Exe Liberdade — Hotel in Lisbon

This hotel has BROWN water!

We checked into this hotel at 2pm, went to our rooms, and brushed our teeth right away since we just got off an international flight. We noticed the water was BROWN! When we brought the cup down to the receptionist they said this is normal and throughout the whole hotel so refused to give us a new room. They said they had someone looking into it and my only other option was a refund which I would need to send an EMAIL to get! Not only is it hard to find a hotel the night of for but my refund wasn’t even guaranteed and I’d need to wait for an email!!

Only when I continued complaining did they give us a new room. The water was initially ok, so we took the room and finally took our nap. But when we woke up and checked the water again it was a light brown, which is what you see in the image. We went down to the receptionist again and this guy was a little more transparent. He told us it’s maintenance and they’re trying to flush the system and may be a while. By then it was 11pm so we couldn’t move anywhere. We ended up having to go out and buy a bunch of bottled water to shower and brush our teeth with just so we can finally go to bed after our long flight.

Everything the receptionist told me was a lie: first they said this is normal in Portugal (not maintenance), they said they purposely scheduled maintenance during check in to have least impact to customers (terrible decision), they said they were informing people (I saw them check in 6 parties from the time I was complaining about the water and no one was informed), they said their hotel was full so I couldn’t get a new room, they said it would be fixed in an hour. All lies.

Other annoyances in the hotel: they checked us into the wrong room - a smaller room with two twin size beds pushed together when we booked a king bed. We weren’t going to complain because of how slow reception was, but we discovered the king room we booked was significantly bigger when we moved rooms due to the brown water. This leads me to how slow the reception was - I stood in the lobby waiting for an hour for 2 receptionists to check in 2 different parties just so I could get a wifi password. The guests WiFi doesn’t work so make sure you ask them for the staff...

Upon arrival in Lisbon, I was looking for a hotel where I could stay with my cat. I found this hotel on Google maps and to check whether it was really possible to stay with a cat I called the reception to clarify, I received a positive answer and advice to book a room not through Booking as I wanted, but through their website (as of 01/06/2024 on Google The maps indicate that you can bring a cat). I paid for three days through the website and arrived at check-in with a cat in my hands. I was checked in and for the first day everything was fine. the room was good, the breakfast was also good. At lunchtime I went for a walk in the city, but when I returned to the hotel in the evening I discovered that I could not open the door to my room. I went down to the reception and was told that because I checked in with a cat, they blocked my key. To my question why is this so, before booking the hotel, I called to clarify the information and received the answer that the employee did not understand the question. Why they didn’t tell me anything during the check-in, they don’t know either. Why does Google maps indicate that pets are allowed? They answered that this is old information. as a result, they evicted me at night (of course they said that I could stay, but the cat needed to be taken somewhere from the hotel) after one day of living, they refused to return the money to me, arguing that the information was indicated on the website (to find this information you need to be very try because when I try to book a room this information is not there) and in the document that I received during check-in to the room I had...

Eh, well, yes, sure, as someone wrote Exe Liberdade breakfast is indeed passably ok, the hotel's room cleaners are very good, friendly, and breakfast staff polite and helpful though otherwise, to be honest, the entire hotel is really very minimal in terms of service and lacks almost all amenities (no small coffee maker or bottles of water in the very sparse and tiny room, there is no bar or restaurant or room service at all, no garden to sit in or rooftop) so while the balcony (no chairs or table) has light but only a dreary view of an urban construction site, it did sport a set of exposed live electrical wires set on the threshold that shocked my foot like a vibrating needle. Here's the kicker: when I called front desk I was told there was no assistance available on weekend. Still, an offer was made to change rooms,f air enough, but it was now so late at night that I decided to avoid the wire and wait until morning when they could send a repair person and offer an upgrade. Ha. When maintenance finally came next day (on monday), well, all I can say (though not for certain) is that the fellow must have first turned-off the errant current before entering my room in order to prove that nothing was wrong (though I noticed this service person was also very careful not to touch the wires with his fingers, setting bravado aside, and used a current tester that of course registered negative)...ok, so, whatever, no great harm done, just a bit of voltage in the foot, but Eh, honestly, if I were you, well just let me suggest avoiding the Exe Liberdade unless your on a real budget, which makes it passable....