(Excellent)
We recently returned from 12 days on St. John and on this trip we stayed at One Love on Rendezvous Bay. The house is great and the pictures on Caribbean Villa's website are very accurate.
House/Pool:
The house has 3 levels and the lower level is the pool deck and the 2 queen bedroom with sliding glass door. All bedrooms had A/C units that worked pretty quickly. We would turn them on if we wanted when we were home and shut them off the rest of the time. There is a door on the lower level that goes outside the house to the parking area/driveway but we just kept it locked all the time. There are 2 sets of stairs from the pool area up the kitchen and 2nd level. One is a spiral staircase (be careful) up to the courtyard and then a set of steps that lead up to the kitchen. There is a gas grill out by the kitchen which was very useful. The pool went from 3 feet to 5 feet deep which was great for our 8 year old son. He loved the pool!
The 2nd level is the main part of the house. The kitchen/dining/living room are all together with great views off the deck. There is an A/C unit in the living area which helped cool it down but when you are cooking, the kitchen really heats up the kitchen/dining area. TV had satellite service and a DVD player and stereo. Opening the sliding glass doors really brought in some nice breezes that cool things down too. There is a half bath in the kitchen/dining area. Also it has a High Efficient Washer and Dryer room off the dining area as well. The house does not have a computer but it does have WIFI if you choose to bring your own laptop. We try to escape technology on vacation so we didn't use it.
One minor problem was that we did not have cell phone service from the house. We have AT&T which is usually pretty good on the island for us but we were tucked into Rendezvous Bay enough that we couldn't get the tower signal. Once we left the house and went up the hill, the phone worked fine.
The bedroom on the 2nd level is the bedroom we chose to stay in even though it is not the master bedroom. It has a King bed, a closet and a full bath and its own balcony looking over the bay. Great room and they should have made this bedroom the master in my opinion. A/C worked great and water was never a problem. The balcony is narrow but nice with 2 chairs on it.
The Master bedroom is up above the kitchen/dining room and we never used it. It has a King size bed and a nice separate shower/bathroom as well as a closet. We thought the layout of the master was odd. The only deck for this bedroom is actually through the bathroom and it faces off to the side of the house rather than over the bay to the front. A disappointing view when you have this great bay right in front. The windows in this bedroom facing the front of the house actually are small and just look at the roof of the second level. It's a nice bedroom but for views and convenience we preferred the 2nd level bedroom. All bedrooms locked as well as a door from the driveway to the courtyard could be locked. The courtyard was nice with lots of lights and I think 6 beach chairs to use were there. There is an outdoor shower to rinse off there too.
The bedrooms had safes in the closets to use which was very nice.
The pool was awesome and had plenty of floats and other inflatables for kids and adults alike. These are left behind by other guests.
The house was fully stocked with everything you might need .
The view is just awesome. The Stars are amazing at night and when it wasn't hazy you could see St. Croix very easily.
Driveway/Road:
The driveway was interesting and challenging this time. I have stayed at many a place with difficult driveways but this one was a bit more fun. First of all the road coming in to the house is right after the switchback going up the hill from Rendezvous bay towards Gifft Hill. I mean right on the corner and there is no way anyone coming down the hill is going to see you in time to stop if they are going in or out. We chose to always go down the Hill and turn around to go back up so we were not cutting across the road to get to the left side. We had 1 close call but otherwise it was fine. The driveway is gated with a security code but it was not a real secure gate. It could be easily opened without the code it looked like. Once you went up the driveway you had to stop halfway at the switchback and back up the hill the rest of the way which got pretty narrow. I did not do it at night time and chose to park at the switchback. Daytime I could do it slowly to get up to the house. Ultimately this is just part of the adventure of St. John for us so we didn't mind.
All in all, we had a fabulous time on trip #8 to St. John and we would recommend One Love villa.