Independente Bica — Hotel in Lisbon

We booked this hotel to end our 2 week journey through Europe. We traveled with our 2 young children (9 and 11). I unknowingly reserved the penthouse suite, which was extremely awesome. We essentially had the entire top floor to ourselves, aside from staff entering very early in the morning (quietly) to prepare continental breakfast (there is a good size kitchen up there), in addition to couches, a giant meeting table, and foosball. We really just wanted a hotel that was relatively close to things and had a separate area for our kids. They had their own room a few steps from ours. ||The hotel is very nice, clean, and staff were very friendly.||We arrived Friday July 5th, the night Portugal was playing (and lost to) France in the Euro Cup. The city was BUSY. We walked around the corner to Donatello to have pizza and watch the game. We received several tickets for complimentary welcome drinks at the hotel which we never had a chance to use. ||We got back late to the hotel from dinner (after 1030) and were exhausted so we went to bed. Or tried to. The street the hotel is on (Rua de São Paulo) is VERY ROWDY and busy. There are dozens of bars and restaurants near the hotel, and even though I was in a huge Room at the back of the hotel with a somewhat water view, I could hear people yelling, screaming, singing, and making noise until 630 AM, when the police finally showed up to shut down the activity. ||I asked the front desk about the noise the next morning and learned this is not uncommon for the area. ||We had breakfast included in our stay, but beware; you are only allowed one cooked item (6 items total on menu)per guest. So if you want an omelette with bacon on the side, that is prohibited, because it is 2 items. My kids ate from the continental area of the breakfast (cereal, yogurt, fruit, muffins) so they “ordered” bacon and I had omelette with potatoes (they were really just potato chips, but tasty. I’m going to through some lays on top of the next omelette I make because it was a great idea). ||Staff was very friendly and the food was good. I don’t need a big royal breakfast, so we adapted. ||The next night, the partying went until 430 AM. I’m talking constant yelling and bottles crashing into bins. ||Our last full day was Sunday. We went to the beach in Cascais. We returned late afternoon and our rooms were never made. I called and asked, and was told they should have been. This was extremely disappointing. How do you forget to make rooms on an entire floor? There are only 2 on the 4th floor. ||We left Monday morning, the partying abruptly ended at about 5 AM Monday, just as the sun was rising. By now I feel I could identify the same guy all three nights by his drunken screaming. ||In short, if you’re looking for peace and quiet at night, BEWARE. The hotel is relatively new and has a very cool pink theme with great artwork and cool books. I would consider staying my next visit I may want to explore other parts of the city. ||I gave it 3 stars for the weird breakfast policy and the poor room service treatment I received. I know they can’t help the noise, but it...

We stayed at this hotel during late summer and the location was amazing. We had a walking distance to all the restaurants and stores we wanted to check off of our list. We really enjoyed our stay.

But every hotel has room for improvements: breakfast was included but it was quite hard for us to get a decent vegan breakfast. I emailed 2 weeks before and they explained that they could make porridge for us (the breakfast is not a buffet, it’s a fixed menu). But when the morning came they apologized and said that they didn’t have the chef in place to make it but promised it’ll be done for the breakfast the morning after. They did not. If we knew the case, we would definitely not have ordered the breakfast when booking. The cleaner we had the first day forgot a lot of things, they forgot to refill toilet paper, refill soap and dirty cups etc. The bathroom had no space for storage, so there was only one roll of 1-ply toiletpaper at a time. So we ended up having to ask the front desk for rolls every other day. There should be space for 1-2 extra rolls in the bathroom. The minmalistic and functional japanese inspired style in the rooms are great. But our room had no space for hanging up shirts, resulting in wrinkly clothes. And no iron to fix it either. We had to ask the front desk a couple of times for extra water. I recommend having 2 bottles of water in the rooms instead of just 1, since it’s a room for 2 people and it was complementary. The window had no proper sealing inbetween and we had a school outside, so it was quite noisy. Not a big deal, but it felt quite odd having a front desk next to the restaurant desk. Standing there with luggage during meal time results in standing in the way of the...

We loved our stay at Independente Bica. Our arrival was efficient, the lady at the front desk was SO nice to us (I’m so sorry I don’t remember your name!) she sat at a table with us and showed us all the must visit spots on the map. I’m sure we sat there for about 10 minutes. Our room wasn’t ready yet and when we came back all of our luggages were waiting for us in our room. Lovely room, super comfortable, nice big windows. Even if they were parties all around the neighborhood, we could barely hear anything, the soundproofing was good. The breakfast is very tasty, service as well. We were leaving early one morning and they even prepared to-go bags for us (very generous portions I must add!). The location is amazing, the water pressure is also very good. If I had a few suggestions to make it 10/10 instead of 9.9/10 : better wifi (scrolling on social medias was not smooth), more than one water bottle in the room (it get’s hot Lisbon for people from Canada!) and maybe adding a seating spot in the rooms. The female staffers were the nicest, the rooms were always more than clean, we really enjoyed our 7 nights stay there. If we were to go back to Lisbon, this place right there is where...