My girlfriend and I went to Posade de Coloane this weekend and I'm blogging about the visit in the hopes of both praising and condemning the place.
It's worth mentioning that we stayed at The Westin in Coloane a few weeks ago and, frankly, it's a better value with a similar view even if it's a pretty shabby Westin compared to ones in the States.
Posada de Coloane has a good reputation due to the location and the views. And, yes, the room was charming and the view was nice but on most other levels we found the place a failure.
We were promised that we could check in early -- around noon. We arrived early and went to the beach and then used the pool and were given a room key at 11:30 and told that the room was ready.
No one helped us with our luggage, or even offered to. We carried our stuff downstairs only to find the room hadn't been cleaned yet. So we trudged back upstairs and waited another hour.
Once cleaned, the room was fine but dialing out on the phone sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. And when it did work, you had to hope that someone at the desk actually answered the phone.
And why did we call the front-desk so much? 'Cause the free (unsecure) Wi-Fi dropped out every few hours -- 4 times in 20 hours by my count. Looking at my Gmail log and I can see new IP addresses every few hours yesterday from that location as the router was constantly reset there.
We needed 4 pieces of laundry done and there was a sort of gentle argument about that. They were too busy to squeeze in 4 items and get them back before Monday. They did eventually do the laundry and quickly too.
When we went down to dinner we found that the entire restaurant on the premises had been booked for a private party so we had to eat outside (which was okay thanks to the weather).
The meal was decent and any faults there were the result of what we ordered. The baked pears in red wine sauce for dessert was the best thing about the meal, frankly.
Then this morning as I was attempting to check out, there was the usual drama about getting a taxi only to have the taxi show up too early.
Finally, and most annoyingly, the desk clerk this morning couldn't get the credit card machine to work and he blamed it on my Mastercard emblazoned with the Bank of America logo. He said it wouldn't work 'cause it was an American bank.
I said "Yeah, that's why I've used it in Macau, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and The Philippines so far..."
He finally got it to work and I curtly replied "Wow, I guess it *does* work!" to no reaction.
My overall review of Posada de Coloane is that it's a nice view but that's about it. I think the Westin is better, if not as quaint.
Still, there were some nice things about yesterday's stay and I can't help but want to share a few pics.
