the airport as my rucksack was blindingly heavy and I just wanted to get to my room as quickly as possible. The friendly driver ferried me to the hotel at a charge of 15 euro’s (which I had been told should be about right for the length of the journey).

Upon arrival, unfortunately my room wasn’t ready. The staff were friendly and apologetic and offered to look after my bags whilst I went off for an hour and had a coffee. I had initially said I would probably arrive at about midday but I was nearly 2 hours earlier than anticipated. It was really my fault for sorely overestimating how long it would take to get my baggage and through passport control. The sun was shining and I was itching to get into Lisbon and while away the hours at some cafe so I wandered downtown to Suiça and took in the Lisbon air.

As I didn’t have a clue which bus went back to the hotel, I decided to walk back. It took around 25 minutes which wasn’t really that long although the backs of my legs protested as it was uphill all the way!

My room was ready by the time I appeared and I was shown up to a lovely little room on the second floor. The hotel does have a lift which is a rarity. Everywhere was extremely clean, my room bright and airy and whilst it was small it was certainly enough room for me. I didn’t really have a view but for ?39 a night I wasn’t expecting one. What I needed was clean, comfortable, functional and good staff – all of which I received.

There was a bed, wardrobe and desk with a chair and a dial out phone (with tariff chart included). A tv was on the wall with various cable channels as well as main Portuguese channels and a safe in the wardrobe. The safe has to be rented from the hotel at a charge of 1.50 euro’s per day plus a 10 euro deposit. The rental was taken out of the 10 euro’s at the end of my stay.

I would always recommend using a hotel’s safe whether you have a personal one in your room or a main safe. Hotels do not cover any loss of valuables from your room – better to be safe (pun intended!) than sorry.

I booked a room with a private bathroom. It was clean and well equipped with a toilet, bath, wash-basin and bidet as well as a hairdryer. The shower was always hot and whilst it wasn’t a ‘power shower’ it certainly did the job.

One thing I hadn’t realised when I booked was that breakfast was included. This is good bonus. The breakfast room was very clean and there was a range of foods served buffet style. On weekdays breakfast starts at 7.30am and at weekends it’s 8am. I would recommend going as early as you can as the room does fill up quite quickly. There are only 10 tables so if you arrive late you may have to wait.

Being an early bird however, I didn’t have that problem. There was a good variety of foods to choose from – cereals, toast, various bread rolls, sweet pastries and croissant. You could choose from butter, jam, marmalade, cheese or ham to go with the savoury. A fresh fruit basket was also provided as well as plain yoghurt. Drinks were orange juice, milk, tea, coffee and hot chocolate. Everything was very fresh and it was nice to sit in the pretty breakfast room and nod hello to other guests. I noticed a high chair was provided and the baby who occupied it happily shook little bags of sugar and beamed at everyone who walked past her.

Internet access and a tv were also in here which I assumed were used later on in the day. I didn’t use either but I noticed the internet access was around 3 euro’s for 15 minutes. It’s a handy extra that can be useful if you need to quickly find something on the net or send an email telling everyone how fabulous Lisbon is!

After walking to downtown Lisbon and back a couple of times I finally decided public transport would be a good idea. The 790 stops right by the hotel and in 10 minutes has you on Figueira Square (from where you can catch the bus back again). The route was well served by frequent buses and costs 1.30 euro’s if you haven’t got a travel card.

I would however recommend walking down into town at least once so you get the feel of local life in Lisbon. One morning I followed the sound of cockrals crowing and found a lovely little park with ducks and hens running free. Old men sat talking, smoking and feeding the birds. The birds in turn are quite used to people feeding them and therefore tend to accompany you as you wander through.

Residencial Princesa has everything you need in a budget hotel. If you turn left immediately out the front door you have a post office. Going right (then stay right) you’ll come to a cash point and a row of bars and local shops. There is another tiny park right opposite the front doors which is nice if you’re waiting for the bus.

The main front door is open 24 hours a day, as is reception. Most of the staff speak good English and all were very helpful and pleasant. As I left I told them I would recommend them to everyone and I am fulfilling that promise. I intend to stay at the Princesa again.

They have a website here

Residencial Princesa
Rua Gomes Freire, 130
1150-180 Lisbon
Tel: +351.21.319 30 70 - 
Fax: +351.21.319 30 79
E-mail: info@residencial-princesa.pt
 

a

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Having never visited Lisbon before and also being rather short on the cash front our stay at Praça Figueira was the culmination of hours of internet research. We had set a list of criteria at the beginning that we were looking for which basically included the following

Twin room
Ensuite bathroom
No more that £30 each per night

Not much of a criteria really but that these were the only points that we weren’t willing or able to compromise on.

First I built up a list of all the budget hotels, hostels and pensions in Lisbon from reputable sites like trip advisor, I’ve been there, lonely planet and hostels.com. From this list we then checked if they had the basic requirements set out above. From that remaining list I then ear-marked the one’s that were actually available on the dates we wanted and discarded the rest. Now came the fun part…for each hotel or hostel I then revisited all the sites that offered reviews by people who had actually stayed there. This proved to be an eye-opener. Some places that had been in our ‘top 10′ ended up being struck off straight away after reading tales of leaky toilets, grouchy owners and cockroaches! I accept that everyone’s experience is different and everyone can have the odd bad experience but hotels with a catalogue of moan reviews did suggest a problem!

Having sorted the wheat from the chaff, next I looked to see if our current favourites had their own website as well as a listing or advertisement on another site. I have to say that those without a website got struck off the list. Being the internet girl that I am I feel that having a web presence is important these days. I am endlessly frustrated by the multitude of businesses here in the UK that are still not web savvy, but I digress…

Next we checked the remaining contenders against the places we wanted to visit and whether their location was truly suitable to our needs. Whilst planning our trips out weren’t done with military precision (you have to have some free time to just wander in Lisbon) there were places that we definitely wanted to see so it made sense to check how easy it was to get to where we wanted to go and just as importantly check if we could get back again. Being women we didn’t want to find ourselves stuck in the middle of nowhere late and night and not be able to find safe transport to get back ‘home’.

So by now we had got down to our final three and from then on it was just pure intuition. After gazing at the websites for a while I just decided on Pensão Praça de Figueira. It just felt right. Situated on Praça Figueira itself we couldn’t be more central. This is right beside the main square Praça Rossio. Praça means ’square’ in Portuguese but remember it’s not interchangeable like in English to mean ‘uncool and dated’!

I booked through hostelworld.com as I have used them before and know they are a trusted site. We only paid a small deposit of £16 with the balance paid at the end of our stay. The room cost £27.50 per night. The Pension emailed me straight away which was good but also asked for details of my credit card by email. I did send these in a secure way but in hindsight I would do this over the phone in future. The reason they wanted this was incase we didn’t turn up or notify them that we weren’t coming so they could charge us for a night’s stay. Fair enough but it did make me a little nervous although this turned out to be inconsequential.

Getting to the Pension was easy as pie. The Aerobus (No 91) stop was right outside Lisbon Airport. It was at this point in the journey that I discovered to extreme excitement that I really could ask the way in Portuguese and understand the answer. The young lady at the information point smiled politely as I grinned at her like a lunatic and pointed just incase I hadn’t understood what she had said.

The information point by the way is right by the main doors as you leave the airport – you’ll see the glass doors out – just look to your right and it’s there. There’s plenty of maps and leaflets and I think they also speak English although I was too busy speaking Portuguese to find out properly.

The stop for the Aerobus is outside right behind the information point. You really can’t miss it. You can also catch the normal local bus numbers 42 or 45 but to be honest if you have suitcases or in our case rucksacks, the Aerobus has a lot more space.

Once again I practised my new found linguist skills on the driver and was informed that the journey to Praça Rossio (right beside Praça Figueira) would cost us 3 fingers each. Very droll.

That’s 3 euros for those who missed both mine and the driver’s humour.

One of my main concerns before going was not knowing where to get off the bus but that wasn’t a problem as it’s announced on the bus at each stop. The journey took us about 25 minutes if I remember rightly.

On arrival at Rossio square it took us about 10 minutes to find the Pension. This was simply because we were looking for the main door which had a sign over it. Here’s a tip – look up! The Pension has a huge sign and is on one of the corners in Praça Figueira. Walk round the corner off the square, on your right you’ll see a shoe shop (and this won’t be the last shoe shop you see), then take the immediate next left which leads down a little side street. On the corner to your right is a little local café which, by the way, is a nice friendly little place to stop for a coffee and then the door to the Pension is beside it. In the day the main door is open so you’ll just see a huge flight of stairs. The building is very old and doesn’t have a lift that I could see so you do need to be able to climb up. Go up two flights and the reception is there.

We were greeted with a smile from the receptionist and once we had given our names we were shown straight to our room. We were down on the second floor. The room itself was small but absolutely spotless. We did notice other rooms during our stay there which were quite a bit bigger. It was pretty hot in there when we arrived but once we’d opened the window it cooled down. Later we attempted to put up the floor fan but in such a small space and me having very long hair we decided against using this. The receptionist gave us various instructions about the Pension, the most important one being ‘don’t put anything down the loo’ – and this included toilet paper! She told us it gets blocked easily but we never had any problem with it at all. The shower was hot although you had to make a leap to get into the bath to have access to it. The side of the bath was pretty high. Not a problem for those of us who are agile but no good for someone who has problems walking.

In the room itself we had the requested twin beds, a fridge, a wardrobe with hangers, extra blankets, side cabinets and a tv. I was excited to be able to watch some Portuguese television but I noticed it did that weird thing that many hotel tv’s do which is that even though you turn the volume up to full it’s barely more than a whisper. Seeing as the only thing I ended up watching was half of the Eurovision Song Contest I could probably consider this a blessing.

The room looked out onto the road where the number 28 tram runs and is quite busy during the day although again we never found this to be a problem. It’s busy at night but quietens down. I guess I’m used to the sound of traffic as I live in the centre of a city anyway. Also it was quite nice to gaze out of the window onto the streets of Lisbon.

The Pension has a safe which they encourage you to use and they do not take responsibility for valuables left in the room. I decided to use it to store my Passport and spare credit card which I had incase of emergencies.

The room was cleaned everyday – beds made and fresh towels left. There are also phone/fax services and internet (although I didn’t ask about the latter). They also will exchange foreign currency and offer a laundrey service. Pretty good all round.

I only have a few basic moans which are quite minor when taking everything into consideration.

1) It would have been great to have a kettle seeing as there was already a fridge. But then I guess there is no shortage of places to get a cup of coffee in Lisbon.

2) The main door is locked at night and you are not given a key so you have to buzz the door to be let back in. I always felt a little guilty to wake up the night staff and we did think that having a front door key would make the world of difference.

3) Lastly – and this was an unfortunate incident – when you are given the keys to your room there is a large white plastic square fob on them. This is slotted into the main light switch and this activates the electricity in the room. One evening I was coming upstairs key to the ready in my hand and tripped because I was tired. Of course I put my hand out to stop myself falling and ‘crack! there went the plastic fob.

Worried, I made my way to reception to be greeted by someone I hadn’t met before and who was a good deal more serious than the previous receptionist. In my tiredness and worry over breaking the fob my Portuguese went to pot as I lamely tried to explain what happened. She wasn’t at all impressed (I think she thought I was drunk!) even when I offered to pay for it but hunted down another one and gave it to me. Things didn’t really improve when I then had to go back up to reception because for some reason I couldn’t open the main door to our floor – something which had caused me no problems for the last 3 days. Without a word the receptionist took the key from me turned it round and showed me which way it went in the door. I scuttled away feeling quite humiliated! Maybe she’d just had a bad day!

But despite this minor moans Pensão Praça da Figueira was a really good choice. As we were out and about around Lisbon most of the time, we didn’t spend a huge amount of time in the hotel but it was a very good base to have and overall I would recommend it to anyone looking for a budget place to stay.

Check out their website at
http://www.pensaopracadafigueira.com

The site is in English, Portuguese or French

Pensão Praça da Figueira

abraço

a

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