Very nicely renovated property. Interior decor is tasteful. Well equipped kitchen.

It is located in the rolling, wooded,beautiful part of Durham called Lakewood. It is a very short walk to excellent restaurants like The Refectory, Guglhupf, Foster’s Market, Saltbox, and Taqueria La Vaquita. We loved walking around the old neighborhoods many with beautiful gardens and into Duke woods. It is a short drive to Duke Gardens and downtown Durham.

It didn’t have any wine glasses

Location was great for our family since our son lives nearby. It was a lovely place to stay. We very much appreciated having some coffee available, and a few teabags would be nice too, especially for the first morning after a late arrival. The beds were very comfortable. Gügelhopf is within walking distance!

Since this is a new property, we have a few suggestions for the owners to make it even more practical to stay there: a place to hang coats near the door and a shoe rack below would help keep wet coats and shoes in place (it rained during our stay) and also prevent forgetting the outer wear you otherwise have to put in the closet. I suggest at least 8 hooks for the four guests. It is hard to travel with tissue boxes so a few “starter boxes” like you do with kitchen and bathroom supplies would be much appreciated. A notebook for house info like password and info from the welcome letter would be great as well since I found it hard to keep looking through all the emails for that info. Also when we visit a new place, we always need local information about things like traffic rules (e.g. is turning right on red allowed, or what can be recycled, or where is a nearby grocery for essentials, are there poisonous snakes on the woods trails (!), etc.) so that is useful to include in a notebook. We like to recycle when possible so a separate bin for recycling would be well-used. A small hand vac or access to a vacuum or even a carpet sweeper would be helpful since there is a white rug and coming in from the sandy parking space on a rainy day can be messy. Add a wall mirror to the second bedroom for times when the bathroom is in use. Add some folding suitcase stands so we don’t have to place cases on the furniture. Plastic flowers never improve the decor and are usually in the way. The neighborhood is a lovely and friendly place to walk, where people have wonderful front yard native gardens, flower gardens, and raised vegetable beds.