Imani Country House

We choose to stay here after receiving a recommendation, we were advised that the welcome is very warm with a welcome drink. Reception was indeed very friendly, no welcome drink was offered. The room is large and decorated in a special design way, and so is the bathroom, which is very unpractical. A stand alone sink with no area to put down your toothbrush or hairdryer. The shower is very large, but you have to put shampoo bottles and soap on the floor, no rack anywhere. And in a hotel pretending to be luxurious, the bathroom carpet was Ikea. If you wish to have dinner, choice must be made before 6.00 PM, which I can appreciate in a hotel with only 7 rooms. But, upon arrival, you must also decide what you want to eat for breakfast. One of the items we selected was local cheese, and then at breakfast it was not there because they were out of local cheese ! On our first day, the restroom in the restaurant had paper on the floor, and 3 days later the same paper was still on the floor. I also purposely left a candy wrapper on the floor in my room, and sure enough, it was never removed. We had a bottle of wine on our terrace and left the wine cooler on our (accessible) terrace table, and it was not removed. When booking the room on the website, it mentions Hermès amenities. The amenities in the room were Clarins, not Hermès. Nothing wrong with Clarins, but why lie on the website ? The only access to the hotel is via a 2 mile long dirt road. It was very difficult with our sports car. This should be mentioned on the hotel's website. Upon check in, we were asked to pay the room. They refused to take American Express. Upon check out when paying the extras, another person at the reception desk took American Express without a problem. This hotel is not at all what it pretends to be. No class at all, despite its potential. The owner of this hotel should not be in the hospitality business, he has no idea how to run a hotel and make guests feel at home. It is very obvious for hotel guests that there is not enough staff and they all have too many jobs to do at the same time. Having said this, the hotel staff are all, without exception, very friendly and welcome.

We stayed at the Imani Country House for 2 nights and it was one of the best places we've ever stayed. We did get a bit worried as we drove out of Evora into the countryside and wondered where we would be staying. However, we rounded the corner and came to the gate of the inn and we knew that this would be something special. The Country House is set about 15 minutes out of Evora and is a lovely respite from the city. The Country House sits on many private acres and is completely secluded and gorgeous. The pool itself is worthy of a stay. Other reviewers mentioned that they thought the pool was cold but we thought it was a perfect temperature for a late summer afternoon. Our room was magnificent--beautifully decorated and overlooking the pool and olive gardens. You can take long walks around the property and spend time petting the resident donkey, who is very sweet. The restaurant serves incredible meals and I would agree that the food we had there was some of the best we had in Portugal. Vera is a lovely manager and made sure we had everything we needed--she even fixed us a lovely lunch when we showed up mid-afternoon. There is a wonderful outdoor bar/seating area that is gorgeous. It was a 30 minute walk to the monoliths and well worth the walk. We didn't have a car during our stay but also walked into the local village, Guadalupe, and enjoyed some pastries. Overall, this is an outstanding place to stay in Portugal and we will be back next year!