Island Views

During our 2-week trip to FNQ, we spent 2 nights at the Pullman Reef Casino hotel before taking the 25-minute drive to Palm Cove with Pieter from Zoom FNQ, a very reliable transfer service we used to and from Cairns airport and to and from hotels to Palm Cove. We'd booked apartment 6 at Island Views (The Boutique Collection) for a week and were delighted with it. There are 16 apartments in the complex, some of which are owner-occupied and apt 6 is on the second floor so it is very private and looks across at the beach. Apartments 9 to 16 on the 3rd and 4th floors would probably have a bit better view. We booked it as a 2-bedroom apartment but all 3 bedrooms were open for use. The design is excellent with an enormous king master bedroom and ensuite with an amazing spa bath and push back doors opening onto a large covered balcony. That balcony has a dining table in front of the separate push back doors which lead inside to a large living room and kitchen. This living room has plenty of seating and a large TV with the free to air stations. The kitchen is very well appointed with lots of cupboards and an island bench with many drawers of crockery, cutlery glasses etc. A family could move in and live there very comfortably without needing to bring anything except their luggage. Off the kitchen is a second living room with a large TV which has access to streaming services and would be ideal as a kids retreat. A hallway leads to a second bathroom and a second bedroom with king bed and a 3rd bedroom with 2 singles. Both of these bedrooms have doors out to a rear balcony. All bedrooms have plenty of wardrobe space but none have a TV. 2 sets of lifts service the complex and each lift opens to 2 apartments (apts 5 and 6 in our case). The lifts go down to the basement and each apartment has an allocated long and wide parking space. As with many places in FNQ, the pool is not heated which meant that, during the winter months, the water is a little cool. However, we still swam in the pool most days and pretty much had the whole pool area to ourselves each time. The ground floor apartments are just above the pool so don't have much privacy and could get noisy if lots of kids are swimming. They probably don't get as good a view of the beach as the higher apartments. We didn't swim at the beach but a lot of people were doing so. We had no need of a car during our stay as everything you need is within walking distance. Aside from lots of restaurants and takeaway places, there is a small supermarket and a general store as well as clothes shops and a chemist. We had dinners at Kushi (twice) and Beach Almond and lunches at Portofino (twice), O'Donnell's Irish and Reef House. Our dinner at the Life saving Club was just okay as was take away pizza from Il Forno (all reviewed separately). There's a bottle shop down at the far south end of the cove but I couldn't be bothered walking there so I paid above the odds for takeaway grog at the life saving club bottle shop. We were very disappointed to leave at the end of the week and will stay at Island Views longer next trip. Edwin from Zoom FNQ was there on time to pick us up for the drive back to Cairns and our 5-night stay at Shangri-La Hotel. The daily cost for our stay at Island Views was more than the daily total cost for the 2 rooms we each had at both of the hotels but the extra cost was well worth it.