Historic Salyards Mansion by Heirloom Boutique Collection — Attraction in Duluth

I was torn between 4 and 5 stars. Ideally, I would have liked to choose 4.5 stars. The property is beautiful in all aspects, and the owners have taken great care to inform guests thoroughly about pretty much everything--e.g., check-in procedures, history of the property, things to do in the area, local restaurants/coffee shops/breweries. The latter three were communicated via an informational book they made for each room.

Things that could be improved/changed in my opinion: 1) There was no source of filtered water anywhere to be found; there was a large glass bottle of (presumably) filtered water in our room, but in the main house where the coffee and tea are located, there was no source of water; 2) There were no decaffeinated tea or coffee options; 3) I don't say this with malice, but the "pastries" were very marginal, bordering on "not good;" it might be better to not offer any breakfast items, or to offer something like Belvita or perhaps a "higher end" prepackaged item of some sort; I know that presents a certain image that the owners may not want, but again, the breakfast items offered were--I apologize--just not very good; 4) The coffee was sub-par, with essentially no robustness at all; I would suggest a Keurig machine with stainless steel reusable baskets and paper filters that can be put inside the baskets, both of which are readily obtainable on Amazon.

This is a beautiful place with a quiet and central location, so I strongly recommend it overall. I just think a few tweaks would make it almost perfect.

The pictures are: the main room (sitting room) in the mansion, our room in the carriage house (Brule River Room), and the marvelous sun room where I wrote...

We stayed here for Grandmas Marathon. The location was very good. It was 10-15 walk from the race at the top of Lemon-drop Hill, and one mile from U of M Duluth shuttle. We were in the Ballroom Suite which easily accommodated our group of 5 people. It was clean and nice and the kitchen was very usable. There was a very nice balcony with a distant view of the water.

My only concern was check-in. We found 4 pm to be too late so we requested an early check-in. We had to pay 50$ for one hour early, which seems exorbitant. We also called, as suggested by management, to request an even earlier check-in. The call seemed to go to some sort of larger call center and the person said they would look into my request but never returned the call. We ended up at a waterfront park for a couple hours, thank goodness the weather was nice. This small issue aside, we would definitely recommend it and return ourselves. Just make sure you request early check-in well ahead of time and be prepared...

Hubby and I are celebrating our 45th wedding anniversary and decided to take a little getaway adventure. The Salyard Mansion was the perfect place for us to stay while we explored the Duluth area. Everything was decorated so beautifully and our unit in the Carriage House was cute and cozy. We especially enjoyed the jacuzzi after riding bikes along the lake. It was also fun just to walk around the area and gaze at all the beautiful mansions. We even found an estate sale and bought a shirt there from back home. We never needed to call our hosts for anything but they were very attentive, making sure we got in ok and had everything we needed. Next time we’d like to use the sauna since we were too busy taking in all the sites and activities around the area. Oh and we loved having the Duluth Coffee in our room as well as the little frig for the yummy leftovers we had from from around the area. We would definitely like...