This is about our holidays in Salvador. As I posted before, we spent part of our Summer holidays including New Year’s day in Salvador, Bahia. Salvador is a wonderful city, during our stay the sun was glorious and the people were very nice. Our only complaint about this trip was the hotel which is classified as 5 stars, and sincerely, we don’t know how.
We don’t know where they got those 5 stars and all those very good reviews all over the internet.
Our family occupied two apartments on the 5th and 6th floors and both were completely filthy, the carpets both inside and outside the rooms were full of stains, the windows were covered with dirt and the daily room cleaning was not satisfactory, we suspected the swimming pool was not cleaned properly either.
In the restaurant, the plates, glasses, knives and forks were also dirty. The food was ok but nothing special although the price was exorbitant. By the way, for a place where the services and the wages are significantly less than European rates, we were still paying the same price we pay for a can of soft drink in a 5 stars hotel in Europe.
Because I’m from Sao Paulo city, every year, we go for a Christmas brunch served by the chef Patrick Ferry in the Sofitel Hotel, Sao Paulo, which is exceptionally good, even being pricey it costs half of the amount we paid for the New Year’s day dinner with ordinary food in the Pestana Hotel Bahia restaurant.
In our opinion, there are only two reasons this place qualifies for 5 stars, the first is the view which is stunning and the second is the friendliness of staff (bearing in mind that friendliness is a strong characteristic of people from Bahia, Brazil).
We decided to stay in the Pestana Bahia Hotel because I was a guest in this same place in 1991 and 1994 when it belonged to Le Meridien chain and on those occasions my stay was simply perfect, it is a pity that after being bought by this other Portuguese chain the place has gone down hill.