Lonely Planet Review:

An old-style place where new-style people set up for weeks to write and dream about never leaving. Marbella is a beautifully restored Portuguese villa hidden down a quiet lane. This is the Portuguese dream that Goan fantasy was built on. The six rooms of Marbella manifest unique and exotic style.

The Rajasthani suite is spacious and positively regal, though even in the smaller Garden room you can anchor your pile of papers with a heavy bronze ornament and throw open wood-framed windows onto sunlit trees and breeze. The white sheets are so fitting against the white walls that you'll want to wear them to the mosaic-tiled bathroom and out onto your balcony. If you can't afford the penthouse suite you'll be just as happy when you're ensconced in colonial grandeur in one of the smaller ground-floor rooms that opens to the high-walled, densely gardened courtyard.

Marbella is appropriately positioned on a quiet street where even the dogs are too relaxed to bark. Amazingly for something of this undeniable elegance, you won't catch so much as a whiff of pretension in the fresh air.

Marika McAdam - Lonely Planet author