Mirachoro Ii

Mirachoro II exactly what you pay for

We have just got back from staying at the Mirachoro II (02/09/2009) and the principle reason for our stay was because it was cheap. £25.00 per night for two of us, we live just out side Skegness and you couldn’t find a B&B for one for that price high season let alone two people, the other reason was we wanted to be further away from the touristy Praia De Rocha. The hotel is a little tired, but it’s clean, the rooms are huge with a double bed room, separately bathroom and lounge/kitchenette with a large balcony. The rooms have a fridge, toaster, kettle, two ring hob perfect if you want to cook bacon and eggs for breakfast. We did smell someone cooking that one day. The staff are friendly, more than willing to help, in fact go out of their way to help and all speak English. There are a couple of staff who are real characters like the guy with curly hair who does the night shift, when ever we came in really late, like morning late, he would say good morning and laugh. (If you need an ironing board we donated one we purchased while we were down there and told the staff that it was for anyone who needed to use it).

Our pick up for travelling back wasn’t going to arrive till 5pm and we had to vacate the room, but they provide somewhere to leave your bags and a courtesy suite to shower and change, not even the Algarve Casino Hotel did that and that was 5*.

The Mirachoro is a 15 minute walk from Praia De Rocha which we did every evening and found a fantastic Brazilian Buffet Restaurant on the way down the hill, for 10 Euros each you can eat all you want as many times of different fish, different meat, salad, pasta in fact a huge variety of food we couldn’t even come close to eating each dish and we went a couple of times.

The maids come in every day to see if you want a change of towels, however, you need to read the policy of towel changes because they are doing their bit for the environment and if you want clean towels every day you will need to leave your towel inside the bath. If you don’t they wont change the towels, they say they are trying to stop pollution from using bleach and washing powder, I say well done for doing your bit.

The pool isn’t Olympic size but quite adequate for a hotel outside of Praia de Rocha (most pools outside of the main tourist area are) so it’s no different to any other building of its size. We didn’t use the pool so it was no problem for us.

There is a courtesy bus service into Praia De Rocha from the hotel that runs 5 times a day for free. Although the taxis are extremely cheap and safe, we used these usually for going home.

We spent most of our time in the town of Portimao as we had already stayed in Praia De Rocha and we were apartment hunting.

I love Portimao more than Praia De Rocha, but if you are a tourist and you want bars, and sand (the Praia De Rocha) beach is to die for, its huge, has a lighted board walk with cafes about 200 metres from each other lining it on one side and the beach and the sea on the other, great for walking at night.

We finally found our apartment down in Portimao near the harbour and bought it. If you do get a chance to go into the town its well worth the look around and there are hundreds of little cafes as well as a fresh fish and veg market, which is brand new.

While we were there a woman complained in the foyer of the crickets which are loud …hello what did she expect the staff to do go around trying to find them and kill them, we laughed our heads off at that…it makes you wonder why some people go on holidays abroad!!!! The funny thing is when you go near crickets they go quiet, can you imagine some poor man going around trying to find those darn crickets!

Unique Quality: The cat she is outstanding. The staff very helpful, will go out of their way to help you where they can. The night guy with the curly hair very funny! The Hotel is clean although a little tired, but still it had everything we needed. Not being a user of the pool wasnt a problem for me, its not Olympic size but perfectly adequate. This is a self catering holiday so dont expect food to be served other than bar snacks.

It is perfectly situated away from the main run of hotels up at Praia de Rocha and the noise. The continente mall is situated very near so you can go shopping for everything you need.

The hotel does have a green policy on towel changing, if you want clean towels you will need to put them in the bath for the maids to change, if you dont want clean towels leave them hanging.

There is plenty of hanging space for clothes, but be warned the beds are hard and i mean hard, we slept on the two mattresses from the bed settees these were more comfortable and buy some bed pillows from down at the continente because the pillows are like laying on rocks.