Located in Lagos less than 5 minutes from Porto Mós beach, Belmar Spa & Beach Resort offers apartments of various sizes from studio to 3 bedroom. The resort has 4 pools, including an adults-only pool and an indoor pool. There is a full service restaurant that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as an indoor bar and a poolside bar.
We had a standard 2 bedroom apartment and it was a great space for our family. The shared space included a living room with plenty of seating and a kitchen with a small dining area. The kids room had two beds (pushed together but made up separately) and a bathroom across the hall, while the master had a double bed and private bath.
The space was great in the apartment but the decor was a little sterile. Coming from Chalet Saudade which oozed historic charm, this definitely felt like a corporate apartment. For a short two night stay, the lack of character didn’t bother me. I was just happy to have so much room – and two bathrooms for the first (and only) time on our trip.
There was a washer/dryer combo in the kitchen which honestly was very confusing to figure out. There were only pictures and no words on the machine, which seems like it would be great but was actually even more confusing. The pictures looked like nothing I could figure out or would associate with doing a load of wash. Words at least I could have looked up on a translator. We took a trip down to the front desk to get some tips and took a leap of faith by putting the few clothes I had with me (since I still didn’t have my luggage) in the machine. The wash ran for about 3 (!) hours, which made me very nervous. They told us at the front desk not to even bother with the dryer cycle and that everything would dry faster hanging on the porch. So we hung everything on the rack outside and hoped it would be dry by the time we had to pack up in the morning. It all worked out and things seemed at least somewhat cleaner than they had been but it was more stressful than I would have liked.
We had balconies off of the living room and the master bedroom that had nice views of the pool with the ocean beyond.
The resort had several nice pools, although unfortunately it was not warm enough for us to use them in April. The boys did use the indoor pool and enjoyed it. I will say that the pools were really difficult to get to. You had to go through a labyrinth of hallways and stairwells with unclear/misleading signs and then through the spa and the locker rooms to access them. We stumbled across one of the pools (I think the adults-only one) and literally could never have found it again. It was disappointing that they didn’t hand out a resort map when we got there and that the pools were so difficult to access. They did look lovely and I’m sure are wonderful in warmer weather.
Our stay included breakfast at the hotel restaurant, Levante. The breakfast included access to a buffet that had a variety of breads, pastries, and fruits, as well as your choice of one main item off the menu (eggs, pancakes, etc.). Everything was very good. We also had dinner there both nights. The first night we all ate together and the second night my husband and I ate by ourselves and got the kids’ meals to go so they could eat in the room. The dinner menu was not very extensive but the dishes we ordered were good. For the short time we stayed in Lagos, it was super convenient to eat in the resort restaurant but we likely would have ventured out if we had stayed longer.
The resort is located just up the street from the beach. Again, it was too cold in April to go in the water (although our youngest did run into the ocean on a 5 euro dare) but we enjoyed going down to the beach, walking along the water and enjoying the beautiful scenery. The resort does not claim to be walking distance from town but we actually walked back from there after a tour one day. It was not a bad walk distance-wise but not the most scenic or pedestrian-friendly. So it is definitely doable but maybe not an ideal walk.
We enjoyed our stay at Belmar and thought it was exactly what we needed at that stage of our trip: a relaxing resort with plenty of space, nice pools, and dining options onsite. What it lacked in character it made up for in convenience and amenities.
