We were very impressed with the location of the hotel, as well as the roof top swimming pool.
THIS HOTEL HAS NO SEA VIEW ROOMS IT IS ONLY POSSABLE TO SEE THE SEA IF ONE LEANS OUT OVER THE BALCONLY AND LOOKS TO THE LEFT

PROBLEM 1/. The Sol e Praia are only a Residential establishment NOT a Hotel, so there is no where to eat except a breakfast room, at night we had to find 1 of 3 restraunts with only a poor photocopy of a map indicating the location of the eating establishments, we had booked and paid for half board

PROBLEM 2/. the Sol e Praia is not on the map so one has to follow directions given in broken English to get onto the map.

PROBLEM 3/. After retuning to the Sol e Praia we went to the bar, we were alone, the bar has more pillars than an underground car park, and there is only 1 bar man who is NOT a waiter and there were no drinks trays available - so two trips to the bar. The bar T.V. show Spanish, German, Portuguise as well as Sky News and BBC World News. No Euro Sport.

PROBLEM 4/. At approx midnight the bar closes, we had been joined by 6 fellow trravellers who had booked in at 11pm with nothing to eat, as it was Sunday and all the local restraunts (the 3) had closed at 11pm. (the bar also closes between 9pm/10pm so the bar man can have his dinner).

PROBLEM 5/. We were in room 420 when we went to our room the bed was soaking wet, with water dripping through the ceiling.
"We have no spare rooms, we are full" was the responce and there is only the night reception man on duty after midnight. Atapprox 2am the night man found us spare mattresses and we slept on the floor of the balcony.

Problem 6/. It appears that there is only 1 maintainance man and Monday is one of his days off, after 2pm we were given another room with a view of heating panels for a solor heating system.

PROBLEM 7/. On our floor none of the fire doors closed without scraping the tiled foor, there is no soft furnishings on any of the corridors so every sound echoes also the corridor, the stairs are open wooden polished planks and are very hard so they also sound trhough out the hotel corridors, in attempting to close out the noise is how I found out the fire doors would not close.

PROBLEM 8/. We were awoken on the Wednesday morning by the screams of 'Fire, Fire' it turned out to be a drunken nutter, but it conversation with the reception staff next day, on my question as to why it was a NONE SMOKING hotel, yet there were signs asking people not to smoke in bed. "clints do smoke in their rooms that is why we turn off the fire alarm, it used to keep going off all the time". We checked out within the hour.

We found the hotel on the web. Having stayed in and around the Algarve for the last 2 years - looking for a place for our children to buy. The hotel is basic, in that the Breakfast is as in all of Europe, with the most amazing toaster I have ever seen, just a 1 sided grill. The only fruit on offer at breakfast was tinned.

As with most hotels of this standard, one must not expect the Ritz. The lady (chambermaid) on the 4th floor was beyond reproach and was very diligent in her work.
I understand that the Bathrooms were being 'done over' during the winter closure. Over the winter closure the painting should be gone over, by a painter, not the last person who did it, as there are paint smears everywhere. and when last painted no masking tape was used, that is beyond dispute.

The roof top pool is good, but the showers did not work, nor was the pool bar ever open during the 3 weeks we stayed.

IWe have never found a bar in any hotel that closed for an hour so the barman could have his dinner, ( there wer e two barmen who seemed to work the 7 days between them, one called George is very attnetive the other Zac is lazy and it was all he could do to get off his butt and serve, DO NOT expect table service, it will not happen, they seem to be VERY short of staff. On this point all the staff spoke English to a very fine degree.

All in all if I were to visit Lagos again I would stay at this Hotel, but I would be careful to whom I recommended it to

We were on a camping tour in Portugal and booked a couple of nights in this hotel for some comfort. When we arrived, the hotel receptionists checked in all portuguese holiday makers before us, even though we arrived at least an hour before one couple, then they told us our room wasn't ready, so we waited another 2 hours. Receptionist was not friendly. When we finally got into our room it was like a box that the bed filled and it was on the ground floor facing a car park, which was not great for secutity for us because the door from the veranda was beat. The room itself needed alot more than a lick of paint! 2 worst nights in a hotel ever. sleeping in a tent is better than this hotel.

Just returned from a weeks stay at this hotel.The staff were friendly but that did not compensate for the shabby conditions of the rooms.We had two rooms in the dungeon,sorry the basement,both rooms had problems such as yellow/brown water -lights,doorlocks,TV,telephone,radio all either missing or not working.After complaining we were offered other rooms on the second floor but on inspection they were only marginally better and the terrace was a shared facility(by that I mean anyone in the hotel had access).The breakfasts were "ok" but on two mornings they ran out of cereals and fruit juice-not what one expects from a so called three star hotel!There also appeared to be a shortage of tables even though the hotel was nowhere near full.So why did we stay for the pre- booked seven days-we enjoyed brilliant weather and were out of this Portugese Falty Towers most of the time.You have been warned!!