Home Sweet Home last week
Wanted to put something up fairly quickly about our resort as I've had a few inquiries and I wanted feedback bigtime when I was making my decision. Home Sweet Home ended up being a great location for Sweetie Pie and me. We are walkers and loved the location on the cliffs. Easy walk to town, right in the middle of the pub crawl, close to Xtabi, Bentleys, PeeWees, No Limit, Swordfish, German Bar, Canoe, Mi Yard. We walked for coffee every morning at Easy Rock - great coffee there. So I really liked the location. The property is beautiful, it has one of the best 4-5 cliff setups on the West End in my opinion. Everything is RIGHT on the cliffs, the rooms, the pool, the restaurant and a great series of sun decks and dives on the way down to the sea. The property is showing its age but it is well cared for. 40 years on the cliffs in the tropics with a couple of big hurricanes will put a little wear and tear on a place. The owner, Charlie from Minnesota, is on site throughout the high season I believe. He was there the whole week.
We had room 6, it was nice. We never closed the verandah doors the entire week. The tree to the left of our verandah had been trimmed and shaped to give us a tree limb framed view of the sea. It was very nice. we loved the verandah. Sweetie Pie said at the end it didn't feel like we'd spent enough time there even though it was always at least a couple of hours a day. There is air conditioning but we never used it. The bathroom is pretty spartan but functional. The shower is big enough for two but drains a little slow. You may be standing in water over your toes if you take a long shower. The only toiletries provided is bar soap. There's a great big high quality mirror on the wall running nearly the length of the bed and a couple of very nice prints on the wall. Daily housekeeping and I thought they did a good job.
It's a small resort, 14 rooms squeezed in between the road and the cliffs. A couple of big trees in the courtyard, a very nice section of grass. The second floor seaview suite is the primo unit on the property. You see nothing but the sea from that balcony and it's a big balcony. The two floor unit below is also very nice. it has three beds, a king upstairs that opens onto the balcony and two doubles downstairs. It has an impressive two floor glass window looking out at the sea.
Mostly couples stayed there last week. A group of four buddies was there the first couple of nights. It's a quiet place after 9 pm except for the guys playing dominoes those first couple of nights. You are close to the street so you're going to have some street noise. Dogs are part of Jamaican street life. Heard one get hit one night, that was sad. Sweetie Pie said the dogs were pretty loud Friday night but I had my last night drunk on and didn't hear but maybe one little outburst that could pull me out of my Appleton and Stones induced slumber. The rest of the week they were really a non-issue for us. A bark here and there. Miss Mae at Josephs Cave says the dogs bark when evil is about so I'm glad we were in by that time :)
The restaurant is OK, your bill there is seperate from the room and you need to settle with them seperately. I have a story I'll relate in my trip report that shouldn't reflect poorly on the restaurant but did did create a wierd association with the restaurant for the rest of the week for me. I'll say this, They make a great Dirty Banana. Friends said their Spanish Omlette was the best they'd ever had but we drank coffee and ate fruit for breakfast every morning. Coffee from the restaurant wasn't so good but I noticed a couple of folks apparently rented electric percolators from the hotel or restaurant and made coffee in their rooms. We ate around a lot so the restaurant wasn't a big part of our consideration. It was usually closed already when we came in for the evening and we weren't late nighters.
I would and probably will go there again. Maybe not the next trip as there may be some different components to it, but I really like the place. With taxes the room ran $880 for the week, pretty good I think for a clean, well maintained property with a private verandah and sea view on the cliffs.
Hope this helps those who asked :) Go and enjoy, we did!!
