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We run Spare Keys Stay ourselves, here in Boston. Questions before you book? Daryl answers personally.
Call or text 617-799-4558 [email protected]Registered with the City of Boston · STR-629372
For a first visit, with family
Hotels in Boston, or a whole furnished apartment 15-20 minutes from downtown: your own kitchen, laundry and free parking, sleeps up to 10. Book direct, no fees.
Almost everyone searching for where to stay in Boston is choosing between a downtown hotel room and something with more space further out. It is worth being clear about what each one is.
A downtown hotel puts you inside walking distance of the Freedom Trail, and charges you for a room that sleeps two, with parking on top. If you are travelling as a couple and flying in, that is often the right answer and we will not pretend otherwise.
If there are four, six or ten of you, the maths changes completely. Two or three hotel rooms become one apartment. You get separate bedrooms (plus a sofa bed in the living room in many apartments, for the largest groups), a kitchen for breakfast before you head out, laundry for a longer trip, and the car parks free instead of costing you a nightly garage rate.
People arrive at this looking for different words. Some search for a serviced apartment, some for an aparthotel or apartment hotel, some for a furnished short-term rental, and a few just want a hotel with a kitchen. They are all describing the same thing, and it is what we let.
You get the whole apartment to yourselves: its own front door, a full kitchen, a washer and dryer in most of them, and a living room with a table everyone fits around. There is no front desk. Most of our buildings hold more than one apartment, each rented separately, so you may share the entrance or stairs with other guests - but nobody else is inside your apartment. What you do get that a serviced apartment company usually cannot offer is free off-street parking at every address, and an owner who answers the phone.
It suits the stays a hotel room handles worst: a family who would otherwise book three rooms, a work placement running several weeks, a medical stay, or anyone who would rather cook breakfast than queue for it. Stays run from a single night to a month or more, and the nightly rate falls as the stay gets longer - which is why monthly rentals and month-long bookings are common here. Every length books online.
The Freedom Trail is the spine of a first visit - a walking route through the historic sites, from Boston Common past Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market to Bunker Hill in Charlestown. The New England Aquarium and the Museum of Fine Arts are good days out with children, Duck Tours are a fun way to see the city from the road and the river, and the Public Garden is the place for a warm afternoon.
Closer to where you will actually be staying are Franklin Park and its zoo, the JFK Presidential Library out on the water in Dorchester, and Castle Island - the places visitors staying downtown usually miss.
From our Dorchester apartments it is roughly 15 to 20 minutes into downtown outside rush hour, and 25 to 30 from Hyde Park. Both are on the south side of the city.
The part worth planning is parking at the other end, because that is where downtown gets expensive. Garage rates near the attractions run in the same range as event parking - Fenway averages nearly $34 a game and the garages by TD Garden run $30 to $70. Plenty of our guests leave the car at the apartment and take the train in for a few dollars, then drive on the days they are heading further out - Salem, the Cape, or a game.
Either way the car sits free where you are staying rather than adding a nightly charge to your room.
You will be staying in a residential part of Boston, not in the middle of the tourist district. One guest put it plainly: it is not a touristy area, it is where people actually live.
For some trips that is the wrong choice and we would rather you knew now. For a family or a group who want space, quiet at night, somewhere to park and a real kitchen, it is why people book here instead of a hotel - and then drive or ride the fifteen minutes in.
This apartment was perfect for our group of 5 and was clean, easy to access, and located about 20 minutes from downtown Boston - just a short train ride or Uber away. Daryl was excellent to communicate with and made sure we had everything we needed.— verified guest review
