Bit long this one -sorry bout that.
Recent hotel stay in the Algarve. Because of flight and transfer delays we didn’t get to the hotel until almost 1am – by the time we went through the check in process at the hotel desk, we didn’t get into our room until around 1.30am, but I wasn’t going to be miffed about it as we received a free upgrade from a 2-bed apartment to a 3 bed one.
Anyway, the hotel bar area closes at midnight, so in order to “come down” I sat up into the wee small hours having a few beers on the balcony, while everyone else went to bed. Little noises kept coming from the kitchen area, I’d go and look and the noises would stop, went back out to the balcony and my beer can had completely disappeared. Searched high and low for it but it was nowhere to be found – had to get a fresh one from the fridge. Went back to the balcony, and I kept on hearing people talking, again from the kitchen area – went to look, and nobody there.
I then decided that I must be tired and hearing things (see my creepy insomnia post) and went to bed.
Nothing to note the following day / night, nor the next one. On the afternoon of day 3 of the holiday, my daughter and her boyfriend announced that they were going up to the apartment from an afternoon nap, (yeah right) but came back down to the pool area again after only 30 minutes saying that they could hear people walking around inside of the apartment, people speaking in Portuguese coming from the kitchen, and internal doors opening and closing. I told them that the noises must be coming from the apartment below, but they both shook their heads and said the noises definitely came from inside of our apartment.
Things kept on going missing and didn’t show back up again, including the apartment door keys, which I religiously kept in the inside of the main door. Again searched high and low and they couldn’t be found, so Mrs DT went to reception to ask for a replica key, and although she said that the hotel manager was polite and friendly, something was “off” about him, and he was acting shifty and wouldn’t look her in the eyes, like he knew something she didn’t.
On the day we checked out, I thanked the manager for the upgrade but did say the apartment was a bit odd and had anything happened in there, and all I got in reply was laughter and “of course not Sir”.
Thinking about it though, in the height of summer and the hotel packed to the rafters, why would they give out a free last-minute upgrade, unless there was something about the apartment that was undesirable ..?