Hotel Real Palacio

General spaces within the hotel, location for Metro and park

Classed as a five-star hotel but its four-star at best. While the hotel is indeed clean, tidy with nice spaces and in a good location for the Metro, the room we were allocated (room 135) was very, very small. The bathroom was nearly as big as the actual room and was a total waste of space which would have been far better utilised as more space in the room. The space down each side of the bed was around 10 inches either side. At the end of the bed was a silly little round table and a single chair which we ended up putting in the bathroom to give us more space to move around the room. Also at the end of the bed was a lamp with a large shade which I walked into every time I got out of bed. The curtains in the room (3 separate layers) were 6 inches too long, dragging on the floor and a total trip hazard since they were on the floor next to the bed. The curtain rods did not close the curtains properly which meant much tugging and pulling trying to close them. Opening them was just as difficult since the heavy layers did not slide well at all on the tracks. The breakfast hot food was very disappointing, overly salty and greasy. The rest of the items were the same every day. The only saving grace was the fruit which was very good. Coffee and tea were serviced via two machines that you had to work yourself. One of them kept failing resulting in long queues just to get a hot drink. Hardly five-star service. The aircon in our room was not anywhere near cold enough. Set at the lowest temperature, it still did not effectively cool our tiny room. While in general, the staff were ok, the reception staff were grumpy at best. I got the feeling they were very glad it was near the end of the season. Overall disappointed. Nothing about this place says 5-star. There are many better hotels in Lisbon.