For more than eight years, off-season weekend visitors to Hampton Terrace have visited Nejaimes Wine Shop in Lenox with a $30 Gift Certificate in hand, compliments of Hampton Terrace.

For the balance of March, leverage your $30 by taking advantage of their annual wine sale.    Many of their cases are marked down as much as 30% and many individual bottles are 50% off.    Why?    Makes no sense to me.   This store has become a destination for many from all over the Northeast.

The official excuse is that it is their 40th Anniversary.    But they do the same every year.    They also are hosting wine tastings every Saturday in March.   And on display are their large selections of cheeses, breads and complements.

A 2-night, off-season, weekend stay at Hampton Terrace includes the $30 Gift Card, full breakfast buffet, and 30% discount on a 3rd night.   We have 14 rooms, most featuring fireplaces and Jacuzzis.   #1 on Trip Advisor in Lenox.     We look forward to seeing you.

Every year we schedule major upgrades at Hampton Terrace, and this year involves all new flooring  in our Wynnstay Cottage.    Our Living Room area (shown) now has a durable hardwood-style planking with area rugs to aid areas that have always had too much traffic for carpet.

And the guest rooms, as of yesterday, are newly carpeted with some bold new color changes.    All-in-all, a hugely positive experience for us…a chance to rebuild all of the beds to make sure they are solid, clean behind and under furniture which has not been moved in a while…    We get a lot of repeat visitation in our Wynnstay Cottage (6 guest rooms, all with gas fireplaces and Jacuzzis) and I cannot wait to hear the reactions.

Time to plan your summer!    The Boston Symphony is announcing their 2010 schedule tonight, and a preview has been published in today’s Berkshire Eagle.

To see today’s HEADLINE  ARTICLE.

For a summary of the season:  CLICK  HERE

Always take advantage of a 3-day weekend!    At  Hampton Terrace it is possible to do that with a 30% discount on the 3rd night, and a $30 wine gift certificate to help make it feel like vacation.

Hampton Terrace, the #1 Lenox inn on Trip Advisor, still has rooms available for Thanksgiving weekend.    We only serve breakfast here, but we are one block walk from the Village Inn, which serves excellent New England style meals, and which will be featuring a special Thanksgiving Dinner menu.    Also, Cranwell Resort is advertising a Thankgsgiving Buffet from noon until 5 on Thanksiving Day.

At Hampton Terrace, all of our rooms have private baths, most with Jacuzzis, unless you prefer to soak in an antique claw-foot tub.   I do.    Twelve of our fourteen rooms have fireplaces…quite high in a historic inn.     We include full breakfast buffet each morning, and we help you plan your 3-day weekend with e-mailed lists of the better restaurants and lists of things to do in the area.   The Hancock Shaker Village is a perfect match for a Thanksgiving Weekend in the Berkshires.

Compared to our July-October "season," save 30% at Hampton Terrace Bed and Breakfast in Lenox between now and June 25.   Most of our rooms feature fireplaces and Jacuzzis.   Kings and queens.    Full breakfast.    All rooms have private baths.

We are very fortunate to be rated #1 by Trip Advisor in Lenox, which is the vortex for Berkshire inns, representing about 50% of the entire Berkshires.   Our Romantic Weekend Special includes a $30 Gift Certiticate to Nejaimes our local wine/gourmet food shop.    Eery Saturday, Nejaimes features all-day wine-tasting event…..and ultimately, we are paying for your choice!

Call us at 800-203-0656 for availability and a quote.

Let’s face it.     There is more to do in the Berkshires than a couple can even imagine.     This is one of the reasons that Susan and I still consider ourselves tourists in our home town (of 13 years)!    A real exploration of our Concierge Page would take literally all day.

But one experience that should be considered is a balloon ride over the Berkshire hills.   Our guests have LOVED IT, and one couple even got engaged during their ride.    Pilot Paul Sena has been taking people aloft for over 15 years, and his balloon, Thunderbuster, is familiar to most Berkshire residents, who at some point or other have seen it hanging in the sky.  

So combine an exciting new experience with a relaxing stay at Hampton Terrace Bed and Breakfast, the #1 rated Lenox inn according to Trip Advisor reviewers.     Most of our rooms feature fireplaces and Jacuzzis, and an off-season weekend stay includes a $30 gift certificate to Nejaimes, or local wine and gourmet food shop.      Full breakfast included.

When we bought Hampton Terrace in 1999, we took some pictures.   My sister-in-law’s college-age brother was majoring in photography, so we took some more.   Soon after the renovation of the carriage house, a guy walked in the front door with a camera and a business card,  so we added a few of his to the mix.   Three years ago, we had about a thirty minute opportunity to shoot our newly constructed king suites….the space of time between getting our certificate of occupancy and our first guests checking in.   I took the digital camera out there…and you know what comes next…

Many people have complimented us on our website over the years….but I always felt that our photographs undersold the property.   They were small, dark, and taken in an era when it was fashionable to put a wide angle lense on your camera, stand in the corner on a stool, and try to capture as much of the room as possible.

So last Spring, we were very lucky to host Marti Mayne overnight.   Marti is a well-known inn publicist, who does the same for the BedandBreakfast.com website.   Before staying here, she had, of course, seen our inn on the web….and when she told us that our photos had to go……it was the final small push I needed to make the commitment to good inn photography.

She recommended Mark and Matthew of Jumping Rocks Photography in Philadelphia, two guys who had their own inn at one point.   The photography at their Woolverton Inn was so spectacular, that they were asked to shoot other inns.   Ultimately, they sold their interest in the Woolverton, and now they live on the road…having now photographed literally hundreds of the most historic and prominent inns in the country.   There is a several year wait for their services, but a call from Marti on our behalf resulted in our being plugged into a cancellation spot six months later.

If you have run across this blog entry somewhere on the Internet, then I encourage you to hit "Hampton Terrace Home" on the link above and marvel at the pictures these guys took.    They were here about three days, and put in long hours.   Each room was tackled as a separate challenge….finding the right angle, setting up the lighting, and then placing a book here…a vase there…to invite the viewer into the frame.   From my point of view, there was not a single photo in the collection that did not maximize its subject and end up somewhere on our redesigned website.

So thank you Mark and Matthew.   Your reputation is well deserved.   And an added bonus to us for the experience:  we actually see our home now from a renewed perspective.    Over the past ten years, as we have hosted, entertained and fed tens of thousands of guests….as we have routinely performed the housekeeping, the maintenance and the business details….we had begun to take for granted the crystal sconces in the living room, the carousel horse, the color of the main hallway yellow…..  As many of you know….picking the right yellow can be very important and "haystack" was the result of two dozen yellow cards taped on the wall.  As we followed Matthew and Mark around the inn and heard them effuse about how to capture this detail or that…. I developed a fresh sense of pride in Hampton Terrace.  

And without a doubt, that new appreciation has been reflected in the names we have chosen for our guest rooms.   Even though Hampton Terrace has been an inn since 1937, no one had bothered to name the rooms.   It has been suggested to us many times that naming rooms would be important (I never really thought it was myself).   But after my rediscovery of the house’s details and my heightened appreciation for the people who placed a sconce here, a fireplace there…..the names of the rooms came easily.   My last fourteen blog entries cover each room and why we named each.

Enjoy our new photography on this website.   Then allow us to fulfil Mark and Matthew’s intention of inviting you into the photo, by inviting you into our inn itself.

After more than 60 years operating as an inn, Hampton Terrace’s guest rooms finally have names.   It is not that they needed names…Wynnstay Cottage 1 was pretty descriptive…but we decided that this was an opportunity to help tell the history of the property in a colorful way.

Since the 1920s, our sports heroes have swung bats, thrown touchdowns, or squared off in a ring. But prior to Henry Ford, when all local transportation involved a carriage and a horse the most idolized American heroes were those who could pull a carriage and its rider one mile down a track in as close to two minutes as possible.

In its day, this was Corvette verses GTO. Every town had a fair, and every fair had a race track. These horses, called "Trotters," were railed hundreds of thousands of miles to race legendary mares and stallions from other regions. Their names became as household as that of "the Babe."

Robert Bonner and his children (owners of Hampton Terrace from 1917-1937) were considered the premier Trotter owners in American history. The purest line begins with Hambletonian (1849-1876), who sired many of the Bonner’s most prized horses, and even Hambletonian spent his final years under Mr. Bonner’s expert and benevolent care.

"It is said that with the exception of General Grant and P. T. Barnum, Robert Bonner is known to more people than any man in America."

Rarus Room

"The Great Fatherless Trotter Stabled with Noble Companions.  …Mr. Bonner paid more for Rarus ($36,000) than he has ever paid for a trotter before, save Pocahantas. Rarus attracts more attention than he otherwise would from the fact that he is without pedigree." New York Times, 1879. In typical Bonner fashion, the purchase was a surprise headline. The day before, Rarus had been a no-show in Hartford, disappointing 15,000 fans and earning a lifetime ban from racing. It turned out that his owner, hoping to sell his horse that day, had been in negotiation with a buyer, who, wanting to protect his investment, refused to let the horse run. Mr. Bonner, desiring to save the horse’s reputation, and fulfilling his wish that all champions be allowed to retire with dignity, paid an unjustifiable fee to add the horse to his stables.  Broke world record twice: 2:14 and 2:13 1/4 in 1878

This dark, romantic room features the colors of nature – a queen bed with down comforter, gas-flame corner fireplace, television/VCR with cable, air conditioning in-season, CD player and private bath with 72" Jacuzzi whirlpool tub.  Total Room Size: 17ft. x 15 ft.( including bath).

Mass MoCA’s Sol LeWitt exhibit has been named the No. 1 art exhibit in America for 2008 by Time Magazine, which hailed it as "a great new American art-world destination."

The exhibit is located in the Berkshires, a short drive from Hampton Terrace, a top-rated inn located in Lenox.

The honor comes on the heels of a rave review for the exhibit from The New York Times last week, among other raves since its Nov. 16 opening in the Boston Globe, The Hartford Courant and various art and design Web logs — all of which bode well for Mass MoCA and the city, local officials say.

The LeWitt retrospective, which will be on display until 2033, outshone several worthy opponents for Time’s top honor, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Gustav Courbet exhibition earlier this year, along with two showings of the Terra Cotta Warriors from Japan.

"The wall drawings of Sol LeWitt are art’s equivalent of gifts that come with ’some assembly required,’" wrote Richard Lacayo, Time Magazine critic. "The plan is for the drawings to remain in place for a minimum of 25 years. So, this isn’t just an exhibition. It’s a great new American art-world destination."

Among the museums included on the magazine’s "Top Ten Museum Exhibits" were Boston’s Museum of Fine Art, the Los Angeles Museum of Contem-porary Art and The Paul Getty Museum.

"It’s deeply gratifying and a real honor to be chosen as the top exhibition of the year, ahead of shows presented by major institutions like the Met, MoMA and the Getty," Katherine Myers, the museum’s marketing and public relations, said.

"So many people put long hours into the installation, and everyone associated with it is delighted and honored," Myers said. "Despite the economic news, our visitation numbers have been high, and we’re cautiously optimistic that this amazing installation will continue to drive visitors to North Adams for years to come."

Lisa Corrin, director of the Williams College Museum of Art, who helped coordinate the exhibit, said the honor demonstrates the impact local museums have on the art world at large.

"This honor demonstrates yet again that the museums in our community are operating at a level of international importance," Corrin said. "While we in the Berkshires have great affection for Mass MoCA as a home-grown institution, it is a cultural treasure that has an impact on art lovers worldwide."

Mayor John Barrett III said the attention being paid to the newly opened exhibit has been outstanding.

"When we first announced this project over a year ago, we knew it would be big, but not like this," he said. "This (the Time recognition) is one of the most prestigious honors any cultural institution can receive. It’s a feather in the museum’s cap and a feather in the city’s cap as well."

Barrett said the announcement couldn’t have come at a better time for the museum or North Adams.

"It’s great for the museum, but even better for the city," he said. "In these hard economic times, it’s going to bring more and more people to the city."

Myers said the museum’s attendance has been "strong" since the opening of the LeWitt gallery.

"We had our best Thanksgiving weekend ever — more that twice as many visitors as some of the previous 10 years," she said. "It was also our best November ever, by far."

The LeWitt retrospective is an ongoing collaboration between the museum, Yale University Art Gallery and Williams College Museum of Art. Students from Yale, Williams College and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts worked as interns during the six-month installation process of LeWitt’s conceptual drawings, which exist as sets of directions. The completed Mass MoCA installation is the largest in the world of LeWitt’s work.

"The partnership between Mass MoCA, WCMA and Yale provides a new model for how museums with very different missions can come together to do together, as a group, what they could not do alone," Corrin said. "At a time of economic downtown, we will need to work together in order to achieve great things without lowering our standards of excellence."

LeWitt, who died in April 2007 after a prolonged battle with cancer, first began planning the exhibition after a nearly six-hour visit to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in 2003. His vision quickly became a 27,000-square-foot, three-floor installation featuring 105 of his wall drawings in Building 7 at the MoCA complex.

"The setting is close to perfect," wrote New York Times art critic Holland Cotter in a Dec. 4 review of the exhibition. "The space, with its generous windows, is large and flexible enough to accommodate more than a hundred of the ink-painting murals LeWitt designed between 1969 and 2007.

Guests of Hampton Terrace typically consider their dining experiences in the Berkshires to be a key ingredient of their stay.   So we spend a lot of energy making sure our guests’ choices are informed.

Our confirmations include a seriously edited-down list of the better local restaurants…a list based on our personal experiences, but also based on the fact that our guests have had literally over 15,000 dinners in the area….and we hear about them at breakfast.  We also keep copies of those menus in a binder in our front hall.

No doubt, the top of the list includes Blantyre, Wheatleigh, The Inn on the Green, and several other highly-rated Zagat choices.   Blantyre is located just one mile from us….and this week, their chef now belongs to a rarefied group of culinary craftsmen.

Christopher Brooks, Blantyre’s top chef for the past eight years, has received a Grand Chef Trophy. The award was presented last month by the International Congress of Relais & Chateaux at its annual gathering in Vienna.

The Relais & Chateaux association is comprised of 480 of the world’s finest hotels and gourmet restaurants.

The designation of Grand Chef is awarded annually to the "contemporary elite" of fine dining. This year, the honor went to Brooks and three other chefs from around the world.

For restaurateurs, the honor is tantamount to earning an Oscar for best director or a Pulitzer for commentary. Even for Blantyre — an establishment accustomed to racking up culinary accolades — the honor has special meaning.

"I was pleasantly surprised," Brooks said in an interview with The Eagle on Friday.

Brooks credited his "dedicated team at Blantyre" and singled out Arnaud Cotar, his No. 2 man — or chef de cuisine — for special praise.

Brooks, who has worked in tony kitchens around the world, remains passionate about cooking. "It’s a love," he said. "It’s a way of life."

Born in North London, he spent much of his youth on England’s South Coast, where began his career at Chewton Glen, an exclusive hotel in Hampshire, England.

That’s where he served an apprenticeship, from 1984 to 1988, with chef Pierre Chevillard, whom he still credits with teaching him the fundamentals of cooking.

"He was the person who trained me, (and) I still look up to him today," Brooks said.

In addition to the Grand Chef Trophy, Brooks has received kudos from the Zagat restaurant guides and Condé Nast Traveler.

Meanwhile, Blantyre is the No. 1 ranked dining establishment in the Berkshires, according to Zagat’s 2008/2009 Restaurant Guide. Forbes.com included the Lenox landmark on its "50 Best in the World" list, while Travel & Leisure listed it among "The World’s Best Hotels."

Brooks’ recipes are included in a new book, "The World of Blantyre & The Cookery of Christopher Brooks. He and the book’s author, Claire Hopley, will sign copies at The Bookstore in Lenox on Dec. 21, from 2 to 4 p.m.

Blantyre is an extraordinary experience.   At Hampton Terrace we encourage our guests to "Turn Back the Clock to the Gilded Age" and that is true….but Blantyre represents a walk into a true Baronial castle, and the room rates there reflect that experience.  Off-season rates run from $600 to $1,300/night mid-week.   I won’t say an experience at Hampton Terrace, the #1 rated Lenox inn on Trip Advisor, will compare…but then again, we are charging roughly 15% of that.    So we encourage those of you who would like a Blantyre experience, to let us find a great room for you here, and then we’ll send you five minutes down the road for a "destination" meal.