Beacon Inn | Boston Bed and Breakfast | Brookline, MA

It’s (almost) Memorial Day weekend here in Boston and while the weather forecast doesn’t look too promising, we certainly aren’t letting that keep us down. For starters, we’ve got the first ever Boston Calling Music Festival on May 25 and 26 featuring fun., The National, The Shins, Marina and the Diamonds, and more. We may be looking at a few showers this weekend but the event promises to go on rain or shine, so grab your tickets and head on down to City Hall Plaza!

On a somewhat more somber note, visitors to our city may notice that the Boston Common has been partially transformed from today through Sunday with the Military Heroes Garden of Flags, an annual tradition in which more than 20,000 flags are planted in the Common to honor all our fallen heroes since World War I. It’s a poignant way to start your journey on the Freedom Trail, which is one of the best ways to see the sights of Boston.

Baseball fans, take note, the Red Sox are home today through Tuesday, playing a four-game series against the Indians and two games against the Phillies. There’s nothing that says springtime in Boston more than a day at Fenway Park.

And finally the Museum of Fine Arts is holding their free Memorial Day Community Weekend, promising three days of special exhibitions, art making, gallery tours, family activities, and a community art project. Admission to the museum will be completely free of charge for all visitors from May 25 to 27.

Whatever your reason for visiting our city this weekend, make our Boston bed and breakfast your home away from home.

Not often does Boston have the pleasure of hosting music festivals full of critically acclaimed musicians. But on May 25 and 26, City Hall Plaza will attract thousands of fans with the Boston Calling Music Festival!

Artists like fun., The National, Marina and the Diamonds, The Shins, Dirty Projectors, and many more will come together for a two-day event that is fun for the whole family! You can choose between one-day passes, weekend passes, VIP one-day passes, or VIP weekend passes!

Be sure to bring sunscreen or an umbrella, because the show will go on rain or shine. Wear light clothing and comfortable shoes, as there will be limited seating, And remember to leave all food and beverages at home! Some of Boston’s most popular food trucks will be on hand to serve delicious food all day! If you’re over 21, beer and wine will also be served in the beer garden and VIP areas.

If you’re coming from out of down for the festival and are looking for a place to stay during the festival, the Beacon Inn is just a short train ride from City Hall Plaza! At the Inn, you are far enough from all the craziness at the festival yet still close enough to get to the show early. You’ll want to make sure you get a good spot to see the performers in action!

Be sure to catch one of the Boston’s greatest events and spend your nights afterward at our bed and breakfast! Our rooms are perfect for unwinding after a long day of dancing!

We’re almost halfway through April which means that May graduation dates are just around the corner! Our Boston bed and breakfast locations are located close to several area schools, including Boston College, Boston University, Simmons College, Emmanuel College, and more. Our historic brownstones offer a quiet refuge from the hustle and bustle of graduation season, yet our proximity to local attractions and public transportation make us a convenient hub for your Boston visit.

This is always a very popular time of year for Boston hotels so we recommend booking your rooms early! Some of the busier graduation weekends are currently closed to online bookings but we do still have rooms available! You can call us directly at 617-566-0088 or 888-575-0088 for up-to-date availability and rates. Let the Beacon Inn be your home away from home this graduation season.

On rare occasion, The Beacon Inn bed and breakfast hosts the most American type of guest: those road-tripping across country to visit every National and American league baseball park. In that spirit—and the spirit of this, the first month of the baseball season—we’re duty-bound to remind our other, more relaxed guests that Fenway Park is open for business. You are welcome to worship there during your stay, and we have it on good information that Boston’s holy leaders give dispensation for mistaking this green jewel for a Temple.

Yawkey Way, the street on which Fenway is parked, is tree-lined and especially pretty at sunset, on game day, when it’s closed to automotive traffic and opens up to allow fans to stroll among souvenir hawkers, baseball cap vendors, and street food purveyors. If marinating in the history of the area brings about a Red Sox conversion experience to a stark-raving Sox fan, the baseball-deranged staff at the front desk can help!

The bed and breakfast staff can recommend a number of other Boston baseball sites that recall the sport’s early glory days. Head over to Huntington Avenue, home of Northeastern’s campus, to see the site of the Huntington Avenue American Base Ball Grounds.

While the site itself is unimpressive today (it’s Northeastern’s indoor athletic arena), there is a plaque and statue on an adjacent street named World Series Way. Both the plaque and statue were erected in 1993, the former to memorialize the park’s hosting the first World Series in 1903 and the latter to commemorate Cy Young pitching the first perfect game of the modern era one year later in 1904.

That should be plenty of baseball touring for one afternoon, and imagining Cy Young pitching a no-hitter will work up an appetite. If that’s the case, Chicken Lou’s is a short walk from World Series Way, and despite it’s small size (it’s a 10’ by 20’ shack), it serves up delicious sandwiches with names like the Cholesterol (bacon, egg & cheese), TKO (chicken, swiss, bacon & honey mustard), and Naughty Nuggets (fried chicken nuggets). Just like The Babe used to eat.

Are you stuck looking for a last-minute hotel for the 2013 Boston Marathon? Then look no further! The staff at the Beacon Inn has you covered. We have a limited number of rooms available at both our 1087 and 1750 Boston bed and breakfast hotels for travelers looking for a place to stay during the Marathon. It’s just a few days away so book now before our last few rooms fill up! Our hotels are located close to public transportation and are just off the Marathon route. With two locations on Beacon Street at approximately the 23- and 24-mile markers, we are one of the best choices for hotels close to the Boston Marathon. You can cheer the runners on from the sidelines without even leaving our front porch! Check our availability online or call us directly at 617-566-0088 for more information.

In the food truck business, Boston restaurateurs would have to put hundreds of trucks into operation to rival the number of trucks operated by chefs in Austin, Texas and Portland, Oregon—both food truck meccas boasting 600 trucks (or “carts”) apiece. If new food trucks continue to rumble into business at the current rate of 28 per year, it won’t be long before Boston, like Portland, can support a food truck tourism industry. This month marks the beginning of food-truck-hunting open season; it’s time to wash off your handkerchief for 7 months of glorious mouth-wiping, and mouth-watering, gastronomic goodness.

It’s possible to sample all of Boston’s 78 truck-rateaurs—and make no mistake, some of this street food puts sit-down gourmet dining to shame in quality and price—in as little as two weeks. Here at the Beacon Inn, we realize (some of us, reluctantly) that most of our bed and breakfast guests want to do more than nosh-nom-nom their way around Brookline and Boston, so we’ve developed a list of our favorite trucks and keep a schedule of their destinations at our front desk. This list is updated from time-to-time, and we’ll occasionally post these updates, as reviews, on our blog.

In no particular order, the Beacon Inn’s top-three food truck favorites:

The Chicken and Rice Guys: lamb gyro plate
Roxy’s Gourmet Grilled Cheese: Mighty Rib Melt
The Dining Car: Honey Truffle Goat Cheese Sandwich

Spring has finally come to Boston which can only mean that it’s time for the Boston Marathon! An annual event since 1897, the Marathon attracts runners from all over the world, and we’ve had the opportunity to host many of these athletes over the years at our Boston bed and breakfast. Beginning in Hopkinton, the course travels over 26 miles of Greater Boston, passing through Ashland, Framingham, Natick, Wellesley, Newton, and Brookline, before reaching the finish line in Copley Square.

The 2013 Boston Marathon will be held on Monday, April 15, known as Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts. Though the holiday was initially created to commemorate the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first military engagements of the Revolutionary War, it has become known colloquially as “Marathon Monday” due to the fact that the Marathon is run on this day each year. With the coming of spring in beautiful Boston and Brookline, this is the perfect time to visit our city.

Our two hotels in Brookline are located right on the Marathon route on Beacon Street at approximately the 23- and 24-mile markers, giving you some of the best front row seats to the action! Whether you’re here as a runner or just to cheer from the sidelines, the Beacon Inn is the perfect place to stay when visiting Boston for the Marathon. Time is running out so call us at 617-566-0088 to book your room today!

 
As a student in downtown Boston, the Boston Duck Tour might give you a bit of a fright. Those boats on wheels are massive and you hope to the heavens that the driver can see you as you cross the street. Then there’s the flashing lights that come from the cameras in the passenger seats and you wonder if any unflattering pictures of you will surface on the Internet.

But all of the silly fears aside, the Boston Duck Tour is an innovative way to explore the city of Boston that’s fun for the entire family.

The big boats on wheels are actually World War II amphibious landing vehicles that take you through Newbury Street, the Freedom Trail, Fenway Park, and Quincy Market. And when you’ve spotted all of Boston’s most famous sites, the Duck Tour takes you on the Charles River, where you can catch a view of the city unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.

 
As you head out of class, your fear of the Duck can wither away because the ConDUCKtors are highly trained operators of the vehicles and they hignly encourage waving and quacking at pedestrians.

So if you’re looking for something to do when you’re in Boston, the Duck Tours are a fun adventure and a perfect way to see the city! A stay at the Beacon Inn is the perfect way to relax and unwind after a day of sightseeing. We are just minutes away from all the local attractions Boston has to offer, but just far enough that you won’t have to listen to all the quacking!

 
On February 2nd, Punxsutawney Phil emerged out of his burrow and saw no shadow. This proves to be a beacon of hope for the red-nosed, shivering people of Boston as it means spring is just around the corner.

This is the first time Phil hasn’t seen his shadow since 2011, one of the coldest winters in recent memory. But when we got wind of his prediction we quickly began walking through the mini mountain snow banks with our heads held high. We knew that it would soon only be a memory and we could hang up those North Face jackets.

 
Though this winter has been mild, everyone misses how beautiful springtime in Boston can be. With the flowers in bloom, the bitter wind turns into a light breeze. It is the perfect time of year to relax in all of the beautiful parks in Brookline or to embark on some sightseeing adventures in downtown Boston.

When you come to the Beacon Inn, you’re just minutes away from experiencing all of the life and beauty that comes when spring rolls around. And with Punxsutawney Phil predicting that it’s even closer to our grasp, why not catch a glimpse early?