Stayed here as part of a wedding party in August 10. On arrival it doesn't look that special, but once inside it is very impressive. Staff were very helpful and efficient. The spa area was good although a little expensive, an outdoor pool would be nice (especially in the summer), but you do have the beach about 10 mins walk away. Rooms very plush and comfortable, ours overlooked the river and sea. Good choice at breakfast and reasonably priced drinks at the bar.

The Hotel has got a nice view to City / River and Ocean.

My partner and me been here in July and December 2008 and some other time in 2009 (can't exactly recall!). Because it's a great place to come back!

If you want to have a relaxing time, this is your hotel. It's not big as in quantity of rooms, but spacious and comfortable enough for the guests. The whole place has a modern look.

The location is at the other side of the bridge of Vila do Conde, in Azurara. It's a great place if you have a car. If you don't not sure, especially if you want to go to the Vila do Conde's beach, which is QUITE far. I know there's a metro station to Porto (20 km) somewhere near, but not sure where :)

The rooms are spacious enough, with very light lightening; maybe a bit more optional lightening would do better, but it has a romantic ambient as it's intended.
Room has a small flat TV, minibar, air conditioning and heating, safety box, spacious placard, desktop and a table. You are given some very comfy robes. The bathroom has hair dryer and very nice smelling products (gel, shampoo, soap...). There's anything you might miss as a regular hotel user.
You can have breakfast in your own room if you want (for 2€ extra/person).
Personally, I would never book the "River view" rooms (more expensive). You can't even see the sea, and the river view is not something spectacular either. All you see is houses and a green space and a bit of river, a bit away...

The buffet breakfast is very good in my opinion: you have different kinds of breads, cakes (chocolate, plain with nuts, plain...), whole fruit and freshly cut, yoghourts, water, cereals, feijoada, coffee, chocolate, tea, ham, cheeses and other cold cuts, even champagne! The breakfast room is kind of dark but relaxing due to the very wide windows.

We never used the jacuzzi or the pool (someday we will) but they look quite fine! We did use the gym, which is small but enough for some typical mantainance. It has treadmills and static bikes, crunches platform, a very weird aparatus (where you can hang and do all kind of stretchings), maybe a couple of things more. As I said, enough to don't have the feeling of "I'm missing my session!" :) It was all clean and top condition, everything we used, worked.

Never tried the restaurant as we know of some very nice in the town. The bar looks nice but a bit sad, we never seen anybody crashing in there.

The staff was attentive, but that time in July 2008 was a bit of a mess.
Next day from our arrival, we go to the gym, leave the "clean the room" hanging sign on the door. The cleaning lady was in the room of the front of ours, and seen us leaving and hanging the sign. When we go back, one hour after, room was still undone. Ok... we got our shower and left to the town. When we go back after having lunch like 4 hours later, room was still undone!!! We just wanted to relax, what a shame. Didn't they have time enough to do it? We had to talk at reception and fortunately 15 minutes later it was done. In the meanwhile, we used the wireless connection, can say it doesn't work very well (very slow and most of times it doesn't connect, so I wouldn't take my laptop there).

The day after, the gym was supposed to be open at 8.00 am. We went at 8.30 am, the entrance door (to the spa, where the gym is) was closed. Nobody around. We go back to the room, make a call to reception and ask about that (because the plan was gym-shower-breakfast). The woman said we could go downstairs again, as they were cleaning the pool and everything else could be used. We go back again, and STILL CLOSED! We go to the reception, and the same woman at the telephone said we can't still use it, they were cleaning, we reminded her what she told us before... She says she'll see what she can do (it was about 9 by that time), we kept waiting for about 10 minutes!! No respect at all, we went to have our breakfast, they broke our plans >:(

Seems that when they're quite or fully booked, the cleaning service is not up to the task. We went in more calm times and there weren't any problems.

All good and bad has to be said :) We still love the hotel (especially when we can get those 60 or 70€/night fares) and highly recommend it to everybody.

Just one thing: is not an appropiate hotel for children. Guests going there do not appreciate the lovely kiddy noise, nor the ambient is calling for "family time". It is a SPA. Maybe you can do with the Santana Hotel or other for that kind of plan.

We only stayed 2 nights, and had to get up at the crack of dawn on the last night, so we probably didn't take full advantage of what the hotel had to offer. The staff were very accommodating and provided us with a breakfast at 4.30AM! The room and bathroom were spacious, clean and what you would expect from a modern hotel, though they could probably do with buying some new bathrobes as the ones they provided us with had seen better days! The breakfast buffet was also quite poor for a 4* hotel, with a limited selection of food and drinks. I can't comment on the spa and swimming pool because we didn't have a chance to use it. The location of the hotel isn't bad, but you still need a car to be able to see all the sights. Parking was no problem as the hotel has a spacious underground car park. All in all it's a nice enough hotel, but for the money we paid, i think we could have done better.