Villa Bonita Gale

Great Villa, location and hosts.

We visited Bonita Gale in April 2025. Its a nice villa about 35 mins away from Faro airport. We used faro-airport-taxis and was about £85 return trip in an 8 seater. Villa fixtures are a little dated, towels not matching etc, and the odd chip on the crockery (but there was lots of it so could just use others). Front gate a pain to open. The main bedroom upstairs was large with ensuite and a balcony either side allowing you to sit up there anytime of the day / early evening. Stairs up to the bedroom were fine for our kids (4 years +), the warning on website is because the handrail against a wall isn't continuous but wasn't a problem. But could be for very little ones. Bedrooms downstairs were good size (one with an large ensuite) Gardens kept well. Swimming pool was clean but freezing, really needs to be heated out of season. We wouldn't go to Portugal in April again as it rained quite a bit. Friends hired the villa next door and paid for the pool to be heated so we used that everyday instead. Download uber if you haven't already, cheaper to get instant taxis everywhere than hire a car. Aldi is about 15min walk one way and the very nice sandy beach similar the opposite direction. Mr Singhs on the corner does great curry (we had takeaways twice) don't bother with the naan bread. Fish restaurant is good but they do try to upsell quite a bit. The pasta and fish stew was huge could fill 3+ adults. The steak there was very good and reasonable. One odd thing about villa but will probably sort itself out soon, it smelt strongly of smoke each morning only in the lounge area, not sure if the previous renters had used the log burner as it didn't smell of cigarettes. Open the doors and it went but clothes left in lounge would smell of it. The changeover day is Tuesday, we ended up paying for 2 full weeks although could only do 9 days, but we knew that. But so you aren't rushed out on last day I'd suggest booking to Tuesday afterwards anyway as its the same price.

The Villa is in a lovely quiet position at the end of a cul de sac. It is extremely clean inside the property. The kitchen is well equipped. The towels are changed twice a week and the bed linen weekly. The pool was cleaned once during our two week stay. The only downside was that the area around the pool, the garden furniture and bbq had not been cleaned for our arrival. We had to clean the area ourselves and we reported this to Solmar who did contact the local agent who visited us and apologised for the inconvenience. On saying this, we loved our stay and would rebook this villa again.