Villa Vivante

For 5 nights I am holidaying in Coffs Harbour, staying at a fabulous mansion called "Villa Vivante". My friends and I found this Villa on Stayz.com and after looking at more photos on the Villa website we decided to book it, even though it costs $1,200 a night!
So we got together a group of 8 of us (two couples, and 4 singles) and decided to make a holiday of it at the end of January. The week before our holiday we were starting to worry because of the threats of floods in the area, and we weren't positive we'd be able to even get here! But we all made it, and we've been greatly enjoying the mansion, especially today since the sun has finally come out!

The photo above was taken earlier today from the steps leading out to the infinity pool. Impressive, I know. But the water is pretty darn cold!!
This mansion has a lot of great features but it's not without fault.

• The 8 person spa was broken, so we haven't been able to use it until today (with only 2 days left in our stay).


• The beautiful kitchen is missing a standard spatula/egg flip, the blender leaks, the dishwasher takes forever, and the large plates don't fit in the dishwasher!


• Due to either bad craftmanship or just bad weather, there are wet spots around the house, and the wooden frames of the doors seem to expand and then make it difficult to close the doors.


• The rain-type shower in one of the rooms has barely any shower pressure, and therefore is a bit of a waste.


• The fancy bath in my room has one of those plugs you usually see in hotels where you have to turn a silver knob and the plug comes up/goes down. This doesn't work, and it takes a lot of fiddling to get the plug to go up so you can empty the bath.


• There are no fly-screens, which is great for the open-air vibe, but I'm sure there are other kind of fly-preventing devices which could have been installed.


• The drive way is an absolute bitch to get up and down - pretty dangerous and scary - and the parking situation is also difficult.

But really, these are only complaints because this house is so fabulous that it seems strange you wouldn't strive for perfection when you're building it. The fact that the spa wasn't heating up really is a first world problem!