At the center of these charming little towns and bucolic streets is the Mayflower Inn, in Washington. The story goes, when Amy Sherman-Palladino stayed there for a weekend getaway in 1999, it inspired her to write the show with one of the titular Gilmore Girls, Lorelai, working as the general manager of the ‘Independence Inn.’ The Mayflower Inn is perfect. When Palladino first visited, the original structure may have been there, but the grounds were more subdued, quaint, and reflective of the surrounding simplicity of small-town Connecticut—not unlike what became the fictional Independence (and later Dragonfly) Inn.
The grounds of the Mayflower Inn, which served as inspiration for the show’s fictional hotel the ‘Independence Inn.’
Serge Detalle/Mayflower Inn
Inside the Mayflower Inn, an Auberge property
Mayflower Inn
Today, the hotel and owner Auberge have made substantial changes. Guestrooms overlook the trimmed maze of shrubs dubbed the Shakespeare Garden. Visitors can dine at the elevated English-styled Garden Room restaurant, or walk across the manicured grounds to the pool and spa facilities. Noticeably, it doesn’t take the bait with its history, pop culture or otherwise: It would be easy to rest on the laurels of an area steeped in American history and cite preservation as an excuse not to update. It’d be easier still to use the Gilmore Girls source material to attract a certain kind of visitor with anywhere from a plaque to a cardboard cutout of Rory and Lorelai. (It’d be tacky, but other nice hotels have pursued similar gimmicks.) Instead, the Mayflower Inn obfuscates any of these options and remains true to its own vision. I’m sure plenty of the inn’s guests—like myself—are ardent Gilmore fans, but there’s an added layer to them that appreciates the hotel’s decision to be its own unique self—likely what inspired Sherman-Palladino 25 years ago.
The same could be said of the towns for that matter. As a Gilmore Girls obsessive, I wandered each square trying to project the show onto these scenes unsuccessfully. Proclaiming how “this is like Ms. Patty’s dance school,” or “this is like the gazebo,” doesn’t work when the county itself leans away from its TV fame altogether. Of course, people come in search of the Stars Hollow that meant so much to them when they watched the show growing up. I spotted Gilmorites a mile away by a catchphrase t-shirt that read, “Coffee, Coffee, Coffee” or someone simply wearing a Yale tee, Rory’s alma mater. Seeing the latter, it took every bit of self control I had to not ask them, “Why did you drop out of Yale?”
