Someone Tried to Enter Our Hotel Room in Marbella at Midnight

We went to Marbella in February expecting a quiet winter break. Instead we woke up one night to someone opening our balcony door.

We were sleeping in the hotel, around midnight, when Rasa heard the balcony door opening from outside. At first she thought it was me moving around in the dark. Still, she reached her hand toward my side of the bed just to check. Then she froze. I was there, sleeping.

A moment later she noticed a beam of light coming through the curtains. A flashlight. Someone was clearly trying to get into our room.

“Modestas… there’s someone outside,” she said quietly, but in that urgent whisper that wakes you up immediately.

I didn’t fully understand what was going on. Half asleep, I just let out a roar and opened my eyes. At that moment I saw the beam of the flashlight jump around and quickly disappear into the darkness. Then there was some noise, like someone in a hurry climbing back over the balcony railing.

So that was our strange little adventure in Marbella.

For the rest of the night I slept with an empty wine bottle next to the bed. Just in case. If someone came in, at least I’d have something to swing.

Later I learned that these kinds of night visits are not exactly rare in that part of Spain. Apparently thieves sometimes move around hotels and apartment buildings, waiting until people fall asleep. The buildings are easy enough to climb. If a man is reasonably athletic, getting onto the second or even third floor balcony is no big challenge. So some of them try their luck.

Then I remembered something else.

The previous night, around three in the morning, someone had called our hotel room several times on the landline phone. The first time I ignored it. The second time I answered, but the person on the other end hung up immediately. After that Rasa got annoyed and simply unplugged the phone so we could sleep in peace.

Only later did I realise they might have been checking whether anyone was awake in the room.

We arrived in Marbella in February, off-season. There were very few tourists around. Nobody was swimming in the Mediterranean. Out of the five days we spent in Spain, only one was sunny. The rest were grey and cloudy. The warmest it got was about twenty degrees. Most days it was around seventeen.

To be honest, we didn’t go there to sunbathe or swim anyway. Our plan was simply to look around and see the place. For that we rented a small car, a Volkswagen Polo.

Marbella doesn’t have its own airport, so we flew from Leeds to Málaga. From there it’s about an hour’s drive. Check-in at the hotel only started at four in the afternoon, and we arrived in Málaga around eleven in the morning, so we had plenty of time to walk around the city first.

We somehow made our way through the narrow streets to the old town and eventually found somewhere to park. After driving in England for years with the steering wheel on the right, I needed a bit of time to adjust again. At first I kept drifting too far to the right. At one point I even bumped onto the curb.

Still, Málaga left a very good impression. In some ways we even liked it more than Marbella. Rasa especially liked the orange trees growing right in the middle of the city.

Orange trees in February. Not something you see in England.

Orange trees in the centre of Málaga. February. Not something you see in England.

The city felt very tidy compared to English towns. I honestly didn’t see any rubbish lying around. But there were quite a few people asking for money. Some sat near churches, some stood near busy streets. A few would follow you for a short distance repeating the same phrase again and again.

Rasa fell in love with Málaga almost immediately.

Rasa immediately fell in love with Málaga.

“I could live here,” she said at one point.

I looked at the sky. Blue, no clouds at all. In England that kind of sky is almost an event.

After walking around the old town for a while we got hungry. We stopped at a small outdoor restaurant. I ordered a vegetarian pizza. The waiter asked whether I planned to share it.

Share a pizza? I thought. How big could it be?

“Just bring the whole one,” I said.

Rasa ordered the same. The waiter looked at her for a second like he wasn’t entirely convinced she would finish it.

A few minutes later two enormous pizzas arrived. Honestly, those two pizzas could easily have fed four people. Big wood-fired ones. Crispy, smoky, and very good. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten pizza that tasty anywhere else.

After that meal we slowly drove toward Marbella. The motorway took about an hour. At one point we had to pay around five euros in tolls. Later we discovered you could avoid them by taking side roads, so we set the GPS to “avoid toll roads” and after that drove only on the free ones.

Before going to the hotel we stopped at a shopping centre called La Cañada. Our plan was simple. Eat lunch in restaurants, but make breakfast and dinner ourselves.

There were plenty of shops there. Clothes everywhere. A supermarket as well. We bought various food things.

But that wasn’t quite enough for Rasa.

“I just want to look in Zara for a minute,” she said.

A minute usually means twenty minutes.

Then another shop appeared. Then another one.

Eventually I said, “Maybe we should go. Otherwise we’ll still be here at midnight.”

When we finally reached the hotel I noticed something funny. Right next to it stood a huge Lidl supermarket.

I looked at it and thought, well, that was a completely unnecessary trip.

Getting there had been a bit chaotic anyway. The GPS somehow switched to pedestrian routes and started sending us through strange back streets. At one point I turned into a narrow road and Rasa suddenly said,

“You’re in the wrong lane.”

Immediately I felt that unpleasant cold sweat. Cars were coming toward us and there was nowhere to turn around.

“Well, let’s see how this ends,” I thought.

Luckily after a short distance there was a turn to the right and everything turned out to be perfectly normal. It had only looked strange from the passenger seat.

After that I told Rasa, half joking, “Maybe you should drive. You keep saying I’m too fast, too far right, on the curb, in the wrong lane…”

Our hotel was called Gran Hotel Guadalpin Banús. Outside the entrance I noticed five stars next to the name.

The lobby looked impressive enough.

Neither of us had realised we had booked a five-star hotel.

But once we entered the room the excitement faded a little. It looked like the place had once been very impressive, maybe in the 1990s. Since then, not much seemed to have changed.

Still, the room itself was comfortable. A large balcony with outdoor furniture. Sliding glass doors. A separate kitchen. A big bedroom. Bathroom. Rasa also appreciated the bidet.

In the hallway there was an ancient stereo system that looked like it came from another era. It could play CDs and cassette tapes. I tried turning it on. The radio worked, but only with a lot of crackling because there was no antenna.

The television in the bedroom was small, but it had channels from all over Europe. Norwegian, Danish, German, Spanish, English. I even found a few Russian ones.

You hear Russian quite often in Marbella. We saw several shops and beauty salons with Russian signs or Russian-speaking staff. Rasa even stepped into one salon for a moment where most of the employees were Russian women. They chatted for a bit.

Apparently not everyone finds Marbella exciting forever. Some people who moved there from big cities like Moscow eventually get bored.

Compared to London or St Petersburg, it probably feels quiet.

One day we also met a Lithuanian man on the promenade. Around sixty years old. He was blowing enormous soap bubbles for tourists. Children liked it. Adults sometimes dropped a coin into his cap.

He heard us speaking Lithuanian and immediately turned around.

“Ah, my people,” he said with a grin.

Turns out he was from Alytus. Travelling around the world by bicycle, more or less. I wasn’t entirely sure where he stayed at night. My guess was somewhere outside the town with a tent.

Apart from him we didn’t meet any other Lithuanians during the trip.

After England, Marbella itself looked very tidy. Restaurant workers constantly sweep the pavement and keep everything clean. In England sometimes you sit at a table and there is rubbish underneath it from the previous guests.

A quiet street in Marbella’s old town.

One afternoon we were walking along the seafront when we noticed a large cloud of black smoke rising somewhere in the distance. Later we read that someone had set fire to one of the famous nightclubs.

Marbella has a reputation for certain kinds of people. There have been gang conflicts there over the years. Apparently the place attracts money, nightlife, and occasionally criminals as well.

The Mediterranean Sea itself also felt different to me. It doesn’t have those huge tides like the Irish Sea in England. There the water can retreat so far that you can walk on the seabed for kilometres collecting shells.

Here the water stays almost where it is.

Since we already knew the weather wouldn’t be warm enough for swimming, we decided one day to drive to Gibraltar.

We woke up early. Rasa drove. After about an hour we reached the border.

And then realised something important.

My passport was still in the hotel room.

The border officer simply shook his head.

“No passport, no entry.”

So we turned around and drove all the way back. A bit of fuel wasted, but at least now we had a story.

Instead of Gibraltar we walked along the coast toward Puerto Banús.

About five kilometres from our hotel.

At first we thought about renting bicycles, but after looking at them closely I said, “Maybe walking is safer.”

Puerto Banús looked like a completely different world. Luxury everywhere. Expensive cars parked along the streets. Ferrari, Lamborghini, and the occasional Rolls-Royce.

One of the yachts in Puerto Banús. We spent a few minutes wondering what people must do in life to afford something like that.

Even the bicycle paths looked expensive.

At one point we accidentally crossed the road on a red light just as a loud Mustang was approaching. We froze in the middle of the street.

The car stopped. A young driver inside simply waved his hand politely.

“Go ahead.”

We hurried across.

The yachts in the harbour were enormous. Honestly, they looked more like small cruise ships than yachts.

We walked around for a while, looked at restaurant menus, and quietly decided not to eat there.

Prices were something else.

On the way back we wondered what exactly people do in life to afford those boats.

Later I read that many wealthy visitors come from places like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, or Russia.

Eventually we found a small Spanish restaurant near the sea and ate there instead. That was where I tried paella for the first time.

Quite good, actually.

The waitress spoke almost no English, which felt slightly surprising considering the restaurant was full of tourists. But that’s Spain. Many people prefer their own language, and fair enough.

The next day we tried Gibraltar again.

This time we remembered the passports.

And warmer jackets too. The wind near the strait can be quite sharp.

We parked in La Línea, just before the border. The town looked a bit worn compared with the rest of Spain. Some buildings felt almost Caribbean somehow.

After crossing the border into Gibraltar everything suddenly looked very British. English signs everywhere. British-style licence plates. Shops that felt familiar.

We even stepped into a Morrison’s supermarket and for a moment it honestly felt like being back in England.

Then we took the cable car up the famous Rock of Gibraltar where the macaques live.

They have absolutely no fear of humans.

One jumped on my shoulders and started investigating my sweater like it was searching for hidden snacks. Then it jumped toward Rasa.

Rasa screamed.

The monkey looked surprised and jumped away again.

From the top the view was impressive. Spain on one side. The sea stretching out in several directions. In the distance you can almost see the coast of Africa through the haze.

When we came back down we decided to eat something in the town centre.

That part was slightly disappointing. The streets looked a bit messy, the air felt heavy from traffic, and the restaurants didn’t look particularly inviting.

Rasa ordered fish and chips. A proper British meal.

I ended up skipping lunch.

Soon after that we drove back to the hotel.

For years we had been curious about Gibraltar. After finally seeing it we both agreed it was interesting, but not somewhere we would want to live.

On the last day we checked out before noon. Our flight was at five in the afternoon, so we still had time to kill.

We drove once more to the La Cañada shopping centre. Walked around for a while. Neither of us really felt like shopping anymore.

At that point we were simply ready to go home.

Back to England.

At Málaga airport we returned the car, found a restaurant, had a final meal and waited for the flight.

Funny thing is, I never expected I would be so eager to return to England.

But sometimes it turns out the old saying is true.

Everywhere is nice.

But home is still home.