Sheraton Porto Hotel & Spa
My measure of a hotel is to be had in how comfortable it makes my home away from home experience. Some travelers view hotels as simply a bed to fall into at the end of the day... call me needy, but I have a few more boxes I need to tick. Given that I travel frequently on business, and these business trips typically involve not only long days, but regularly working into the early hours of the morning, I typically end up spending quite a bit of time ensconced within the confines of my hotel room, bathed in the neon glow of my computer screen. So, things that top my list of hotel needs are: plenty of natural light within my room, a room that is of a suitable size so as not to feel cramped and large enough to roll out a yoga mat on the floor, a nice bathroom, gym facilities, a wifi connection, and a room service menu. All these conditions must be met for me to even consider staying. I can take or leave the coolness factor - I'll opt for natural daylight and a large well appointed room over hipsters and electronic grooves in the lobby any day. The Sheraton Porto Hotel & Spa rates highly in all these categories (and pretty low in the hipster one).
When walking into the lobby (should it happen to be during the day), the first thing that will strike you is the feeling of bright airiness. Tall sweeping ceilings framed by a magnificent glass wall facing the street that stretches impossibly high, allows the light of the day of bathe the lobby. The lobby is clean, contemporary, uncluttered, and on this particular trip, is also playing host to a 1953 Corvette (hipster points building). Reception is to your left, with a bank of elevators in the middle of the open room, wrapped in glass and steel, gliding silently like a cooler version of Charlie's Great Glass Elevator. The hotel plays host to guests of all demographics: primped ladies with expensive handbags merge seamlessly with large families containing well-dressed kids, and business travelers wearing their identifying dark suits and briefcases.
The Club Room is quite large and laid out in shades of white, cream and rich brown, with floor to ceiling windows at one end, and a wall of dark wood paneling sitting in perfect contrast against the tall padded leather headboard directly across from it. The overall feeling is modern, yet warm. Picture a classy gentleman's smoking room. A chocolate leather armchair with matching footrest sits in the corner, framed by a floor lamp and a glass side table. The work desk is impressively large for a hotel room, with plenty of room to spread your files, papers and pajamas on. However, the absolute best thing about the Sheraton Porto rooms are the bathrooms. I could wax poetic for paragraphs about the bathrooms alone, as they are unique in my hotel experience. The wall that divides the bathroom from the main room is entirely glass, floor to ceiling, with tidy venetian blinds that are controlled by the touch of a button (find two White Stripes references). The remaining walls of the bathroom are frosted glass - the end result being a bathroom that is large and bright. When you are thousands of miles from home, away from the things that you know and love, there is nothing quite like a gorgeous bathroom to make it all feel more tolerable. Especially if that bathroom comes with an oversize soaker tub and independent frosted glass walled shower with an massive rain shower head (and deliciously perfect heat and water pressure). Hats off to the designers who thought of this bathroom. They certainly got it right, and I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't influenced by this bathroom when I recently remodeled my own.
So... The rooms: comfy. The bathrooms: ecstatic. The pillows: fluffy. The option for natural daylight in your room: perfect. And the ability to ring up service at 3am for a relatively healthy meal: priceless. That's one thing that the Sheraton Porto does really well... caters to guests that are interested in health and wellness. In the room conveniently placed upon the desk, where you will first see it as you are throwing down your passport and emptying your pockets after a long flight, is a small square card, thoughtfully laying out their recommended 10k jogging route. Now that is service. The first page of the room service menu is a pull out flyer with a completely separate 'healthy options' menu... blueberry granola, steamed veg and salmon, and yes, soy milk for your espresso if you need it. When on extended business trips, contrary to popular belief, eating out every single night at fabulous restaurants gets old. I know... shocking. Sometimes you just want to wrap yourself up in the provided fluffy white robes, lay low, and order up some room service. So, having a great menu, with healthy and varied options is not only a life saver from too many rich and alcohol fueled meals, but for me, can be the deciding factor on whether I will return to a hotel or not. Now, we're not talking a five star gastronomic experience - let's not get too excited here. But, let it be said, that I have yet to be disappointed with something that I ordered from the menu.
Their gym facilities are some of the best I've seen. To put that statement into perspective, this traveler has sampled hotels in Mexico, Poland, Peru, Ecuador, England, France, Italy, Germany, Canada, the US and China. Having been in hotels where the gym consists of one tiny claustrophobic basement room with a broken treadmill, the gym room at the Sheraton Porto is luxuriously large: approximately 400 sq ft, well-lit and mirrored, and filled with treadmills, arc trainers, stationary bikes, rowing machines, free weights, exercise balls, resistance bands, and a very complete collection of top of the line free standing machines (instead of those horrible all-in-one towers that one frequently runs across). All this and a dedicated stretching area. The gym at the Sheraton is my sanctuary and I have happily spent hours there, getting my sweat on, and recalibrating. After all that, you can swim in their beautiful indoor 70m pool. And did I mention they have a spa? And a beauty salon? I haven't used the spa services, preferring to work out my jet lag by way of jump squats and pushups, but the spa services appear to be very popular, if I am to judge by the nearly constant stream of diverse bath-robed spa attendees flowing past the gym in the afternoon.
All in all, the Sheraton Porto is probably one of the most welcoming hotels I've had the pleasure of staying at. So much so, that I'm willing to overlook the costly internet (9 euro per day, or 15 for two days) and over priced (yet very complete, with it's own omelette station) breakfast buffet. The service is impeccable, the food is quite good, the rooms are bright and supremely comfortable, and on top of that, you have a fantastic gym, a luxurious spa, and a pool, in a hotel that is easy to get to and very centrally located (with a grocery store a few blocks away). Honestly, I don't know what more you could ask for (helicopter service or celebrity turndown perhaps?). It certainly makes being away from my own bed, warmed by two cats and my family, and my familiar and loved surroundings, and working long hours at a job that I love, much more bearable. That, friends, is how this traveler measures the success of a hotel, and the Sheraton Porto wins.
(Silvana Rivadeneira - Civil Writes)