Hotel Convento do Carmo, Salvador

The hotel is beautifull and very well located for a visit to the historic center. Breakfast and room service is excellent. Atmosphere is wonderfull. The spa is very small and doesn't really work (jacuzzy without water, steambath has to be open by demand). However, we experienced some problems, the most important of which was following a very bad episode with a dreadfull brazilian travel agency, which offered to leave our luggage at the hotel. When we arrived (nearly five hours later) to the hotel, we found our luggage unattended, neatly organised at the hotel bellman cart, at the main entrance of the hotel. There were tourists entering the convent just to have a view at that same moment, and no one aroud. There was a security at the entrance who didn't ask us any questions (not even good afternoon), we stood by the luggage for five minutes and no one from the hotel was visible. We started to open our luggage, which included a backpack with a new laptop and all my work documents, and no staff arrived. There were lots of tourists and hotel guests passing by us. I was totally enfuriated by this. I decided to head for check in, as my husband waited by the luggage with the children, they asked a lot of documents from us and also for my husband to come and sign hotel documents. This was when I exploded, and told them that my husband was garding our luggage which had been unattended for nearly five hours. The staff at check in was kind of upset with my reaction and instead of appologizing, seemed troubled and insisted for my husband to leave the luggage (with my laptop and all our belongings) and come sign their documents. We never heard any appology for this. I seriously wonder if they would take any responsability for the disapearance of our luggage, alhtough it was packed in the hotel cart... After that, another hotel staff member insisted to take us for a visit around the hotel, slowly showing us everything including how to use the air conditioning or open the closet and bathroom doors, while we insisted (we are portuguese and speak portuguese) that our luggage (including small backpack with my laptop) remained unattended at the hotel lobby... this was pretty exasperating. However, nothing really bad happened. Also, staff member's children use the pool as hangout while they wait for their parents. This would be a nice "socially inclusive" strategy if the children weren't so unpolite, didn't look so bored, some totally dressed with their feet inside the water, just staring at guests for hours... while the smaller splash around without parent guidance. Another really annoying thing is that some of the staff is pretty rude: I counted 5 times that I had to give priority to staff just in one single breakfast. This personnel had nothing in their hands, so there is really no intelligible reason as to why I should give them priority when passing a door (?). To european standards, it is extreme rudeness to do this, and I have to say I was extremely offended. One time is really bad, but five (!!) is really out of this world. I should also remark that although breakfast opens at 6h30 am, upon checkout the hotel staff opened the breakfast room at 5 am for us and everything was perfect as allways... and this time there were no "priority" issues.