Villa Iris (1 bedroom)

We just returned from a one-month stay at Villa Iris. PROS: • The view is spectacular. Villa Iris is situated high up overlooking both the Grand and Petit Cul de Sac. • This area is generally quieter and less congested than anything closer to town. This matters if you’re looking for a bit more quiet. • The house is very well-built and the interior spaces have been thoughtfully designed and outfitted with high quality materials. • The housekeeper, Charline, is a delight and eager to be helpful with any question or request. Likewise, Clemence, the property manager, was also very pleasant to work with and tried her best to accommodate requests. CONS: • The house is surrounded on three sides by an active roadway. You cannot see this in the property photos because of the angles from which photos were taken. If you’re sensitive to noise, keep this in mind. • The beds were quite uncomfortable. Although we never wake up with back and shoulder aches at home, we did every morning here. • The a/c vents in the bedrooms fire directly at the beds. Because the system is over-sized, even the low fan setting blasts out too much cold air, making it uncomfortable to settle in. For the same reason, the fan noise is also an issue. • The showers are poorly designed. The temperature valves in the showers have been set so you cannot get anything warmer than tepid water. Very little water comes out of the two upstairs showers. You get pinprick-size emissions, which makes it difficult to take a proper, comfortable shower - and it shoots everywhere, creating a mess. The downstairs shower ceiling fixture works better, but the lack of hot water was still an issue. • The TV / sound system is quite complicated for such a small home. It’s tied to a dated iPad-based system. It’s clunky and creates a few problems. Word of advice: use the TV remote to access Netflix and other apps directly; avoid the iPad. QUESTIONS TO ASK: • Does the pool heater work? Since the power grid on St. Bart’s is famously unreliable, the pool heater card got zapped and we went the entire month with no heat in the pool. • Is there active construction using the roads that surround the villa? Hard to control, but worth asking. • Can the irrigation system be shut off? The outside watering system starts firing every 60 seconds at 4am every day. This produces a loud clanking sound once each minute for 30-40 minutes. We've already booked a return visit -- but at a different villa.