Spacious, Relaxing get away with Beautiful View

Guest: Lars (Fort Lauderdale, Florida)
Date of Stay: 07/21/11 Review Submitted: 08/03/11

This spacious apartment in Piedade (just South of Boa Viagem) is a bright, relaxing get away. If you are visiting Recife for a short or long stay, this apartment is the perfect place to stay. I stayed in Bob's apartment for 11 nights and it felt like home from the first day. It is much better than staying at a hotel as you have all of the amenities (tv, phone, wireless internet) and comforts of your own home, but with much more space and privacy than a hotel. As well, there is a parking space in the secured underground parking where you can take the elevator directly up to the 12th floor apartment. This was great as I was able to drive all over Recife; from Olinda to Porto de Galinas with my rental car and alway feel safe pulling into the secured underground parking. After touring the city by foot, bus, car or what have you, the apartment was an amazing stress reliever the moment you open the door to the living room area with the beautiful view of the ocean and the ocean breezes. As mentioned in the other reviews there are grocery stores and a few resturants near by. Also, the Shopping Center Guararapes is located just a few minutes by bus, taxi or car from the apartment with all the luxuries of any mall/shopping center including a movie theatre. I don't know what else I can say other than you can't go wrong staying at Bob and Dalva's apartment while visiting Recife. Highly Recommended!

Recommended for:Adventure seekers, sightseeing, families with young children, romantic getaway, age 55+, families with teenagers, tourists without a car.

Great place to spend the Holidays-continued

Guest: Ray (New Orleans)
Date of Stay: 12/06/10 Review Submitted: 02/03/11

continuation: All Borborema busses stop in front of the Apartment (when waived at) and they drop off just past the LEAO food store on the way back. To get to the city center and the historical district, take the # 61 Piedade/Boa Vista bus. It will go down the beach road to the edge of Boa Viagem and turn off and run parallel to Av. Boa Vaigem until it crosses over in to Downtown Recife. This is also a good bus to take if you want to get to Boa Viagem Beach. If you want to go to the malls, get on any of the busses that show “Shopping Guararapes or Recife”. This is where you want to augment with a taxi to haul all of your purchases back by car. For 15-20 reais the driver will go down into the parking garage at the apartment so you have no need to carry your purchases vary far. If you want to go to Olinda, take the bus # 910/912 Piedade-Rio Doce and get off in Olinda. You need only ask the fare-collector to let you know when to get off. It is pretty obvious though. Take the same bus for the return trip but boarding in the opposite direction. It will pass by the LEAO food store just remember to signal it to stop by pulling the cord. If you want to go to the Zoo, take the # 20 Candeias/Dois Irmaos Bus and ask to get off at the “Parque Zoologico”. This is a nice ride that will also take you past some of the big department stores and the Sams Club on the main road through town. Going home, take the same bus in the opposite direction. You can’t miss the bus stop. After you get oriented, you will find this information makes much more sense and you can expand on other possible destinations. While at the apartment, spoil yourself a little and hire Zenaida for a day. She will clean, do laundry and cook some great local cuisine. Boa Viagem!

Recommended for:Adventure seekers, girls getaway, sightseeing, families with young children, romantic getaway, age 55+, families with teenagers, tourists without a car.

Great place to spend the Holidays.

Guest: Ray (New Orleans)
Date of Stay: 12/06/10 Review Submitted: 02/01/11

My wife and I spent a month at Bob and Dalva’s apartment over Christmas and New Year 2011. I couldn’t agree more with Steve’s and others’ previous comments about how nice the apartment is. By any standards it is huge and by Brasilian standards it is opulent. As for the beaches, you have a choice of 3. Walking ten minutes to the south will put you on Candeias Beach. This is a quiet, local beach with a small fishing boat harbor. At Candeias the tide is not an issue. Here you will find vendors that will offer seats, shade and refreshments. The walking vendors who sell the beach snacks vary by the crowd volume, i.e. low volume crowd means few vendors. Restroom facilities are not available except at the restaurants nearby. Walking about the same distance north will place you on Piedade Beach and here you will find similar services to those on Candeias Beach. Most of Piedade is protected by the coral reef but at high tide, there is very little beach. Also, much of the protected area is in the shade in the afternoon due to the high-rise buildings blocking the sun. If you really want to see the beach action, take the bus down to Boa Viagem and find a place to claim in the sea of humanity that you’ll find there on the weekends. Here you will find vendors selling everything from soup to nuts, quite literally. There are also public restrooms along the stretch of Boa Viagem. Using common sense and discretion, you can enjoy many of the beach offerings including char-grilled cheese, shrimp and oysters. Make sure the shellfish are fresh and that they can pass the “sniff” test. I must disagree with Steve’s remark about the necessity of a car. First of all, Brasilians are the nicest people on the planet on a personal level but they are the most lawless people behind the driver’s wheel of a car or motorcycle. That being said, if you are in Recife on a holiday, you will find that nearly every place that you will want to go is readily accessible by public transportation. Augment that with an occasional taxi and you have a perfect world. Never the worry of theft, vandalism and where to legally park or violent thoughts when you get pushed off the road. Here are a few suggestions for use of the public busses. All busses are privately run enterprises in Recife. We used only the Borborema busses. Tariffs are marked in the front window and you get half-price on Sundays. Continued on next posting.

Recommended for:Adventure seekers, girls getaway, sightseeing, families with young children, romantic getaway, age 55+, families with teenagers, tourists without a car.

Great apartment and wonderful hosts!

Guest: Steve in DC (Alexandria, VA)
Date of Stay: 01/15/11 Review Submitted: 01/27/11

My partner and I rented this apartment in beautiful Recife for a week in January 2011. The apartment is very spacious and has everything you need to feel like home. Tons of storage space, comfortable beds, a hard-wired internet connection, a washer, and bottled water were provided in the apt. The nice big windows overlook the ocean and the reef. Since it is on the 12th Floor, you have a wonderful view of the ocean. I wish I could have bottled up the breeze from the ocean that cross ventilates through the apartment and brought it home with me. It is heaven! We hardly needed to use the ac at all. The beach is just a few hundred yards away from the back exit from the apartment. During low tide, you can walk along the reef and enjoy the tide pools which we loved. There is no pool at the apartment, but you can ask to use the pool at the Dorisol Hotel just a few doors up the street. I cannot say enough about Bob and Dava being wonderful hosts. They really went out of their way to make our stay wonderful and memorable. I have rented a number of places from VRBO and HomeAway over the years, and have never been treated better. The apartment is located in the Piedade neighborhood, south of the center of Recife, the airport, and the busy beaches at Boa Viagem. You really need to have a car so you can get around and see the sights. The apartment comes with a secure garage space in the basement. There are just a few restaurants very close by (Laca Burguer and a "by the kilo" buffet place with a bakery across the street). About a 10 minute walk south down the beach in Candeias, there are a couple of nice outdoor places with huge menus. We liked Serentejo the best. The apartment is very close to 2 large supermarkets, which was great. The fresh fruit was awesome! We preferred the Leao...you can see the sign from the back window. The benefit to being in Piedade is that you are just a short ride to the city and the airport, but it feels like you are really living in a local neighborhood and not in the middle of a tourist place. Shopping Guararapes is a huge mall about 5 minutes away. The area felt very safe. Even though we stuck out as tourists like a sore thumb, I never felt as if anyone was watching or following me to pick my pocket. I would totally stay here again. Plenty of room for 2 couples comfortably & can accommodate up to 8 people if you have a family. If you rent this apartment, you will want to move to Recife for good....like we do.

Recommended for:Sightseeing, families with young children, age 55+, families with teenagers.

Live above the ocean

Guest: FW (San Francisco, Ca )
Date of Stay: 09/22/10 Review Submitted: 10/26/10

Just completed a month at Bob and Dalva 's place in Recife and we highly recommend it . The view of the ocean and the sound of the waves in this large apartment will make you want to never leave . There is a constant ocean breeze that keeps the apartment cool even on warm days . But , if you need air conditionning , they have that too. When you look out over the ocean from the twelveth floor windows , you feel as if you were floating above the sea and it's vastness . We also had Dona Zinaide come twice a week to cook , clean and wash clothes for us and she was a total delight . Finally , Bob and Dalva extended hospitality far beyond our expectations . Hope to come back soon .

Recommended for:Sightseeing, families with young children, age 55+, families with teenagers, tourists without a car.

Guest: Martian Stueber (Wahlsburg / Germany)
Date of Stay: 03/09/10 Review Submitted: 03/09/10

Wir (2 befreundete Paare) hatten die Wohnung über Karneval 2010 gemietet.Wir haben uns dort sehr wohl gefühlt.Bob und Delva waren sehr hilfsbereit wenn wir Fragen oder Wünsche hatten und haben uns einen sehr netten Taxifahrer für einen Ausflug nach Porto de Galinhas vermittelt. Wir würden die Wohnung jederzeit dem 5-Sterne Hotel Dorisol (nebenan) vorziehen. Einkaufsmöglichkeiten sind in unmittelbarer Nachbarschaft und eine Bushaltestelle befindet sich direkt vor dem Haus.

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Guest: Ed & Marcia Moore (Baltimore, MD 21237)
Date of Stay: 12/29/08 Review Submitted: 12/29/08

My wife and I rented this apartment for 30 days from August to September, 2008. This apartment is outstanding, spacious, clean and very well furnished with a marvelous view on the ocean. We found a true friend in our maid Jael who did her job conscientiously and always with a smile. This apartment, right on the beach, is quiet and very well located. We highly recommend it.

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Guest: Jorge Rivera & Mary Beth Steele (Washington, DC)
Date of Stay: 05/30/08 Review Submitted: 05/30/08

This is the first time that my wife and I traveled to Recife and at first we were planning to book a hotel room, but we are very glad that we didn’t. We stayed at Bob’s place instead from May 12 to May 19, 2008. The apartment looked exactly as it was described on Bob’s posting. The apartment was very clean, the rooms were very spacious with plenty closet space, the A/C units worked well in every room, we did not use the kitchen that much, but everything worked well. We used the laundry machine with no problems. Bob’s apartment is located in Piedade beach and that location was great. We rented a small vehicle for the length of our stay and drove to many places in the city – shopping for the wife. We parked behind Bob’s vehicle which was fine. The building personnel were very friendly. Costa, the property manager was extremely helpful and accommodating. We only used the maid service once because it was just the two of us and having that included in the cost is great. She even offered to buy food and cook for us! Isn’t that great? If you get a chance and have a vehicle take the time to visit Porto de Galinhas (beautiful beaches 40 minutes drive south), Olinda (can’t swim there, but go out and eat out – 15 minutes drive north), and Joao Pessoa (amazing place, we recommend you to go to Tambau beach, it is very nice and clean, great food – 2 hours drive north), or just simply enjoyed Boa Viagem beach and Piedade Beach, nice scene on the weekends. We really enjoyed our stay at Bob’s place. It was exactly what we were looking for and we hope to visit Recife again in the future.

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Guest: Tommy Hasty (Charlotte, NC USA)
Date of Stay: 02/11/08 Review Submitted: 02/11/08

Great spacious apartment. Watching the sunrise there is awesome. My wife and I stayed at Bob's place with our 2 young son's in 2007. I would highly recommend this apartment. T3

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Guest: Ernst Terje Jakobsen (Skien, Norway)
Date of Stay: 01/27/08 Review Submitted: 01/27/08

we rented bobs apartment in january 2008. The apartment is right on the beach. The view is spectacular and so is the apartment. The apartment have many rooms, it was clean, and was wery spacious. We loved the maid, she did a good jobb and were a friendly person.The appartment have everything you need and more.We can highly recomment this beutyfull place in Recife.

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