I am a Hilton Diamond memeber and spend over 200 nights each year on the road. As a result I stay at a lot of Hilton properties and this property does not live up to the Hilton standard. I stayed at this property November 15 -17, 2011. I must say...I was not impressed:

Cons:
The hallway was littered with dirt and random bits of paper. I had cobwebs and spiders in my room. The wall are paper thin (I could clearly hear the conversation of the person in the suite next to me). The breakfast and evening meal were horrible. The underground parking garage is small and makes parking very difficult.

Pros:
Free internet (it was very slow), free parking (see above), dvd player, flat screen tvs.

I will not use this property on future visits to the area.

We stayed here for a Tufts parents' weekend because the Hyatt Place, where we usually stay, was booked up. Our daughter is a senior. Wish we had tried the Homewood Suites sooner. It's an easy drive to the Tufts campus. We stayed in a king 1-bedroom suite with a fireplace. It was clean, up-to-date, quite comfortable. The staff was very friendly and helpful. The kitchenette had real plates, knives, silverware, etc., which you don't always get at suites hotels. My one complaint is minor, and only of interest to tea drinkers. The breakfast buffet offered nice, Bigelow tea in the exotic, herbal flavors, but if you like a good black (caffeinated!) cup of tea in the morning, the only offering was Lipton. Other than that, we were very happy with our stay.

I spirited away my husband for a quick anniversary vacation in Boston; we wanted to visit the Adams National Historic Park and see family. Being a Hilton Diamond, I looked for the best Hilton I could find to serve our purpose. A Homewood Suites property seemed perfect: a bit more room than a hotel room, and a little more ambiance.

Ambiance we had in plenty. I am aware that some reviewers have found the place somewhat run down, but I looked very carefully during our entire stay, and found nothing less than perfectly clean, perfectly intact, and entirely "up to snuff" -- at least in the physical end of things. The bed was comfortable and warm, with excellent linens; all lamps, TVs and appliances worked without a hitch. The queen suite is a touch small in terms of closet and drawer space, but as we were there with only a couple of days and casual clothes, it didn't seem to matter.

Parking is free and underneath the building; be warned that the spaces are NARROW, so be careful to line yourself up and avoid dings.

Three disappointing aspects kept this from being a five star review: the breakfast was, in a word, swill. I am sadly finding this across the board at Hilton properties these days -- if you eat gluten products, you can manage to find acceptable (but no more than that) breadstuffs, waffles or cereal. If you are not doing gluten or are foregoing carbs, there is precious little that is edible -- the eggs are clearly not from the original eggshells, and the meat (in our case, Canadian bacon) looks like something from a school cafeteria. The "breakfast burritos" were 80% burrito and 20% mystery filling. The fruit cup was fermented. Really, Hilton, it's nice to provide us with breakfast but if you need to cut the quality THAT much, we're better off finding food elsewhere (which we did the second morning).

Also, the hotel is NOT feet away from the T line -- they have a bus stop in front of the hotel. The T stop (Alewife Brook Parkway, one end of the Red Line) is about a mile's walk away. If walking is a problem for you or the weather is bad, that might be quite the inconvenience, because you DO want to avoid driving in Boston unless you have to.

Lastly: the wireless service was slow to the point of turtle, and intermittent when it wasn't slow. I ended up needing to pull out my Verizon Hotspot to get anything done.

All in all, I'd go back; it served its sleeping purpose admirably. But the amenities were barely adequate.

I stayed at this Homewood Suites over the weekend while doing business in the Harvard Square. It is just up Massachusetts Ave from Harvard Square, an easy drive. But, I had even better luck parking at the nearby Alewife station and taking the T into town. Super easy to do- much easier than parking. The hotel has easy underground parking. The staff is super friendly. The suites are spacious and nice. I loved the little things like complimentary water and milano cookies. And the blow dryer was high quality. I strongly recommend this hotel for both business travelers and families. Complimentary breakfast looked good, although I only stopped in to grab a banana.