About the Guest House: 

Welcome to Inner Light Guest House, a private home serving as a tranquil, retreat-like setting in the South Berkeley area close to the Ashby BART station This charming Old Lady, a Victorian Home over a century old, is an artistically colorful and inspiring refuge or retreat and place to find rejuvenation for your soul. 

My guest rooms are quite popular and tend to get booked 1-2 months in advance, particularly in mid spring through mid fall.  I offer both shorter stays and longer stays which are popular for students. Because of the popularity of my guest rooms, I strongly advise you to book early.  I've had several guests who expressed interest, but they delayed and did not book in time, so the room was booked by someone else and they lost the opportunity.   Note that in order to preserve space for longer bookings, I don't allow people to book short stays more than about a month in advance.  

Thus, it helps before contacting me, to FIRST CHECK to see if I have space for the dates you need. Check the room calendars and see what dates the rooms come available. Do that by scrolling down this page just a bit where all room dates are available, or by going to the rooms page in the menu above. If you have any questions about availability or anything else, please use the "contact" page to contact me.  

You can read more about each room, and see more photos of each room, either by going to the "rooms" page on this site, or by going to the Airbnb listings for the rooms. Sometimes the links don't take you to the right listing but you can easily find all my rooms and all the up to date info on each, by going to my Airbnb profile, here: http://https://www.airbnb.com/users/5406587/listings

 With the exception of shorter stays in the Hobbit House and Buddha Rooms, in which I allow two people for SHORT stays of less than 2 weeks in length, all rooms are single occupancy only, (this means: no more than one person per room ) in order to support the creation of such a tranquil atmosphere. Inner Light Guest House is a soothing place for travelers, vacationers, those coming to town for retreats, workshops, internships, research, study or other short to medium length term projects. Rooms are intended for stays varying from 3 days to several months long. In keeping with its purpose as a Guest House, permanent housing is not available here. SInce I do not offer permanent housing, open-ended rental arrangements are also not available -- all reservations are for fixed-length terms. Please read the house rules to learn more about the atmosphere of the setting.  

To see and read about the individual rooms: 

There are several guest rooms available (see the separate page which describes them individually and shows calendars of availability for each) at rates between $45-69 a night, $280-420 a week, and $1050-1650 a month. Some rooms are at times available for shorter stays (the Meditation Room and Magical Hobbit House Room are more often available for such, or others where there is space between longer stays)  

You can visit the rooms page to read more about individual rooms and view calendars for each. This information is also summarized here below. 

To do a quick check across all rooms to look for availability for dates you want, look at the quick calendar page here.  

Architecture and Atmosphere:

Architecturally, this is a colorful and playful house, where you won’t find white or “off white” rooms. The rooms on main floor have ten foot high ceilings and attractive molding. All the original redwood molding and redwood panel doors of the house remain. The spacious kitchen is orange with a blue countertop and green tile floor, featuring an antique Wedgewood stove, microwave and toaster oven, dishes, pots and utensils for common use, and basic staples for you to use for your cooking. High-speed internet,  Wifi and laundry facilities are available on site. Feel free to enjoy the backyard garden, perhaps visiting the rabbits in their "Bunny Castle", or sitting in the Meditation Hut in the "Fern and Fairy Garden" by the small pond. Two of the rooms have libraries of books in them, there are books in the back hall for everyone to borrow, and four of the rooms also have meditation cushions with zafus.

Amenities:
You'll have use of all common areas of the house, which include 2 full baths, one half bath, a full kitchen on each floor.  The kitchen has all common appliances mentioned above.   I provide supplies which are used by all such as dish soap, hand soap, laundry soap, paper towels and toilet paper.  I do not provide supplies which are for personal use such as shampoo, toothpaste, kleenex.  There is no on-site parking, but there is plentiful street parking, either in the areas of unrestricted parking nearby, or on my street in a "2-hr parking zone."  Most of this 2-hr zone is rarely enforced, but on the odd occasion a parking officer comes by so you park in 2 hr zones at your own risk.  This is not a "bed and breakfast" so I do not provide any food or meals to guests.  

Area Attractions:

This house is very conveniently located in the Berkeley-Oakland border region just a few blocks from the South Berkeley (Ashby) BART station, the local subway, and is one and a quarter mile from the UC Berkeley campus. This allows you to travel to most any San Francisco Bay Area destination without a car. You can get to the UCB campus in a 30 minute walk, 10 minute bike ride, or 5 minute subway ride. You can quickly arrive to downtown San Francisco within 30 minutes by BART. Read more about BART here. If you would like to rent a car, an Enterprise Car Rental agency is located only 4 blocks from my home.

Ashby BART station is a stop point for the Google Bus.

Within walking distance of 5 blocks, you can find: several ethnic restaurants, 4 cafes, 2 bakeries, La Pena Latin American cultural center, Starry Plough Irish Pub, and Berkeley Bowl grocery store, with its celebrated enormous offering of fresh produce. There are two weekly farmer's markets within walking distance, the closest is the Adeline farmer's market every Tuesday afternoon. 

Walk a little farther north, and within 30 minutes or 1 mile you will come to downtown Berkeley, and the University of California at Berkeley. East brings you to the attractive Elmwood shopping area and upscale neighborhood, as well as the magnificent Claremont Hotel at the edge of the Berkeley Hills. Walking 30 minutes south, you come to the thriving, up-and-coming central Temescal shopping district, with its renowned "Temescal Alley" boutiques.

Walkscore.com gives my home location a score of 88 out of 100 in terms of walkability...any better a score and you would have trouble finding parking!

Going a bit further out, you can enjoy the many regional parks in the Berkeley-Oakland hills, and the large amount of open space in Marin county. The San Francisco Bay Area is blessed with the largest amount of open space of any metropolitan area. To see photos of area attractions, see the Photo Gallery.

To read more about places to visit in the region, including local parks, spiritual centers, museums, bookstores, favorite restaurants, special events and more, see the Facebook Page for Inner Light Guest House.  

Payment:

Payment can be made through PayPal, Venmo, or Airbnb, or directly. A security deposit is required. See more information on the Payment Page. 

Look at every path closely and deliberately,

Try it as many times as you think necessary,

Then ask yourself, and yourself alone...

Does this path have a heart? If it does,

the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use.

-- Carlos Castaneda