What a wonderful holiday we had at Casa Sabrina! The accommodation was excellent and the overall service provided by Leo and her lovely cleaning lady was second to none.
Firstly, the accommodation. The reviews are absolutely right when they say that the photos don't do it justice. The house is bright and airy and SPOTLESSLY CLEAN! I'm a bit of a clean freak but it surpassed even my expectations. We were very pleasantly surprised to find that the cleaning lady visited us twice during our stay to change towels and bed-linen, which is very unusual in a private rental like this. She even did a full clean on both occasions: windows, bathrooms, kitchen - the lot!
The pool area was perfect and with the addition of the shaded porch, table tennis and darts board, there was plenty to occupy all of us. The children made plenty of use of the massive Smart TV in the very comfortable living room watching DVDs or Netflix, or making use of the Wifi, which was unexpectedly speedy.
The whole place was fully equipped - from serving platters, glasses for all occasions, cake baking equipment, paella dishes and not one but two different types of coffee machines; I defy anyone to need any kind of appliance or kitchen utensil that wasn't available.
As a host, Leonor was an absolute angel! She took us to the supermarket on arrival - even helping us navigate the checkout and packing our bags for us, and she recommended a wonderful taxi driver in Lourdes who took us wherever we wanted to go for the duration of our stay for very reasonable rates.
The location is also excellent. 10 Euros in Lourdes' van into the old town (you could probably walk in about half an hour but we didn't bother to try it) and a five minute walk from the strip. The next road to the house is quite busy and we ate at several restaurants which proved to be excellent. The café bar at the end of the road, Paulo's, Eduardo's - all excellent, and the boys made use of the sports bar (Bar33) for football watching with the kids. The beach was a good 15 minute walk but the bars and restaurants were excellent. There are a couple of local beaches to choose from but the one at the bottom of the strip was by far the nicest and we made several visits there.
Overall, a wonderful holiday with an exceptional host and a beautifully authentic Portuguese house. Thank you Leo - we had a blast!