As always, Duluth will be full of attractions and events this year.  A recent bit of great news is that a small group of Tall Ships will be once again gracing our port in July. It will not be on the grand scale of last summer, but will be a nice surprise for the season. This May the newly remodeled DECC will be hosting a couple of superstars, Elton John and Sheryl Crow.  Then later this summer at Bayfront Park we will have the great honor of Willie Nelson performing.

The Visit Fleet will be setting sail and begin their dinner cruises on May 7^th with the regular sightseeing tours beginning May 13^th!  The Glensheen Mansion will be opened daily (just weekends now) beginning on May 27^th, and the William A. Irvin has already begun limited tours.

Of course this is just a small sampling of the multitude of things to do in Duluth and along the North Shore.  A favorite stop is always Gooseberry Falls and Split Rock Lighthouse, but don’t forget about Tettegouche State Park and Palisade Head further up the North Shore.  Plus so much more!  We have a ton of information for you and can always help you plan your stay.

Finally, we are very excited to start our summer with some great recognition from one of the Midwest’s premier magazines, Midwest Living.  In April, we learned we were chosen as a “Best Bed and Breakfast” in the North Shore for the 2011 Midwest Living Travel Guide.  This guide provides travelers a list of the very best places to stay.  We were then incredibly honored to be chosen in their top 30 “Best B&B’s” in the May/June 2011 issue of Midwest Living.  We are the only Bed and Breakfast chosen for our North Shore region, and quite honored to be selected when realizing that the magazine covers and includes an entire 12 state region.  Midwest Living is also one of the rare publications that actually send its writers to stay at the places they endorse!

Thank you to the amazing travel writers and editors of Midwest Living magazine for taking time to visit us, and for choosing our Inn as a “Best B&B” in both issues!  We’re looking forward to another great year in our gorgeous port city; and to welcoming old and new friends as we embark on the season that is THE reason we love Duluth!!

If January is any indication of what the year ahead will bring, we are very excited about the experiences and people we will meet in 2011.  This January has proven to be the best the AG Thomson House Bed and Breakfast has had since it’s opening in 2000; and more importantly since our caretaking began in 2007.    We have started and completed projects on the “Honey do” list, we have more to work on, and then we will be back in the heart of our busy season before we know it. 

The projects have been relatively mild so far; primarily painting updates for now.  We have some greater ambitions in mind as we head toward the spring, but we will have to take it a project at a time!  You can check out the changes going on at the Inn by going to the AG Thomson House Bed & Breakfast Facebook page and taking a look.  Don’t forget to “like us” while you’re there, and post your comments and thoughts – we would love to hear from you!   As always, we will continue to improve upon this spectacular home, and our efforts will be focused on making it an experience and environment where you, our guests, feel welcome, at home, comfortable, and rejuvenated. 

We are also very proud to announce that the AG Thomson House Bed and Breakfast has been selected and awarded some very prestigious industry awards.  We have been selected as a “Top Ten Romantic Inn” by the renowned Bed and Breakfast website iLoveInns.com.  It is a great honor to be representing Duluth among other wonderful regions across North America, including Hawaii, British Columbia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and more!  This selection comes from a choice of over 30,000 Inns across the United States and Canada.  The AG Thomson House Bed and Breakfast was carefully selected by iLoveInns.com for overall romantic attributes–scenic setting and location, interior beauty and design, heartfelt hospitality, pampering amenities and creative activities. 

We also learned that we have been awarded “BEST AMENITIES” by LanierBB.com; one of the industry’s leading Bed and Breakfast websites.  Winners of this prestigious award have been voted the best in their category by LanierBB online readers and voted for the AG Thomson House from a selection of over 8,500 Inns across the country.  We are very proud; and very thankful to all of our guests who chose our Inn for this award!  We continue to be grateful, humble and will never forget why we are here…for you!! 

Finally, it is time once again to vote in the 2011 Duluth~Superior Magazine “Best Of” Poll in the Twin Ports area.  Last year our guests helped us by voting the AG Thomson House the “Best Bed and Breakfast”, “Best Hotel Rooms”, and “Best In-room dining.”  We would be most appreciative of your support in this years’ poll once again in some of the categories listed such as “Best Bed and Breakfast”, “Best Romantic Getaway”, “Best Breakfast”, “Best Rooms”, “Best Amenities”, etc.  Just click on the link at the beginning of this paragraph, enter your email address (one vote per email address), enter your favorites in the categories listed, and then click “vote” after each entry.  You don’t have to vote for every category, but chances are if you love Duluth, you have a few favorites you would like to help out in this year’s poll.  We are always thankful for your support!  

In this first blog entry of 2011, we want to wish you a very Happy New Year!  We look forward to greeting old friends and making new. We take to heart the sign we have hanging in our living room…”Enter as strangers, leave as friends.” and we look forward to another fantastic year at the beautiful AG Thomson House Bed and Breakfast!

The most obvious is the recent launch of our new website!  This process began some time ago with design ideas and has come to fruition to be what we believe one of the nicest sites around.  We have improved the size of the pictures so guests can really see what our rooms look like with no “make-up.” We have added additional pages and kept the navigation easy, but beautiful.  One additionwe are particularly proud of is our “Plan Your Stay” page.  We spent a great deal of time working on putting this page together.  It offers guests an in-depth list of things to see and do around Duluth, no matter what the season.  We have established sample itineraries for Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter because there is always something to do in Duluth – no matter what the season or the weather!!  We know we will continue to improve and tweak the site, but we couldn’t be more proud to offer our guests this great new venue!

Other things keeping us busy this year, besides our wonderful guests that have passed through our doors, are the new Hickory wood floors in the North Shore Retreat and Brule River Retreat.  It’s a truly amazing transformation of these two cozy rooms, among their other wonderful amenities.

All of our rooms have received new Flat Screen TV updates, with the most dramatic in our unbelievable Lake Superior Suite!  The Lake Superior Suite now has a new 40″ High Definition Flat Screen TV – perfect for watching any of our over 500 DVD’s in our movie library, or that baseball, basketball, football game – or whatever your favorite sport may be! 

Another addition to our breakfast is the option to receive a full breakfast delivered to your room – just like room service!  This new addition proudly won us the Best In-Room Dining in the Duluth~Superior Magazine poll this Spring!  It has proven to be a great amenity for our guests!

The Ryerson Suite received another new update with the addition of an outrageously comfortable King Size Bed, making this our third room to offer a King Size bed as an option – very rare in the Bed and Breakfast world!

And last, but not least in our ongoing efforts to make the A.G. Thomson House your home away from home, we have added a new raised bed garden so we can grow and use fresh herbs in our already tasty breakfast dishes.  I’ve already been cutting!  And as we do each year, we have added more beautiful flowers and plants to our perennial gardens all around the Inn, two new fountains, and added more potted annuals around the Veranda than ever before.

One thing is for sure, we will never stop improving the A.G. Thomson House!  We invite you to visit our site, peruse our photo gallery, and even join us on Facebook where we continually add updates, pictures, and information.  And if you are thinking of staying here, book soon!  Our advance bookings are way up this year.  So pick out that perfect room and join us this summer, fall, winter or spring at the AG Thomson House!

Whether it’s this package, or any one of many others that we offer, we urge you to take time for yourselves and your relationships. A stay at the A G Thomson House in spectacular Duluth MN is a great way to start!

We still feel like new Innkeepers of this gorgeous home, and surely will for awhile. But we also feel we have accomplished a great deal and learned a great deal in a short amount of time. We have tried each day to put ourselves in your shoes. With each additional amenity that we have added, with each new recipe we discover, and with each new detail that we create; it is with your comfort, convenience and relaxation in mind. We are proud to have not only brought back the life to this great Inn in the physical sense, but are also proud to have brought back the reputation of our Inn and the bed and breakfast industry in general. For each new guest that has walked through our doors, we have made sure to provide a wonderful bed and breakfast experience that will keep them coming back to not only our Inn, but Inns across the country! Duluth is truly a fantastic place no matter the season! And we believe that the best place to relax and unwind, is a bed and breakfast – and we will strive to make the A G Thomson House your preferred choice.

So once again, as I write this while enjoying a great football game (and hoping my beloved team will be celebrating in 2010), we thank our guests for choosing to spend their valuable time and hard earned money with us over the past year and years prior. We are humbled, greatly appreciative, and look forward to many, many more years of sharing our home and warm hospitality with new friends across the country and globe. We will not rest on any laurels, but will continue put all of our energy and efforts into making our Inn the absolute best it can be…for you!

Happy New Year everyone! And our wishes for a safe and prosperous 2010 and THANK YOU!!!