Thomson Holidays - Hotel Reviews of the Hotel And Residence Porto Mare

Writing on 21/04/2013 Anonymous  from East Yorkshire said...

On the whole this is a very nice resort. We had to wait an hour for our room and were not offered a drink, this was a poor first impression. When we got to the room it was a very good size and in excellent condition. We had a bath with an incorrect plug which drained continually, this was fixed within minutes, strange that nobody had reported before. More English TV channels than usual. We ate buffet style for the week we were there, the only comments I would make is that the selection of main courses was poor compared with the vast array of salads, vegetables and sweets. All roast meats were tainted by the amount of garlic used, sad to see whole legs of lamb ruined and I quite like garlic. On the plus side we were hardly ever bothered by vampires during our week at the hotel. The open areas are very well kept and there are fairly exotic plants to look at. No problem with loungers in April. There is no drinks service to the loungers which is a bit odd in a hotel which tries so hard to get guests to visit their timeshare sales, you would think they would try harder to sell drinks. This brings me to the subject of milkshakes. I am one of those strange people that don't always crave alcohol before noon so when wifey asked if I fancied a cold drink by the pool I studied the bar menu and selected a banana milkshake as the cool refreshing libation. I was disappointed when a tiny elongated glass thimble arrived. I took a pull on the straw and nothing happened, just that sound you get when you reach the end of a drink. The thimble was merely full of froth, I was so aghast that I didn't immediately notice the total lack of any flavour! In short I had been charged 4 euros for a thimble full of skimmed milk froth. So, stay away from the poolside bar and you should be ok. The walk into Funchal is fairly easy and in the other direction you can walk for about one and a half hours mostly along the sea front to Camera de Lobos, this is more challenging and pretty steep in places. Madeira probably had the biggest proportion of "senior" visitors of anywhere we have ever been, it is very clean and picturesque.

Review based on a trip in April 2013