AlmaLusa Comporta

Comporta's other hotels keep to the pine forest, out in hamlets such as Muda and Bicas. AlmaLusa is the one in the village itself, an existing building on Rua Pedro Nunes renovated with local materials. It is two white storeys and wooden shutters, the ground-floor terraces screened by rough poles with the bark left on and grasses growing along the edge of the roof, and the pool lies in front under straw parasols. Indoors it is cane and raffia, a woven headboard and round baskets on the wall. The pictures in the public rooms are by artists from the Comporta region, and every one is for sale, so the decor can go home in the luggage.

Recommended for anyone who would rather walk to dinner than drive to it. The hotel says the stay needs no car, and the distances back it up: the shops and restaurants of the centre are 350 metres off, and the beach is a flat kilometre, fifteen minutes on foot. Further out, there are bicycles, e-bikes among them, with routes mapped across the rice fields, and a dog of up to 15 kilos can come too, so long as it stays in a Garden Suite. The one drive worth making is ten minutes to the stilt pier at Carrasqueira on the Sado estuary, where the storks and flamingos gather and sunset is the time to go. Back in the village, dinner can be on the roof at The RoofTop Bar & Restaurant, local tapas with the rice fields laid out below. A DJ plays on Fridays and Saturdays. On Thursdays it is karaoke, which the rice fields have to put up with too.