What is in the house,
and what to bring.
About a week before the trip, whoever organised it sits down to write the group a packing message and realises they do not know whether there are towels. This is the whole answer, taken from the questions groups have actually sent us, so you can paste it into the group chat and get on with your day.
Already here. Do not pack these.
- Bed linen and bath towels. Every bed we make up for your group has its linen on and two bath towels with it. Nobody needs to bring a towel for the shower.
- A Nespresso machine and a French press. Groups ask this just before the first supermarket run, so: Nespresso. Buy pods on the first shop, or ground coffee for the press.
- Two washing machines and two dryers, with detergent. Groups regularly find one set, message us, and then find the other. There are two.
- Hairdryers and an iron.
- A white-noise machine in every bedroom, and ear plugs by the beds. We would rather explain this than have you wonder. The street is semi-rural, the neighbours keep roosters and dogs, and they do not observe check-out times. The machines and the ear plugs are our answer to that.
- Two kitchens, two ovens, two dishwashers.
- The WiFi details, printed at the top of the note in the welcome basket in the kitchen. Groups lose that note during the first grocery unload often enough that the details are in your arrival message as well.
Bring these, or buy them on the first shop
- A beach towel each. The house keeps about ten blue towels for the pool and the beach, and those are the only ones that leave the building — the white ones stain and stay indoors. The blue ones also stay behind on your last morning, when they are washed for the next group. Ten is plenty for a family and not enough for a group of twenty, so tell everyone to pack their own.
- Toilet paper, beyond the starter rolls. Each bathroom starts with about four rolls. Stays here run from a few nights to over a week and groups vary enormously in size, so we stock a start rather than a supply. Put it on the first shopping list and nobody has to think about it again.
- Coffee pods, as above.
- Worth knowing before you pack: there are no speakers. The house does not provide any, and that is deliberate. Why, and what it means for a celebration →
Shopping for a group
If we are running your week — a chef in the house, meals arranged — most of this section is somebody else’s job and you can skip it. It is for groups who have taken the house on its own and are feeding themselves.
The nearest supermarket is a Lidl, about three minutes by car. A Pingo Doce is about five minutes away and there is an Aldi within a short drive. For a first-evening shop with a hire car, any of them will do.
For delivery, match the service to the size of the order. Glovo is right for something small and urgent — it has reached the house within minutes. It is the wrong tool for the week’s shop: one group built a large basket on it and the order simply dropped. For the big shop, use a supermarket’s own online delivery — Auchan or Continente. Auchan works on booked delivery slots and its site is in Portuguese only, both worth knowing before you start.
Put the postcode on every order. There is another address in the Lisbon area with the same street name and number as ours, and the postcode is the only thing that tells them apart. It has sent drivers to the wrong house. We give you the full address, postcode first, with your arrival details. More on the address trap →
Recycling, rubbish and tap water
There is no recycling collection on this street. The area is newly developing and the council has not delivered the bins yet. The nearest recycling point is roughly half a kilometre away, which in practice means a car. Put bottles and cans in the general bin, or leave them at the house and we will take them. We know how that sounds to a group that sorts its rubbish at home. It is the honest position.
Take the rubbish down as you go, not only on the last morning. The bin is at the end of the street. The reason is pests: the house has none, and regular trips to the bin are how we keep it that way.
The tap water is safe to drink. Run the tap for a few seconds first. You do not need to carry bottled water up the drive unless you prefer it.
If the power goes off
The house has the largest electricity supply a Portuguese home can have. A full group can still trip it by running the air conditioning or heating in every room with an oven and a dishwasher going at once. Usually nothing is broken. Reset the switch at the breaker panel, which we point out in your arrival message, and stagger the big appliances. If it keeps tripping, message us and we send an electrician.
The food you did not finish
Groups over-buy. On the last morning there is often unopened beer, wine, water, ice cream and fresh fruit that nobody wants to put in a bin. More than a dozen groups have written to ask, usually apologising, whether they can leave it.
Yes. Leave it. It goes to the cleaning team, who have brought their own containers for it before now. You do not need to ask, and you do not need to eat four tubs of ice cream at nine in the morning.
- Provided: bed linen, bath towels, hairdryers, an iron, laundry detergent.
- Bring: your own beach towel.
- Coffee: Nespresso machine and a French press. Buy pods.
- First shop: toilet paper, pods, breakfast. Lidl is about three minutes by car.
- Delivery: Auchan or Continente for the big shop, Glovo for small things. Always include the postcode.
- Tap water is fine to drink.
- No recycling collection on the street. No speakers in the house.
- Leftover food: leave it for the cleaning team.
If the shopping list is the part of the trip you are dreading, there is a version of the week where you never write one. How feeding a group works when a chef does it →