A Stay at Summit Street Inns

Hi, friends! We recently went to Winston-Salem for a friend’s birthday and decided to stay at Summit Street Inns so we could walk back from the party and not worry about parking and/or driving. I couldn’t find a ton of information about Summit Street on the Internet so I thought I’d share a little bit from our very short stay.

Summit Street Inns is one of the historical inns in town, managed by the same people as The Shaffner Inn (which I’m a little more familiar with since it’s much closer to the campus of my alma mater). Summit Street Inns consists of two neighboring buildings thus the plural name. The check-in was in The Sheppard House which is the brick building on the left when you arrive.

We stayed in the West End Suite (fitting name for the neighborhood) of the Ludlow House which seemed to have stained glass everywhere (I’m learning that’s a thing for Victorian houses as I write this…). Upon our arrival, we were greeted with a small bottle of wine, for which they texted us ahead of time to confirm our preference. You can opt for beer instead if you’re not a wine drinker.

Our quick stay was from Saturday night only, and we didn’t run into or hear anyone else the entire time which was a pleasant surprise though it might’ve been an extra quiet weekend in town (past graduation season, etc.).

There were two options for breakfast–a continental breakfast at Summit Street Inns or a “hot breakfast” at The Shaffner Inn about a mile away. Since we are breakfast people, we decided to drive over to The Shaffner Inn. You could definitely walk there if you would like but parking is easy since there is a small private lot.

Founders Restaurant at The Shaffner Inn is no longer open to the public and they are only doing events at the Inns. This change seemed to be pretty recent based on Google reviews, and it was sort of a bummer since I recall the brunch at the Founders being pretty good.

Not sure if it’s the norm with the new way of operation with Founders but the day we went, The Shaffer Inn had a breakfast buffet laid out in the dining room. It was a step above continental breakfast with grits and sausages and eggs but obviously not as nice as it used to be when you could order off of the Founders breakfast menu.

Overall, we had a brief but lovely stay at Summit Street Inns! Our only regret from our stay was not taking a bath in the clawfoot bathtub since we just didn’t have time. Next time for sure!