Hotel Praia Mar, Lisbon

Advantages: Location!
Disadvantages: Nothing!

...After losing out on going to Tenerife (see my Thomsons review), we decided to go to Portugal. First choice was Lisbon. To get a hotel by the beach seemed very expensive so we looked a little further out and came to find Costa da Caparica. --Getting There-- If you are on a late flight into Lisbon i would say you would be best to catch a taxi to the hotel. This costs around €40.00 which isnt too bad for a 25 minute jouney but i think some of the taxi drivers do try and pull the wool over your eyes especially if you are obviously a tourist. The taxis do charge an extra €1.60 for luggage, not much i know but worth mentioning. If you are on a earlier flight or feel like being brave a cheaper way to get to the hotel is to get a taxi to Praca De Espanha (€7.00) and then catch the 153 bus (€2.50) to Costa Da Caparica. The hotel is a 5 minute... Read review

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Advantages: small village, relatively unspoilt
Disadvantages: occasionally dead fish

..., 50 € for half a day), there are no showers on the beach, though, if you want to take a shower, you have to walk up the stairs to the right of the restaurant Praia Grande, you can find showers and (clean) toilets there, both free of charge. Three other, smaller restaurants are situated at the back of the beach under the cliffs. We see mainly Portuguese people, foreign tourists either stay in their hotel compounds at the swimming-pools or swim in the sea and then walk back to their hotels or hire a car and explore the hinterland. We already studied the Portuguese during two stays in Lisbon and found them the quietest and best behaved of all Romanic peoples. The same number of Neapolitans on a beach and your ears would hurt! The beach is rather clean, every 50 m there’s a bin and every morning some men collect the rubbish and rake the sand... Read review

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Advantages: Good climate; English widely spoken
Disadvantages: Coming home again ;¬}

...Yes, there are beaches: have stayed at the same hotel at the Praia Formosa each year. This is at the western edge of the tourist area of Funchal, the main town on the island. The main part of this beach is cobbles, but there are black sand areas too. Yes, Madeira is very hilly: on one trip last year one of the other tourists started hyper-ventilating. She was in the very front seat of the coach so had a better than drivers-eye view of the drop. Not suitable for the young or infirm: even the costal promenade walk from Funchal to Praia Formosa The octopus and squid dishes are the best I have ever had, even better than Italy. What is sold as calamari in Britain is better compared to fried battered onion-rings. The local fish speciality, espada (fresh black scabbard fish), is excellent and I normally do not like fish. Served... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful