Squirrel's Nest Bed and Breakfast, LLC Chosen as the B&B in Iowa with the "BEST BREAKFAST" for 2015 and "Best Overall B&B in Iowa" for 2014, the Squirrel’s Nest Bed & Breakfast, LLC is owned by an architect and an artist. Also chosen "Most Scenic View in Iowa" for 2013, & 2014, this B&B provides an awesome, panoramic view of the Mississippi River Valley from the third-story, Penthouse balcony and from the first-story deck. A leisurely walk through the neighborhoods of the Historic North Hill District's Victorian mansions can easily take you downhill to numerous, downtown specialty and antique shops. You may also relax and dine at a variety of fabulous, quality restaurants. All are within walking distance for you to enjoy; however, the walk uphill is a bit more difficult ... Reservations can be made online or by phone. Pamper yourself in our quiet rooms and enjoy a romantic "Squirrel Love" breakfast in our river-view dining room. The Squirrel's Nest Penthouse Suite is an award winning destination!
"Best Overall B&B in Iowa" for 2014 Guests of the Iowa Bed & Breakfast Guild also chose Squirrel's Nest B&B, LLC as the B&B in Iowa with the "BEST Breakfast" for 2015 and the "Most Scenic View in Iowa" for 2012, 2013, & 2014 Tripadvisor 2014 and 2015 Certificate of Excellence In 1997, Qualified Remodeler magazine chose the Squirrel's Nest Penthouse Suite as the BEST room addition in the USA. Squirrel's Nest Penthouse Suite - $175/night/couple - Futon $15 extra/booking Bear's Den Room - $105/night/couple Berry Patch - $95/night/couple Graco - Pack 'n Play - $10/extra/booking Twin-sized, Air Mattress - $5/extra/booking $10 extra/night/child for all rooms Environmentally friendly accommodations - recycle all glass, metal, & plastics; compost all organic waste; practice non-toxic, eco-friendly cleaning. All the coffee grounds from our K-cups is recycled into our raspberry patch. / No one drinks river water ... Black Raspberry on the inside
Frosted with our special Black Raspberry Devonshire Cream"Squirrel-Love" Breakfast Guests in the Penthouse eat Squirrel-shaped Melon Guests in the Bear's Den eat Bear-shaped Melon Entree: Oven-baked Denver Omelet"Bear Meets Squirrel" When melon is in season in Iowa, guests can eat both Entree: Maple Syrup & Pecan French Toast served in a Ramekin Welcome to Scenic, Historic Burlington, IA! A special place that is a totally unique architectural paradise. Photos of Snake Alley (left) and Downtown Burlington (below) taken by Chelsea Stevens. Trip Advisor's recent reviews: While traveling for business I needed a place to stay in eastern Iowa and quickly used the trip adviser app and found this place with high marks in Burlington. I try to stay in B&B's as much as possible in my travels. After 34 years in hundreds of different inns from Cape Cod, Mass. to Sequim, Washington, I would rate the Squirrel's Nest #1 in total experience. Most of the reviewers mention the view which is incredible but that is only part of the overall ambiance of the totally charming penthouse suite.
Delightful conversation, delicious food, and attention to details made for an unforgettable stay. During our recent visit to Burlington, Iowa, we had the good fortune to stay at the Squirrel's Nest Bed and Breakfast. We stayed in the Penthouse and had a wonderful view of the Mississippi River. Every item served to us at breakfast was gourmet. Our hosts were charming and we were very comfortable. I wholeheartedly endorse the Squirrel's Nest Bed and Breakfast for your next stay in the Burlington, Iowa area.Riverboats frequently travel along the Mississippi River. The Queen of the Mississippi docked in downtown near the Port of Burlington It was photographed by Sherry Ohlmutz from the balcony of the Squirrel's Nest B&B, LLC Penthouse Suite on Tuesday, August 5, 2014 as it made the trip north to St. Paul, MN. Queen of the Mississippi Photo by Sherry OhlmutzQueen of the Mississippi Photo by Roy Rocky PhillipsQueen of the Mississippi Photo by Sherry Ohlmutz
Voted "Most Scenic View" in Iowa for 2012 - Private, quiet, relaxing. Panoramic, bluff view of the Mississippi River - Riverview balcony - Full-bath with shower - Elevated Whirlpool - Bed + Futon. Free Satellite TV & WiFi available. Second floor - quietly relax with the television or read a book. King-size Tempurpedic bed - Private full-bath with shower - Street view with large shuttered, bay window. Extended families, and those traveling with friends, also reserve the Penthouse Suite to enjoy the third floor view; or they reserve the Berry Patch to save money. Second floor - small room with full-sized bed - private full-bath with tub/shower combination. WiFi access with NO television in this room. First floor deck accessIt's a fun game, and one I'm not above engaging in: what is New York's cool neighborhood du jour? If you follow the real estate press, you’ll know the answer: Bedford-Stuyvesant. The New York Post, New York magazine and the New York Times—that ultimate arbiter of the line between under-the-radar and formally “up-and-coming”—have all anointed Bed-Stuy the new hipster 'hood, with one broker dubbing it “the hottest neighborhood in Brooklyn.”
I moved to Bed-Stuy a little over a year ago, after three years living just over the boundary in next-door Clinton Hill. I rent a studio that lacks an oven and a bathtub for $1,135 a month. And, like the Times, I consider the neighborhood a beautiful and diverse place, with a friendly interaction between people of different ages, races and income levels, for the most part, and stretches of gorgeous architecture. I won’t tell you not to move to Bed-Stuy, nor make any value judgments about who should or should not live there. But I’m getting out, moving to a far roomier studio in nearby Fort Greene.If your constraints are similar to mine—workdays that stretch beyond 9-to-5, a commute to Manhattan, the desire for plentiful and unpretentious dining options—you may want to look elsewhere, or at least know what you're in for. Below, nine things I’ve gleaned about the neighborhood:1. "911 is a joke" I used to live in Clinton Hill, and during that period was mugged, robbed and threatened on multiple occasions, so I spent some quality time filling out paperwork at the 88th precinct.
The Clinton Hill precinct is welcoming, friendly, and full of helpful cops who get to your house three minutes after your robbery. By comparison, the 79th and 81st precincts in Bed-Stuy have a lot more on their hands, meaning that unless you’ve been stabbed, you’re unlikely to get much attention. If you call your precinct with a noise complaint at 10 p.m., don't expect a response until, oh, at least 3 a.m., when silence has once again been restored. Even though I use my patented lady-in-distress voice—I've called about five times in the last year to complain about the band next door—no one ever responded in a timely fashion. (Editor's note: The writer called the local police precinct, not 911, about her noise complaints.)2. Your neighbors are lawless children (with bank accounts)This brings me to the neighbors. I recently paid a visit to the people who live next door—a group of twenty something, 9-to-5-job-scorning, independent-art-project types—to ask them to keep their frequent late-night drumming sessions to a minimum.
One of them was polite and said they’d quiet down, but not before another one scolded me for making the request in the first place. “Maybe you shouldn’t have moved to Brooklyn,” she snorted. I was ambivalent, part of me gleeful to, essentially, be called a yuppie for the first time in my life. But another part of me loathed to get into the “Who’s more Brooklyn?” debate. The takeaway here, my friends, is that, yes, your neighbors in Bed-Stuy will largely be families and others who came in search of relatively affordable living with access to Manhattan. But there will also be those who arrived because they are in a band. Maybe they read the Times article. Dad pays the bills and this is a fun adventure before starting a master's program at the New School. They will not be the kind of neighbors most people want.3. You can’t see the forest OR the treesOne of the perks of New York living is taking a stroll in a public park. New Yorkers are always citing stats about the amount of green space in their city.
It's a needed respite from your cramped apartment, which may or may not have some combination of bugs, rodents and bad plumbing (we'll get to this in a second). But the problem with Bed-Stuy, you see, is that there is basically one park—Herbert Von King—and you may or may not live anywhere near it. If you don't, forget that stroll. You'll have to board a train to see a tree.The G train is lacking, to put it mildly (Photo credit: Wikimedia)4. Transportation really is a problemI live in the part of Bed-Stuy that's pretty much closest to Manhattan. If my commute takes 35 minutes, I consider it a victory; normally, it's more like 50 minutes. But it’s not just that the commute is long. (Plenty of other outer-borough dwellers and even Manhattanites spend a lot of time on the subway.) It’s that the trains are so unpredictable, especially at night, and don't seem to be a priority for the MTA. First off, the G train. Much ink has been spilled on the horrors of the G, which is one of the three lines that serve the neighborhood.
It’s short (only four cars long), comes infrequently (every 30 minutes at night), and it’s basically always down for repairs. There’s nothing quite so inconvenient as a late-night G failure, when you realize the only way you’ll get home is by blowing your budget on a gypsy cab to your front door. It only takes one or two to really ruin the neighborhood for you. Especially when added to the MTA’s seemingly constant, poorly announced work on the line on weeknights. A few weeks ago, the G train failed to follow a schedule posted on the platforms—which already called for reduced service, with trains coming only every half hour—prompting one particularly frustrated traveler to simply light up a cigarette on the platform.Meanwhile, the C train, regularly rated by straphangers as the worst in the city, and featuring cars that date to 1964, does on occasion clank its way to Bed-Stuy, for those of you who prefer that variety of transportation hell. (There's also the A, which is a similar story; the J/M/Z runs along Broadway, the northern border of the nabe, and is only accessible to a select few commuters.)
Unlike other neighborhoods that are stuck with shoddy trains, there aren’t many alternatives in Bed-Stuy. Buses are reliable and decent, and could take you to the Atlantic Center or Broadway Junction to head to Manhattan, but there are no express buses from the area. It’s sort of a perfect storm of crappy transit. 5. The food is great—if you can stomach the serviceMuch has been made of Bed-Stuy’s growing dining scene, and many of the neighborhood’s new(ish) restaurants—like DO or DiNE, Oaxaca and the nearby Marietta—are tasty, I must admit. The problem is, many of these places suffer from the-only-game-in-town syndrome. As a result, service is inattentive, and comes with charming prohibitions, such as only taking cash.Italian restaurant Seraghina is a neighborhood favorite, but servers frequently mess up my orders and have never once asked how my meal is. This is only my personal experience, but it's not like the prices run so much lower than those in Manhattan.
When I buy an $11 sandwich and say "no tomatoes," I, for one, expect not to have to eat friggin’ tomatoes.In a related insult, the uber trendy Do or DiNE serves excellent food but only in the most ironic way, seemingly capturing all that’s wrong with this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. Last time I visited, the dessert menu included a frozen Snickers bar, presented elegantly with powdered sugar dusted neatly over the wrapped candy bar. For $7.Neighborhood haunt DO or DiNE is trendy but pretentious, our writer says6. Grocery stores are lackingGrocery stores in New York City tend to be one of three types: horribly overpriced but decent; horrible but well-priced for the city; or Trader Joe's/Fairway, the supermarkets that most people can only aspire to live near. In Bed-Stuy, variety No. 2 is all that’s available: a generic Key Foods, smelling oddly of the freezer, with poor selection, especially for produce or healthy options. The exception is a few Hasidic-run stores, with their beautiful fruits and clean lovely aisles.
But they will not provide pork or any number of other staples. And maybe this won't always be the case, but at my local store of this sort, it's been made pretty clear that some of the other customers wish I'd get my stuff at the Goyim grocery store. I've never been told to leave, but I've gotten the silent treatment, especially from the men. The Hasidic-owned wine shop is lovely, though, and the proprietor friendly. Alas, he's not there on Saturday, when I really need him.Why, oh why, is there such variation in sidewalk cleanliness among New York City neighborhoods? ‘Tis a great mystery. The city should hire an overpriced consultant to sort it out. Regardless of the cause, Bed-Stuy streets appear to be magnets for dog shit. I'm sure that the streets of Kensington offer much cleaner walking fare.8. Crime can't be ignored I offer this as a standalone item:But in case you need any more convincing, take it from a cop who works in the area: “All I can say is there should be a sign that reads, ‘Buyer beware,'" this person told the Post.9.