seabreeze - Review Page 2
Accommodation
SeaBreeze has a total of six air-conditioned bedrooms and six bathrooms. There are two double bedrooms and one single on each floor. All bedrooms are fully en suite with the exception of the single on the lower floor, which has an adjacent private bathroom. The rooms are spacious and the furnishing and decoration simple, but adequate.
Reception Rooms
On entering the villa after driving down the rather grand palm-lined driveway to the covered portico/car port, it comes as little surprise to find yourself in a large and elegant reception room. The room is tastefully furnished with rattan furniture. One secret of successful tropical living is to keep furnishing simple, allowing nothing to stop the circulation of air or disturb the through-drafts. In this respect, SeaBreeze works well.
The reception room provides access to the three upper bedrooms, the wide wrap-around covered veranda or to the heart of the villa, the kitchen.
Measuring 6.1 x 3.7m, the kitchen is amply large enough to cater for parties of ten guests. Given the name of the villa, it is hardly surprising to find that the house benefits from wonderfully cooling sea breezes. So, despite being situated in the middle of the house and having just a single large window overlooking the Jacuzzi and gardens, the kitchen remains perfectly cool at all times of the day, aided by nothing more than a single large ceiling fan.
The kitchen is furnished conventionally with a large fridge-freezer, a six-ring gas stove with griddle, microwave oven, coffee filter machine, toaster, kettle, blender and a dishwasher. The kitchen is lined with storage cupboards, above and below the work surfaces, stocked with a somewhat haphazard collection of kitchen utensils, crockery, glassware and cutlery. All the kitchenware was clean and functional, but large groups might find themselves having to wash up on a very regular basis to avoid running out of items. Thank heavens for the dishwasher!
Guests mustn’t expect pristine sets of matching kitchenware. This is not unusual in ‘holiday homes’. It is also in stark contrast to the excesses of some rental villa owners and agents who present guests with a neat inventory of matching plates and kitchen items and sometimes ask the guests to sign the list on departure to confirm that everything is being handed back intact.
Adjacent to the kitchen are two utility rooms. The huge ceramic wash basin is ideal for dealing with salt-laden swimwear. There is also a washing machine and dryer. Detergent is provided and helpful housekeeper, Vernette, was happy to do washing during her visits.
The rear of the house is dominated by a huge 8 x 5.3m living room. Five metres of glazed sliding doors extend across the front and side aspects of the room and provide access onto the wide wrap-around veranda, giving almost uninterrupted views out to sea and across the bay.
The unusual coral rock walls of the living room rise to an open cathedral style wooden ceiling, some 30 feet high. Decorative air bricks around the upper part of the walls ensure that hot air can escape. Villas on the windward side of Bacolet Point often suffer from dampness and the corrosive effect of the salt-laden sea blast. Being located to the east of the Point, SeaBreeze is more shielded and avoids the worst of this. We stayed at the villa during five very hot and humid days. Nevertheless, we found it permanently cool and inviting and were never forced to seek refuge in the air-conditioned bedrooms, even at times of the day when the heat in the garden was almost too much to bear.
The living room is furnished with a large and comfy soft-leather suite grouped around a glass-topped coffee table. Close at hand, a set of bookcases and display units are home to a large cable television (I will refrain from my usual rant about the truly awful local/North American television services), DVD-player, a small music centre, range of novels, local guides and information booklets, card and board games and a stock of DVD films (but no CDs).
On the other side of the living area, next to the kitchen and serving hatch, the large dining table could comfortably seat ten utilising extra chairs from the main veranda.
Veranda & Terrace
As with all good tropical architecture, a wide roof overhang shades the wrap-around veranda that runs along two sides of the building. When the living room’s five-metres of sliding doors are open, you have a sense of living outdoors even when you are inside.
The front veranda is 2.7 metres in width and perfectly furnished with a pair of circular all-weather tables and half-a-dozen comfortable plastic chairs. Although the front of the house is at ground level, the sloping grounds mean that the rear veranda is actually on the second floor. The additional height enhances the views of the Atlantic Sea, Rockly Bay and Scarborough port.
The veranda also provides access onto a 5-metre square open terrace furnished with more all-weather tables and chairs. Guests are spoiled for choice of dining spots at SeaBreeze.
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