THIS IS NOT A 5-STAR HOTEL! When my husband and I arrived at the hotel the lobby was deserted. There was no doorman or bellman to help with our luggage. The huge lobby with worn-out furniture was empty. There was no one at the front desk. Behind the front desk was a board that was taped up. Clearly, these were all uncharacteristic of a 5-star hotel. This is a one-star compared to the 5-star and 4-star hotels we stayed at on another Azores island, Sao Miguel. I thought the taxi dropped us off at the wrong hotel. A few minutes later, a lady came behind the front desk. She was not dressed in professional attire like what you normally see in nice hotels. To our disappointment, she confirmed that we were at the right hotel. Our room was not ready, and she asked us to bring our luggage ourselves to the storage room, which was dirty and smelly. My husband and I were disappointed with what we had seen so far and were quite nervous about the condition of our room. The room turned out quite spacious albeit sp**** and dated furniture. We were at least relieved that it was clean and had no smell. However, many things malfunctioned - the A/C, toilet flush, coffee machine. We complained about the AC to the front desk. He was not surprised as he said it was a usual occurrence. He said the hotel was full and could not transfer us to another room. He promised to send a fan while he schedules a technician to come. Neither came. Thankfully, the temperature cooled down at night. My husband fixed the toilet flush himself. The other things we just let go. What is annoying about the room is that it does not have the typical light switches on the wall. You must use this weird remote control to turn on the lights, which should be easy to use but it was not. It kept turning on the wrong light. The breakfast room was huge with only one staff. It offered a not-too-appetizing breakfast buffet. You have to help yourself with coffee by lining up at 2 coffee machines, both of which kept breaking down. The only staff had to keep resetting them each time. The options for coffee machines included caffe latte and cappuccino, but they all came out as black coffee. I told the only staff that they seemed to forget to put milk in the machine, and she looked at me as if I was asking too much. The pool area looks very run down. It boasts of a pool bar but is not in use. There is a bar/restaurant on the top floor with no ambiance and is always almost empty. Too bad, because it had a lot of potential with its spaciousness and beautiful view of the marina. Our hiking guide mentioned that he had not met a single happy guest from this hotel. The only saving grace of this hotel is its location. To the front of it is the marina, to the left is the historic fort and the town is just a few minutes' walk away. Outside of this hotel, all of our experience in Terceira was 5-star.
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