Excelsior

POSITIVE: cheap, central location NEGATIVE: blacklisted by local organization; we were robbed!!! For a business trip to Lisbon, we had booked two nights at Hotel Excelsior. During our first night at the hotel, several men climbed the fire stairs, removed our window (locked and covered by a curtain) from its frame, then entered our room and stole everything inside (clothes, computers, valuables). We woke up right when they left, and immediately alerted the hotel staff. To our surprise, they couldn't care less! The staff were entirely passive, even refused to help us block our credit cards (we had to hijack their computer terminal to do so), had to be talked into calling the police at all, and refused to grant us access to the fire stairs, or even the backyard, even hours after the robbery. When we returned from the police department, they even tried to charge us for our stay at the hotel... After this, it took us two days and a lot of help by Portuguese-speaking local friends to finally get to meet the hotel manager, who subtly blamed the incident on us, refusing any compensation by citing "superior orders". As a result of this incident, the hotel has been blacklisted by the Lisbon-based Champalimaud Foundation.