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Going here next month on the intern points rate 🙂
Anyone been recently who can advise on things to do nearby? We are hiring a car at Porto Airport so can drive around. Are there any quintas nearby worth a look? Obviously if we are wine tasting would prefer not to drive so public transport it will be….
I am IHG spire, any benefits here or should I get ambassador for the trip?You may struggle for public transport as it’s quite remote. Plenty of Quinta’s nearby. It’s worth picking up a few bottles as the resort is expensive.
Spire benefits are outstanding – free breakfast and also 2 free 50 minute massages. Book the massage slots in advance as they fill up. The massage was excellent.
Half board worth looking into. The “clandestine entrecote” steak is one of the best I’ve ever eaten. I had it twice it was so good. Despite when they may tell you, all restaurants are included including the BBQ tasting menu and all dishes including the 50 euro steaks.
– Negotiate HB rate and book your spa treatments before you arrive through GEMs (Guest Experience managers).
– Don’t forget the free tea pot and cake from 11am till late afternoon.
– The outdoor pool will be closed, so you can’t enoy that, but indoor pool is equally stunning.
– Make sure to open the windows every morning to breathe in the most loveliest fresh air and smell of vineyards
– You can request to have breakfast in the suite or outdoors if the weather is nice.
– You need to ask them to light the outdoor fireplace. Suggest you ask them before dinner. It’s great place to enjoy post-dinner/night cap
– We also did a picnic by the river on their grounds. £120 excluding drinks for both of us. It was really great way to spend the afternoon
– Download the Six Senses app and put your reservation number. The app will show your what free and paid activities are available – so you can then contact GEM to book in advanceQuinta Pacheca is 10-minutes minutes drive, highly recommend! They also do a tour with tastings. There are also couple of other very nice ones.
On the way there stop in Amarante for an hour or two, it’s a lovely city with a nice bridge and river. There is a cake shop with a view of river/bridge on the other side from the car park. Make sure you do the scenic route to Six Senses for the last 45 minutes.
On the way back could visit Lamego. Nice city for a quick stroll and cheap food/drinks.
Regarding transport – it’s going to be difficult, but you can organise a taxi/transport via GEMs to nearby quintas at a cost. When we stay in Douro, we always just buy wine in quintas and then drink on a terrace in our room. There are many other lovely quintas with accommodation just as good as SSDV.
- This reply was modified 55 years, 4 months ago by .
Thanks BP and meta, some fab advice. We are on the 3.40pm BA flight to Porto so will be dark on our way to SSDV so no stopping off on the way 🙁
Would like to have a drive & maybe a river cruise mid stay as we are there for 5 days and OH will go stir crazy on what he’s calling a “boring” trip. Did either of you go to Pinhao? Or travel a bit from SSDV? ThanksI have done Pinhao on a previous trip and also Regua. Both lovely. Boat trip is a must, Pinhao train station with azulejos tiles. There is also a museum in Regua. You can do Lamego for half a day, it’s only 20-25 minutes from SSDV.
- This reply was modified 55 years, 4 months ago by .
Going here next month on the intern points rate 🙂
What’s the intern points rate? Sounds like something I need to know about!
Thanks meta, sounds like I’ll be going to Regua & Pinhao 🙂
t0m, a while back was bookable on points 🙂Going here next month on the intern points rate 🙂
What’s the intern points rate? Sounds like something I need to know about!
They were trialling the booking system to accept IHG points (which you still can’t do) and opened up all the suites for the standard room rate. I was booked in myself – in fact we had the top two suites – but it got culled when I got covid.
Really enjoyed our trip. Wish I could be back there now. Enjoy!!
Yes, it was wide open till the end of the booking period at the time so that’s why people still ask for advice.
Did anyone pay for HB while there? I’m a light eater, one course only, not sure if its worth the upgrade for me….EUR55 pppn
I did, but I had a rate of 35 euros per night as breakfast is included for Spires (and Plats I believe), so I negotiated hard. I also booked a picnic which was 170 euros total with wine for 2, so I think that pushed them over to give me a reduced HB rate. Everything is included in that rate, incl. steaks at 60+ euros.
If you’re light eater then maybe no point, especially if you’re salad/pasta type. The prices are high so you’d easily pay more if you want anything other than starters. Also you could drive to have dinner elsewhere. Nearby Pacheca also has a nice restaurant which is cheaper. We paid 80 euros two years ago for two-course dinner with wine.
- This reply was modified 55 years, 4 months ago by .
Thanks @meta, they said HB for non spires is EUR90 so taking breakfast off was still EUR55…seems a bit steep to me as I’ll probably only eat a salad lol. At EUR35 I’d probably bite though…
We will have a car but would probably prefer to eat on site most nights. Think I’ll take my chances without HB, doubt we will spend more than EUR110 per night on food alone and leaves us the option to venture out too 🙂We will have been among the final few to have enjoyed room 554, the Vineyard Garden Suite, using last May’s 90,000-point mistake rate. A night at the Casa da Calçada in Amarante (highly recommended, especially if you can get room 407 with its large roof terrace overlooking the river) followed by a night at the Six Senses was the perfect way to spend the Bank Holiday weekend, especially as the weather was so much nicer in the Douro Valley than back home. The outdoor pool was still a little bracing, but fine once you were in. The £66 return economy flights on TAP weren’t too bad either.
Meta’s tips above are well made, especially the free tea and delicious homemade cake that you help yourself to just outside the Lounge Bar. The cake is not replenished though. They provide one large cake (about 12-inch diameter) to cut slices from, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.
As vegetarians, we found the dinner menu a bit uninspiring and limited, so had pasta from the bar menu. Half board definitely would not have been worth it for us. Breakfast however was excellent, and all but a couple of options were veggie.
The Vineyard Garden Suite was stunning, provided you are pre-prepared, as we were, that rooms in this wing come without river views. It’s huge and very comfortable. Even though one of the two roof-top suites is located directly above, a plant-adorned canopy over the whole length of the living room ensures that the paved area of the terrace is not overlooked. (Only your lawn further out is visible.) Within the paved area are a dining table with four chairs, sofa seating on three sides of an outdoor fireplace, two sun-loungers with one umbrella, and the 3m-by-2m pool. The pool has a few jets, but they operate at a very low pressure. Two overhead spouts of water can also be activated.
We arrived to the mildly upsetting sight of a newly dead bird on our patio: apparently this is a very common occurrence. Because the living room has two walls of floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall glass, the birds see a perfect reflection of the sky and fly headlong into the glass,
A complimentary 40cl bottle of port and four chocolate truffles had been left for us. Diamond Ambassador status meant that breakfast was included, as was a 50-minute full-body massage each, which we had simultaneously in the same treatment room. (I’d forgotten to pre-book this, but getting a suitable time was not an issue.)
Service was informal, friendly and very good. If you want Four Seasons standards, you will be disappointed, but it exceeded what many five-star establishments offer.
A request for a 2pm late check-out was granted without resistance.
There are several daily activities, around half of which are complimentary. We enjoyed two freee ones: a 35-minute workshop on fermented drinks, which was an education, and a 60-minute forest walk, that turned out to be 90 minutes as Olivia the guide was so enthusiastic. We discovered at check-out that there is a resort map available on request. (They do not volunteer this to save paper, apparently.) Without Olivia’s walk, and without advance sight of the map, we would have missed out on many of the on-site features, such as the secret tunnel, the “nests” (i.e. places to sit) at various viewpoints, the tea house ruins, the obelisk and the two artificial “lakes”.
The Lounge Bar has a pool table, a chess/backgammon table and a good selection of board games. There is also a paddle court behind the activities hut that we didn’t try. Note that access to the outdoor pool area is via four flights of outdoor steps down from the third floor. Those of limited mobility will struggle here.
Aqua, the resident rescue dog, wanders around the grounds with a completely nonchalant air, which seemed fitting. If you stroke her or tickle her belly, she is far too cool to let you know that she’s enjoying it. She’ll just close her eyes and drift away blissfully dreaming doggie dreams. She’s a very calming presence.
There was a little daytime noise from construction work that is ongoing in the private villas the other side of the outdoor pool and herb garden. These villas are planned to re-open in June, but, given how they looked, I would expect that date to slip.
At the right price, I would return, even if the lowest category room were all that I could afford, provided it is a woodland, river or vineyard view. The only rooms to avoid are the courtyard ones. These have no scenic view at all, and the courtyard terrace outside your room is also a public area, and guests wandering past can look straight in.
I did have a few gripes but all were minor or trivial:
– The hotel’s “sustainability” gimmick appears to be no more than marketing, since there were many examples of waste, such as the outdoor fireplace, and outdoor heaters which were even lit when no-one was around;
– The in-room “slippers” are actually flip-flops, provided in lieu of the usual fluffy slippers so that they can be re-used, but they are uncomfortable and difficult to walk around in without falling off;
– The projection tv in the room required no less than four remote controls and a laminated instruction sheet to use;
– The room had a blu-ray player, but, if the hotel had any films to borrow, we weren’t told;
– The iPad controlling the room features was frequently unresponsive: I never managed to get it to turn on the Do-Not-Disturb sign, and there was no alternative means of doing that;
– Apart from the bedside lamps, no lighting had individual controls, and trying to work out via various wall switches or the iPad how to turn on/off a specific light was needlessly complex.- This reply was modified 55 years, 4 months ago by .
I was there from Thursday – Yesterday, I did wonder if any other HfP’ers would also be there but didn’t dare ask!
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