La Reserva de Marbella

A fabulous place to stay. It's a bit of a way from the beach, but we had a rental car, so that worked out.

The place itself was peaceful and clean, and the room was nice. Even so, what happened in the sauna was frightening, and nobody checked whether I was okay afterward. On my last day I went in. It looked new and was great at first. A staff member switched it on, and after about ten minutes I saw smoke. I thought that might be normal and dozed off briefly, but coughing woke me. I went out to shower, then smelled smoke when I returned. When I opened the sauna door, it was on fire and smoke was everywhere. Getting into the sauna area required a card. If I'd fainted from the smoke, it could have been fatal. I think the staff weren't prepared or trained for an emergency. Instead of asking how I was, they asked what I'd done, whether I'd poured water on the stones, and what had happened. My coughing and falling asleep may have been from breathing in the smoke. Luckily, I woke up.

We had a lovely meal, sitting at a nice table outdoors, and the servers were very pleasant and accommodating. The cocktails were good too. I had the cod fritters, which were very nice, and we all chose pasta for our mains, also very nice. My son and grandson were especially impressed by the prawns, which they thought were divine and better than expected. We'd definitely recommend it and plan to come back.

DO NOT RECOMMEND. My English isn't good. I stayed here with my family, and it was the worst hotel ever. The room they gave us had ants everywhere, plus a huge cockroach on the wall and another in the bed. We were also robbed by two people who broke in and took almost everything, though they left a decent amount of our stuff. The security guard was rude and said this had never happened before, but it had happened the day before and the month before too. The doors use plastic cards, and nothing in the room was broken, so there seemed to be no way in except with a master key, which the guard has. They wouldn't check the security footage, key entry times, or the name of the key used to get in. They seemed to think offering a quarter refund would make up for it. Don't. Go. Here.