Five of us spent a week at this beautiful villa perched on a hill overlooking Happy Bay in Grand Case, St Martin. We have rented many vacation villas all over the world and this one was one of the most beautiful AND comfortable. This is what we found particularly appealing about Happy Bay:
The Villa, including all furniture inside and out, linens, cooking implements, pool area, were spotless.
The furnishings were extremely comfortable, light and airy, attractive without being fussy, minimal without being cold.
We had plenty of hot water and excellent water pressure.
The television got thousands of channels and we even watched our local Connecticut channel on departure day to get an update on the weather!)
The villa was well stocked with a sufficient neccessities for our first night.
The pool area was especially well-furnished with two seating areas under cover - couches, tables, chairs and views; a large square glass-topped dining table and 10 comfortable dining chairs, under cover; and extremely comfortable loungers and 2 large umbrellas for sunning around the pool.
The villa is in a gated community and in addition, has it’s own gate. So we felt perfectly safe and were happy not to have a guard on duty 24 hours a day (as sometimes happens with luxury villas).
Loved proximity of beautiful, quiet Happy Bay beach and all the delicious restaurants, bakeries and boutiques of Grand Case.
Our excellent concierge, Cheyenne, responded immediately to any of our questions.

Excellent working with WhereToStay and Jean Drewes. We will use her for future villa rentals

Happy Bay villa was a perfect choice for our girls getaway! From the moment we walked in the front door we were delighted by the charm and beauty of this villa. The bedrooms were very private and super comfy and the outside pool and views were spectacular!! Our time in St Martin was amazing and spending time in the villa put our vacation over the top. !

Betsy was excellent!!

Happy Bay Villa is a jewel. Both the view and the property are five star. The pool/deck/patio area is so great we ended up spending much more time at the villa than would be typical for us on a trip like this. The bedrooms are lovely (if you are renting all four note that one of them does not have its own bathroom) and each room has its own climate control. The kitchen is very well equipped, with two refrigerators and a wine cooler.
As advertised the villa overlooks Happy Bay, and it is a 10 minute walk both there and also to Friar’s Bay. Happy Bay is gorgeous (and btw one of the island’s unofficial nude beaches) but has no facilities; bring what you need with you. Friar’s Bay has chairs, a restaurant and some water sports.

For us the location was perfect; walk to the beach, and get to Marigot, Grand Case and Orient Bay within 15 minutes (traffic permitting!!!)

WhereToStay was very easy to work with. This trip was a scramble; we were supposed to go to St. Barth but both we and our agent there realized about nine days out that there was not going to be enough clarity about entrance requirements for us to proceed. Since we were flying into St. Martin anyway we decided to see if we could still make the trip work in
the time frame we already had. As we looked at properties Happy Bay Villa pretty much jumped off the page. WhereToStay and Shawna took care of arrangements very quickly; in less than a day we were booked.

Dining out is a big part of these kinds of trips for us and Shawna’s list (plus a shorter one she prepared just for us) were very helpful.
A VERY big shout out to our on-island concierge Giovanni. He did everything from booking all our restaurants to rescuing us when we took the wrong set of villa keys and couldn’t get back in. When we couldn’t don’t quite get the location of the COVID testing site straight he even drove out there, took a picture and sent it to us! We nominate him for Concierge of the Year.