Ghost Horses and Butter Candy: A Review of the Inn at Saratoga in Saratoga Springs, New York

In “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” an out-of-towner, Ichabod Crane, comes to a town north of New York City only to disappear (it’s implied he’s driven away) by the spectral, headless Hessian soldier atop a ghostly horse.

This March, I, an out-of-towner, came to Saratoga Springs, New York, a town north of New York City, only to find the ghosts of horses in the hotel I stayed at, the Inn at Saratoga. I left a couple of days later — with my head intact — but I’ll think about those ghost horses and other oddities for a long time.

Booking the Inn at Saratoga

An annual late-winter weekend trip to Saratoga Springs has become something of a tradition recently. It’s a Gilded Age spa and resort town that catered to New York City’s wealthy families, who used the area’s springs, horse racing scene, and greenery as a backdrop for glittering soirees, social climbing, and (I’m guessing) the kind of petty gossip that’s inevitable when you bring together families with too much time and too much money.

Because I needed a place within walking distance of the Saratoga Springs City Center convention center and also because I’m a fan of history and not of cookie-cutter chain hotels (and because I figured that it might make a more interesting review), I booked a stay at the Inn at Saratoga, an independent hotel and the oldest continuously operating lodging house in town.

Built in 1843 as a boarding house, the 42-room inn (then known as the Coachman Motor Inn) was meticulously renovated in 2003 to restore its historic charm. This included restoring its period side room, ripping out the 3 inches of concrete that covered the hardwood floors, and kitting it out with antique furniture.

Note that this is not the Inn at Saratoga in Saratoga, California, near San Jose, which was confusing as I made the booking and started comparing it to other hotels and rates! Last year, we had a similar situation with another Saratoga Springs hotel that AmexTravel.com had mistakenly listed as being in Wyoming.

I found and booked the hotel for 2 nights on AmexTravel.com, but when I saw that the points redemption would have been worth about 0.7 cents in value when we value American Express Membership Rewards points at 2.0 cents apiece, I paid for it in cash instead.

Another reason I booked this hotel was that I could earn bonus points if I booked using certain Amex cards via AmexTravel.com. I used The Business Platinum Card^® from American Express for this booking, earning 5 points per $1 spent for a total of 4,265 points earned.

LIMITED TIME TRAVEL OFFER

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The Business Platinum Card^® from American Express

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This card is ideal for business travelers who enjoy luxury travel and are looking for a card loaded with benefits!

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The Business Platinum Card^® from American Express

This card is ideal for business travelers who enjoy luxury travel and are looking for a card loaded with benefits!

Welcome Offer

Earn 150,000 Membership Rewards^® points after you spend $20,000 on eligible purchases on your Business Platinum Card^® within the first 3 months of Card Membership. Plus, earn a $500 statement credit after you spend $2,500 on qualifying flights booked directly with airlines or through American Express Travel with your Business Platinum Card^® within the first 3 months of Card Membership. You can earn one or both of these offers. Offer ends 6/30/25.

150,000 points + $500 statement credit

UP's Offer Valuation*:

Up to $3,800

Annual Fee

$695

APR

18.49% - 27.49% Variable

Credit Recommended

Upgraded Points credit ranges are a variation of FICO^®Score 8, one of many types of credit scores lenders may use when considering your credit cardapplication.

Good to Excellent

Why We Like This Card

The Business Platinum Card^® from American Express is a premium travel rewards card tailored toward business owners who are frequent travelers with a high number of annual expenses.

When you factor in the large number of perks that the card offers like the best airport lounge access at over 1,400 lounges, along with tons of annual credits, it’s easy to see why this card can is a top option for frequent traveling business owners.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• 5x Membership Rewards points per $1 on flights, prepaid hotels, and short-term rentals and prepaid flight and hotel packages booked through Amex Travel
• Access to over 1,400 worldwide airport lounges as part of the American Express Global Lounge Collection (as of 10/2024).
• Get 50% more Membership Rewards points (1.5 points per $1) on eligible purchases in key business categories, as well as on purchases of $5,000 or more (on up to $2 million per calendar year)

Cons

• High annual fee of $695 (rates & fees)
• Airline fee credit does not cover airfare, only incidentals like checked bags

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Card Highlights

• Limited Time Travel Offer: Earn 150,000 Membership Rewards^® points after you spend $20,000 on eligible purchases on your Business Platinum Card^® within the first 3 months of Card Membership. Plus, earn a $500 statement credit after you spend $2,500 on qualifying flights booked directly with airlines or through American Express Travel with your Business Platinum Card^® within the first 3 months of Card Membership. You can earn one or both of these offers. Offer ends 6/30/25.
• The American Express Global Lounge Collection^® can provide an escape at the airport. With complimentary access to more than 1,400 airport lounges across 140 countries and counting, you have more airport lounge options than any other credit card issuer on the market as of 10/2024.
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• Earn 5X Membership Rewards^® points for flights, prepaid hotels, and short-term rentals and prepaid flight + hotel packages booked at AmexTravel.com. 1X points on other eligible purchases.
• Earn 1.5X points (that’s an extra half point per dollar) on each eligible purchase at US construction material, hardware suppliers, electronic goods retailers, and software & cloud system providers, and shipping providers, as well as on purchases of $5,000 or more, on up to $2 million per Card Account per calendar year. Purchases eligible for multiple additional point bonuses will only receive the highest eligible bonus.
• $199 CLEAR^® Plus Credit: Use your card and get up to $199 in statement credits per calendar year on your CLEAR^® Plus Membership (subject to auto-renewal) when you use the Business Platinum Card^®.
• $695 Annual Fee.
• Terms Apply.

Financial Snapshot

• APR: 18.49% - 27.49% Variable
• Foreign Transaction Fees: None

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For my March 2025 stay, I booked a standard room with 2 double beds for $853.12 total, or $426.56 per night. This wasn’t cheap, but it was also in the middle of a competitive statewide chess tournament for kids that gobbled up all the rooms in this smallish city and saw folks booking hotel rooms all the way over in Vermont and driving in every morning and back out in the evenings.

Inn at Saratoga Location

The inn is at the southern end of the main strip in the central part of Saratoga Springs, New York. It’s about 10 minutes by foot from popular central spots like the Uncommon Grounds coffee shop and the Adelphi Hotel, and 15 minutes or so by foot from the convention center.

By car, it’s about 3 to 3.5 hours almost straight north from New York City, depending on whether or not you’re traveling with children who suddenly develop a craving for freeze-dried Skittles. The closest commercial airport is Albany International Airport (ALB), about a 35-minute drive south of Saratoga Springs.

Checking In

After a 4.5-hour drive from New York City (including a stop for freeze-dried Skittles), I arrived in Saratoga Springs with my first-grade son. I easily found the hotel along the main street and pulled through the portico to park in the small lot behind the hotel. (There was overflow parking across the street, too.)

We arrived in the evening shortly after dark, using the parking lot entrance instead of the main portico entrance. As we passed the portico, it was hard not to notice the sign that said, almost angrily, “Do not ride the horse!”

There was no horse, my friends.

Instead, there was a bare patch on the ground that looked like it might have been the home of a small statue or large sign. I brushed it off, and we hauled our bags inside.

I grew up in an area with many colonial houses, where seemingly every other person’s home once hosted George Washington. So walking into this home, with the gently spicy smell of its warm-hued woods everywhere, ornate but gentle wallpaper, and lovingly intricate woodwork, took me back, even though this was actually a decades-younger edifice. I could almost feel the disapproving stare of the phantoms of the Saratoga Springs town fathers as I asked for the Wi-Fi password later.

The woman at the reception desk cheerily checked us in, handed us our key cards and a welcome sheet (which said we had to be out of the room while they cleaned between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.), and explained check-in and checkout times and the free parking.

When I asked about any benefits from booking through AmexTravel.com, she said that, as they were an independent hotel, we got nothing. Nada. (Note that Inn at Saratoga is not part of Amex Fine Hotels + Resorts or The Hotel Collection.)

Instead, she waved to a silver bowl on the counter full of brightly colored, pill-sized dabs of what looked like old-fashioned diner mints and told us to help ourselves.

“Butter!” she said.

Utterly baffled as to what she was talking about, I begged her pardon and asked her to repeat herself.

“Butter! It’s old-fashioned, locally made butter candy!”

So my son and I each took 1 piece, put it in our mouths and, as it melted on our tongues, tasted what was a lot like sweet, mildly minty diner mint, except obviously with the oleaginous, silky-smooth texture of, well, a pencil-eraser-size dab of butter.

“Yum!” my son said, obligingly as the hotel clerk looked on.

“Do you want another?” I asked.

“No, thanks,” he said.

The butter candy dish had vanished by the next day before I had a chance to take a photo of it.

And that was apparently our sole Inn at Saratoga check-in prerequisite (except for a tiny chunk of fudge when we left, which I suppose was technically a checkout perk).

Standard Room With 2 Double Beds

We were in Room 112 on the first floor, which was past a door that muffled the noise from the lobby, restaurant, and bar from coming into the guest room wing.

It wasn’t a huge room, but it was bigger than the single-king bedroom friends of ours had, which we checked out later. Our room had beds with handsome, dark-wood headboards and footboards and even a stepping stool for one of the beds.

Opposite the beds was a small television on a dresser, an open coat rack, an ironing board (there was no closet), and an antique folding secretary.

I loved the writing desk, which also had a tiny coffee maker and packets of regular and decaffeinated coffee with a couple of disposable cups. You were supposed to pull out the wooden rods before folding down the countertop, but I absolutely did zero writing on it because I was afraid it might crumble into splinters if I so much as dotted an “i” too hard. There wasn’t a dedicated desk chair for it, and the green velvet armchair in the corner wasn’t quite the right height to use the secretary.

The door to the hallway did a better-than-expected job of keeping out hallway noise.

The room was carpeted, though we could feel the wooden floorboards creak — and a couple of warps and gouges in the boards — as we walked around.

Our window had an unlovely view of the parking lot. Late at night, while my son was sleeping, I could hear a couple of guys talking to each other right outside our window, but it was otherwise not too loud.

This isn’t the view the Astors, J.P. Morgan, or Evelyn Nesbit enjoyed when they summered in Saratoga Springs.

Bathroom

Surprisingly, the bathroom at this antique-adoring hotel was thoroughly modern, with all the expected 21st-century accessories like hair dryers, bright lighting, and a bathtub with a shower, good temperature control, and water pressure. The soap and shampoo came in pump bottles mounted to the shower wall. Better yet, it came with a ceiling-mounted heat lamp on a timer, which is great for when you step out of the shower in the winter in a place like upstate New York, which can get chilly.

Amenities

Pool Privileges

Hotel guests get free admission to the outdoor Victoria Pool at Saratoga Spa State Park, less than a 5-minute drive south. Admission is normally $8 for adults and $4 for kids, though children are apparently discouraged. According to the hotel website, guests also can visit the indoor pool and gym at the local YMCA for free (though when I spoke to woman at the front desk, she knew nothing about any of that). The YMCA is a couple of minutes more to the southwest by car. Day passes normally cost $5 to $15 per person.

However, swimming was not in the cards during our visit. But just by looking at the map and thinking about how unfriendly the walk would be for pedestrians (unlike going north into town), I can tell you right off the bat that neither would’ve been as convenient as an in-house swimming pool. But that, of course, would be impossible in an old, 19th-century building like the Inn at Saratoga’s.

Ballroom

As you might expect for an old hotel in a town with a posh history, the hotel had a ballroom that could be rented out for weddings and other events. It went unused while we were there, but we snuck in and looked around.

Horse Artwork

And then, of course, there were the horses — something you can’t escape in Saratoga Springs. In this case, they came mostly in the form of old paintings of racehorses. The mysteriously missing horse statue never showed up.

Food and Beverages

Side Room Restaurant and Tavern

The Inn at Saratoga had a bar (the Tavern) that opened daily at 4 p.m. and a restaurant (Side Room Restaurant) that opened at 5 p.m. and closed at 9 p.m., with live music Wednesday through Saturday starting at 6 p.m. Menus can be found here. Before we came to Saratoga, I made a reservation for Saturday night, the second night of our stay.

We ended up eating here with a couple of friends (another dad and a grade-school boy) who were also in town on Friday. A slightly frazzled older woman with bouffant hair and owl-sized glasses sat us in the bar, where a musical duo was performing folksy renditions of classic rock songs.

It was a little loud for conversation, but the chicken pot pie was hearty and filling, the salad with a citrus vinaigrette crisp and fresh, and the scene congenial and filled with a combination of affable locals at the bar and families in town for that weekend’s state chess tournament. The service was friendly and, though it wasn’t the most prompt, got everyone fed and off to bed before any meltdowns.

The next evening, however, when our friends tried to get a table at the restaurant, the hostess turned them away. Apparently, they were short-staffed, somehow having not anticipated the extra hungry people that a once-a-year convention of hundreds of families in the most important state for student-age chess competitors might bring in.

The hotel staff suggested that our friends go to the restaurant at the Holiday Inn right across the street. We joined them about 15 minutes after they’d already started dinner, only to have the Holiday Inn server obviously repeatedly forget to put in our order several times over the course of an hour until we told her to forget it and went to the McDonald’s across the street instead.

In fact, that turned out to be a common issue throughout the whole weekend all over Saratoga Springs: not enough or undertrained service staff who were just not prepared to deal with a huge influx of out-of-towners (mostly from the city) and their kids.

Most of them handled it with smiling aplomb, but I couldn’t shake the impression that some of them would’ve liked to have put on an old Hessian uniform, mount a spectral horse, and toss pumpkins at our heads as hard as they could.

Breakfast

Both mornings, we partook in the hotel’s buffet breakfast, which was served in a small hallway adjacent to the parlor.

Breakfast was not included with the room rate and cost $10 per person. Kids didn’t get a discount. It was served from 7 to 9 a.m. on weekdays and till 10 a.m. on weekends.

Most people found tables in the truly charming period-perfect parlor to take their plates to eat, and we did so as well, once by a fireplace and the second morning at the head of the long table toward the back.

The buffet included tea, coffee, fruit juices, and milk, but the hot dishes changed — eggs and sausages on our first day and waffles and bacon on our second morning. The problem with the waffles, though, was that they seemed to only have a single waffle maker working in the kitchen, so the man refreshing the buffet came out with 4 quarters of a waffle at a time, went back into the kitchen to make another 4, and so on.

Naturally, in a parlor filling up with carb-starved kids and tweens, this wasn’t happening rapidly enough to stem the tide of adolescent hunger lapping over the buffet. Luckily, even the kids seemed to know not to take every waffle piece for themselves, and the adults all abided by the unspoken rule that the kids got first dibs on the waffles. Though some kids had to wait for waffles, none of them appeared to go waffle-less.

Service

The staff at the hotel was friendly and on top of things (besides perhaps our hostess the first night, who seemed a little out of it), and though not as punctilious as you might expect in a 5-star hotel in a major city, it was enough to make us feel welcome in Saratoga Springs for an extended weekend. We left our rooms early in the morning and returned relatively late, so we never encountered the cleaning staff or had to deal with violating the 10 a.m.-to-4 p.m. rule.

My son and I checked in Friday night and left word with the front desk that my wife would be joining us late Saturday night, and they noted that and her name down. She ended up arriving around 2 a.m. on Sunday, and when she told the man at the front desk that she was expected, he immediately gave her the front key card without asking for ID, which she found odd. (To be fair, however, my wife doesn’t have a common surname.)

When things got noticeably busier as the chess tournament got fully into its swing, the hotel bucked the trend of the rest of the town and stayed functional — except at the restaurant, which didn’t have the staff to deal with a full dining room and turned members of our group away.

When we left (my wife checked us out, since I was taking care of our kid at an event across town), the desk clerk handed her a small box filled with a parting gift: 2 tiny chunks of slightly stale fudge. It was a nice gesture, but I still liked the slabs of freshly made fudge we got from Kilwins in the town center much better.

Final Thoughts

I feel like I’ve been homing in on the best hotel for my family and me. Last year, we went to a hotel with a racetrack attached to it, which was unique (we could watch the horses running from our room window) but was too far from town and too … casino-y.

This year, we found a charming hotel an easy walk from the town: Inn at Saratoga. It had touches I can honestly say I’ve never had at a hotel before—butter candy! Mystery horses! But as far as I’m concerned, the search continues, and we’ll try a new, hopefully cheaper, place next year.