A girls’ weekend is one of the few trips where where you stay is the whole point. Nobody wants to scatter across a hotel corridor and text each other about which room to meet in. What you actually want is one beautiful house, a door you can close behind all of you, and somewhere to sit up talking long after the city has gone quiet.
That is more or less what 300 Clifton is. A National Register mansion in Loring Park, a few minutes’ walk from downtown Minneapolis, with distinct guest rooms, a four-season garden hot tub, a speakeasy in the cellar, and gardens that look like a film set at dusk.
Why Loring Park is the right base for a group
Loring Park sits at the hinge between downtown and Uptown, which means most of a weekend can be done on foot. The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is a short walk across the park — free, open daily from 6am to midnight, and home to Spoonbridge and Cherry. The Walker Art Center is right there too (adults $18, open until 9pm on Thursdays, closed Mondays and Tuesdays).
Ten minutes south, the Minneapolis Institute of Art is free every day it is open — no ticket, no reservation, just walk in. For a group with different budgets, two world-class museums where one is free and the other is free on Thursday nights is a gift.
Rooms that actually work for a group
The mansion’s rooms have real personality, which matters when you are assigning them. The Crystal Mansion Room and the Grand Edwardian are the showpieces — carved fireplaces, hand-painted murals, the kind of room someone will photograph before they put their bag down. The Hayloft, the Forge and the Coachman’s Room are the characterful ones, carved out of the old carriage house. The Estate Rooms round out the count.
If your group is large enough, the mansion also does whole-house bookings — worth asking about for a milestone birthday or a bachelorette weekend, because having the gardens and the common rooms entirely to yourselves changes the trip completely.
The hot tub, the speakeasy, and the movie room
Three things tend to decide the itinerary once everyone arrives. The garden hot tub runs all four seasons, tucked into the greenery under string lights — in January, sitting in it while it snows is genuinely the best thing in the house.
Downstairs, Gertrude’s Cistern is a speakeasy-style lounge built into the old cistern, and the movie room has heated reclining seats. It is also, depending on who you ask, haunted — which is either a selling point or a problem, and you will find out which about ninety minutes in.
Dinner, drinks, and the vouchers worth using
Book direct and every stay comes with a $20 dining voucher for the Pillsbury Club and a $20 Minneapolis Trolley voucher — both per stay, both direct bookings only, and both redeemable only while you are here. The Pillsbury Club is a members-style club inside the 1916 Charles S. Pillsbury Mansion with a speakeasy-style bar; it is a short ride away and makes an easy first night. Check the voucher page for the current terms before you plan around them.
The Minneapolis Trolley boards at the Pillsbury Club and is the single best way to get a group oriented without anyone driving. The ghost and true-crime routes are the ones groups tend to pick.
Practical notes
Getting around without a car is easy — plan hops with the Metro Transit trip planner, and remember the Nicollet Mall buses are free. If a car is coming along, ask about parking when you book rather than assuming.
Weekends fill first, and the largest rooms go earliest. If you are building a weekend around foliage, our guide to peak fall colour in Minneapolis is a good companion piece; for a quieter evening out, so is the Dakota Jazz Club rundown.
Ready when you are
Pick your rooms, book direct for the vouchers, and leave the rest of the plan loose — the best part of a weekend in a mansion is the hours nobody scheduled. Check availability at 300 Clifton.
Keep reading: Where can you have a small wedding in Minneapolis? A historic mansion your guests can sleep in.