TRAVEL & LEISURE
Travel + Leisure
October 2005
"A Villa by the Sea"
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Why settle for a hotel room in the Caribbean?
Meg Lukens Noonan reports on rental life from St. John and offers an islands-wide guide to finding the villa with your name on it.
by Meg Lukens Noonan

TOP RENTAL AGENCIES
Representing Villas
Throughout the Caribbean, Villas Caribe eliminates surprises with 360-degree virtual tours, available on-line calenedars for its 1,100 properties, including those on Jamaica, Barbados, and Virgin Gorda. 800/645-7498; www.villascaribe.com.

"Rent a villa with your family, high on a breezy hill overlooking the Caribbean Sea, and be prepared for some singing. That's what my husband, Michael, and I found, anyway, when we brought our two daughters, Kelley, 13, and Claudia, 10, to St. John last spring. They rarely stopped: they crooned Top 40 tunes in the pool and on the deck and in the outdoor shower. The countdown continued as pink-bellied clouds drifted by in the morning and when the moon silvered the bay at night. They sang with gusto and with volume and-this is the good part-we never felt compelled to tell them to keep it down. (Well, maybe that one time, but, hey, we were trying to read.) That's just one example of the things we loved about having our own house, rather than simply our own hotel room.Rent a villa with your family, high on a breezy hill overlooking the Caribbean Sea, and be prepared for some singing. That's what my husband, Michael, and I found, anyway, when we brought our two daughters, Kelley, 13, and Claudia, 10, to St. John last spring. They rarely stopped: they crooned Top 40 tunes in the pool and on the deck and in the outdoor shower. The countdown continued as pink-bellied clouds drifted by in the morning and when the moon silvered the bay at night. They sang with gusto and with volume and-this is the good part-we never felt compelled to tell them to keep it down. (Well, maybe that one time, but, hey, we were trying to read.) That's just one example of the things we loved about having our own house, rather than simply our own hotel room..."