Olissippo Marques De Sa Hotel

I stayed at Hotel Olissippo Marques de Sa with my girlfriend and her parents for 6 nights during a visit to Lisbon to celebrate New Year 2011/12.

We booked our stay through www.booking.com and paid 63 Euros per night for each double room with breakfast.

Location

Hotel Olissippo Marques de Sa is located a few kilometers north of Lisbon city centre. It would be quite a walk from the hotel to the centre of the city (30 minutes or so to the squares of Restauradores or Rossio) if you chose to get around on foot.

I'd have been happy to walk to and from town on at least a few occasions during our stay, but my travel companions weren't so keen! Instead, we made use of the metro which is a very convenient (and good value) means of getting around Lisbon.

The hotel is located on Avenida Miguel Bombarda and the two closest metro stations are Sao Sebastiao (on the red and blue metro lines) and Saldanha (on the yellow and red metro lines). We never used the latter station (the yellow and red lines are the least useful for tourists), but made use of Sao Sebastiao station on a daily basis.

Upon leaving the hotel's front entrance, cross over the road and walk to the right to the end of Avenida Miguel Bombarda (only 50m or so). Turn left and walk for 100m along Rue do Marques de Sa Bandeira and you'll find the closest entrance to Sao Sebastiao metro station. This entrance brings you onto the red line; you'll then need to walk for 3 or 4 minutes through the station to reach the blue line which travels into the city centre.

Restauradores and Baixa-Chiado are 4 and 5 stops along the blue line respectively and these are the two central stops that we mainly used. The former is within a few minutes walk of Rossio Square and Rossio train station (for trains to Sintra), as well as the Santa Justa lift. The latter is where you can connect to the green line which, after one stop, arrives at Cais do Sodre train station (for trains to Estoril and Cascais).

In summary, Sao Sebastiao metro station is less than 5 minutes walk from the hotel and then a 10 minute metro ride will deliver you to the heart of the city centre, so don't be put off by the hotel's seemingly peripheral location.

Away from the city centre, the nearby metro stops are also useful for visiting other attractions. Lisbon Zoo is just 2 stops along the blue line whereas the red line leads to Oriente where you will find the Vasco da Gama bridge, tower and shopping mall and the Parque das Nacoes (entertainment venues, restaurants, bars, marina, aquarium and cable cars).

The El Corte Ingles shopping mall is a 5-10 minutes walk from the hotel and there are lots of small restaurants, bars and shops in the streets surrounding the hotel.

Bedroom

Our room was fairly spacious, was spotlessly clean, comfortable and suitably furnished to meet our limited needs.

The bed was a proper double (not the annoyingly pushed together single beds that we increasingly seem to encounter!).

The wardrobe was large enough for our needs (and with 6 full days worth of my girlfriend's clothes, our needs were quite substantial!) and there were bedside drawers, a writing desk, a chair and a fridge.

The TV was mounted on a wall bracket high above the foot of the bed. It picked up numerous channels, including a handful of English language ones such as BBC News and CNN.

Wi-fi was available in the room, but a small fee was charged (about €2-3 an hour if memory serves correct). You can purchase passwords from reception and you can buy time in hourly instalments. One slightly annoying thing was that there was nowhere to keep track of how much time you'd used. If you used 30 minutes one day, when you logged on the following day there would be nowhere showing that you had 30 minutes remaining. Furthermore, there was no warning that time was about to run out, so it was easy to lose connection while in the middle of doing something. The connection was fast and reliable for the most part.

The en-suite bathroom was clean and modern, with a bathtub and a power shower.

Clean towels, a readily replenished selection of toiletries and a hairdryer were all provided.

We had a great view from our window over the rooftops of northern Lisbon and could regularly see planes coming in to land at nearby Lisbon airport. Despite being on the flight path of incoming flights, we were never disturbed by any noise.

Breakfast

The breakfast buffet included in the room rate was excellent.

The choice included cereals (cornflakes, branflakes and coco-pops), yoghurts (various fruit flavours and natural), cold meats, sliced cheeses, pastries (pain au chocolat, apple puffs...), croissants, an extensive selection of breads, fresh fruit (orange, pineapple, melon...), a selection of spreads (jams, marmalades, honey...), scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, grilled tomatoes and grilled courgettes.

The choice varied slightly each day, but not much. The cooked items remained the same, but the choice of fruits, breads, pastries and yoghurts differed slightly from one day to the next.

There were a variety of fruit juices to choose from (orange, pineapple, tropical), a good selection of teas and a couple of coffee machines that prepared a handful of different coffee types; I started each day with a couple of double espressos, but the cappuccino machine always seemed to have a bigger queue than the espresso one!

Despite being fairly spacious, the dining room did get crowded on a couple of occasions and there were queues at the various food stations.

Good value rooms, an excellent breakfast and close to a couple of metro stations. Don't be put off by the seemingly peripheral location; the centre of Lisbon can be reached quickly and cheaply on the blue metro line from nearby Sao Sebastiao station. Recommended!