A very good hotel at an excellent location. Our room had the most splendid view of the Douro river with three different bridges and surrounding vineyards. The staff, and Artur in particular, was outstanding.

The hotel boasts spacious rooms with balconies. Choose the riverside - it's worth the extra price - as the view is brilliant and reminds one of the Rhine Gorge. Lots of rich, port-grape growing terraces sheltered under plum and cherry trees. Good-sized pool. Excellent restaurant - Sunday buffet great value for money. Included the tastiest, tenderest boar (or was it an over-sized suckling pig ?). Evening meals delicious and served by the kindest, pleasantest waitering service. Reasonably priced local wines. All the staff a credit to the hotel management - cheeriest and best humoured chambermaids I've ever come across. If you want a quiet relaxing place away this is it.
Mini-downsides: wifi not included in room (and this is expensive compared to the rest of Europe). Also the pool was closed after 1900 when the pool-area was catching a blazing sun until 2100. Felt that was a wasted asset. Despite these quibblettes would thoroughly recommend. Oh yeah, good parking - altho if you are frail make sure you dump your bags in reception from the main road as a flight of stairs from rear entrance.

We enjoyed four nights in this hotel. The breakfast was excellent and the food in the dining room beautifully presented. My husband's lactose intolerance was catered for as requested.

We used this hotel only to sleep and to take the break-fast in the morning. So I can mainly describe this part.
The room where we stayed was good and very reasonable for a 4 star hotel. Although in the bathroom(shower) I saw some long hair stuck in the wall, probably from old guests that stayed there before me. Well so that's why my cleanliness rate isn't that good.
Nevertheless room was good, with TV and a poor mini-bar.

In the morning you should stop in the breakfast room area to eat the most important meal througout the day. And here you could have a good meal, because you have so much to choose from. Since American to Continental breakfast, you'll find it good and complete.

The pool wasn't, yet functioning but it would be after one or two weeks and it sounded apelative. The Bar Area was alright. The bought a Port bottle and we drank right there.

One of the things I disliked was one of the employes from Reception looking at us with a funny face, looked like he was making fun of clients.