Home on the Road

by Philip Langdon

IN 1971 MY wife and I spent most of our summer-long honeymoon hitchhiking through the British Isles. At the end of a day’s travel we often checked into a local bed-and-breakfast. B&Bs were cozy and reasonably priced, and they provided what in Britain was usually the best meal of the day.

When at last we flew home, our bedand-breakfast days ended: B&Bs were all but unheard of on this side of the Atlantic. Then, about five years ago, a friend told me about the wonderful stay he’d enjoyed at a B&B in the Dorchester section of Boston. I was traveling frequently on business, and my friend insisted that I should try American B&Bs, which had been proliferating since the early 1980s.

It was a fine idea. In a little more than four years I’ve stayed at twentyfour B&Bs—in Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, Miami, Austin, San Antonio, Anaheim, Rancho Cucamonga (California), San Francisco, Berkeley, Sacramento, Portland (Oregon), Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland Heights, Brookline (Massachusetts), and a half dozen other places. Once, during peak tourist season on Nantucket, I paid $110 for a night’s lodging, but in most parts of the country I’ve been able to obtain comfortable lodging and a filling breakfast for half that amount. For two, the price usually goes up $10 or so.

The key to staying happily at B&Bs, whether on business or pleasure trips, is to approach them with the attitude of an explorer. A B&B is an opportunity to experience some of the character of an area, in many instances while paying less than a hotel would charge for a room that only its architect can remember. Being by nature frugal, I’ve more often than not paid $45 to $55. Although that has frequently meant doing without a private bath, it has saved me from the overly genteel atmosphere that people sometimes complain of encountering in more expensive B&Bs.

One of the first B&Bs I stayed at was the Bed & Breakfast Inn in Savannah’s “Gordon Row,” a block of four-story 1850s row houses whose curving steps lead to front doors a floor above ground level. There I had a high-ceilinged room looking out toward the live oaks and Spanish moss of placid Chatham Square. The room, which shares a bath with one other room, now has a rate of $47. For $76 there are carriage apartments at the back of the property, each containing a private bath, a kitchen, and a living room. Many B&Bs offer more than one level of accommodation and more than one rate.

My third-floor bedroom in Savannah had an alcove containing a TV—the majority of B&Bs I’ve visited have a TV in every bedroom—but there was no need to turn it on, because the room was well stocked with books that I never would have found time to read back home. I happened to pick up a collection of essays from H. L. Mencken’s American Mercury, and before I knew it the evening was gone, the old book magnifying the pleasure of being in a city where the past pervades everything.

B&Bs are not the right choice for someone who wants to be alone from check-in to check-out. It’s expected that you’ll talk to someone at breakfast —the owner if it’s a small house, other guests if it’s a larger establishment. In Savannah guests assembled at three large tables in the dining area for ample buffet-style breakfasts. Some guests initially appeared uneasy about what to say to strangers at their table. But one humorous remark is all it takes to break the dam of inhibition, and then the talk usually turns interesting.

I ENJOYED meeting and listening to the other guests in Savannah so much—there were bright, well-educated people from all over the eastern United States—that I resolved to stayonly at large B&Bs. This proved to be impossible. Most B&Bs, I discovered, are small—operated by homeowners who have one to four spare bedrooms available. After staying at a few of them, I began to appreciate that small B&Bs, known in the lodging business as “homestay” bed-and-breakfasts, have solid virtues of their own. Hosts with only one or two spare bedrooms are often grateful to have visitors and income, and they may behave more generously than a traveler has any right to expect.

In Oak Bark, Illinois, a couple of blocks from the much-visited Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, for $45 a night I had a handsome room with extensive oak woodwork and a private bath just outside the door. Early one evening, when I entered the house through the kitchen, Gloria Onischuk, the proprietor, asked if I’d had dinner. I hadn’t. “Would you like some of the soup I made today?” she asked. I gladly consumed a large bowl of it at the long table in the kitchen, amid family conversation. The soup was tasty, and thick with vegetables. My eye, however, was on the homemade apple pie that was cooling on a counter; in a few minutes a broad slice of it came my way. At breakfast the next day the pie shrank further. Extras like this build repeat business for homestay B&Bs.

At most small B&Bs guests are asked whether what’s being planned for breakfast sounds agreeable. Quite a few owners will adjust their timing to fit guests’ schedules. This makes it possible for people on business trips to keep morning appointments, though a hindrance to business travelers remains: an absence of phones in the rooms at most B&Bs.

Old houses bursting with antiques have shaped the prevailing notion of what a bed-and-breakfast should be. In a beautiful section of Louisville, I was given a suite at the top of a grand staircase in a Victorian mansion worthy of a robber baron. At breakfast, laid out next to a tall bay window, the host supplied my table with an elaborate silver service that accentuated the architectural splendor. In truth, however, B&Bs operate in houses of all kinds. Once, in California, I stayed in a ten-year-old tract house complete with spa and my own private deck and garage-door opener.

A NUMBER OF B&B guidebooks have been published in the past ten years. Among the most comprehensive is Phyllis Featherston and Barbara Ostler’s 553-page Bed & Breakfast Guide ($16.95), sponsored by the National Bed & Breakfast Association, in Norwalk, Connecticut. Now in its sixth edition, the guide contains more than 1,660 listings and contact information for eighty-eight reservation services. Another thick guide, edited by Julia M. Pitkin, is The Annual Directory of American Bed & Breakfasts, whose 1,423 pages contain more than 6,000 listings (Rutledge Hill Press, Nashville, $18.95). These guides and most others are better on small towns and resort areas than on major cities; readers will find more listings for Lancaster, or Gettysburg, or even Ephrata, Pennsylvania, than for Philadelphia. Most guidebook compilers feel compelled to mix factual information with syrupy atmospherics. It I had a dollar for every time the words “gracious,” “elegant,” “lovely,” and “special” are used, I could stay at the Ritz-Carlton for a month.

In response to puffed-up or misleading descriptions (sometimes written by the B&B owners themselves), efforts are under way to evaluate B&Bs objectively. The American Bed & Breakfast Association, in Richmond, Virginia, has inspected its member B&Bs in the United States and Canada, rejecting some of them and giving the rest ratings ranging from “acceptable, meets basic requirements” to “outstanding.” The results appear in a guide called Inspected, Rated, & Approved Bed & Breakfasts/Country Inns ($16.95). Unfortunately, the number of B&Bs covered is small: about 450.

Rather than rely on guidebooks, I prefer to call a reservation service in the area I’ll be visiting and ask what’s available in the price range and location I’m looking for. I’ve had good luck with several local reservation services affiliated with Bed & Breakfast: The National Network. For a brochure, write to the network at Box 4616, Springfield, Massachusetts 01101. Another association, which covers a larger number of reservation services, is Bed & Breakfast Reservation Services Worldwide. Requests for Worldwide’s brochure, which costs $3.00, should be sent to Box 606, Croton on Hudson, New York 10520. Reservation services sometimes require a deposit, which may be only partly refundable. One major point in favor of reservation services is that they usually examine each B&B before sending travelers to it. (Many national guidebooks are not so discriminating.) Another advantage is that they include many homestay B&Bs not found in guidebooks.

The smallest B&B I’ve experienced so far has been a two-bedroom, 750square-foot house in Berkeley, where I stayed five nights for the sum of $180. In such compact surroundings traveler and owner progress well beyond pleasantries. Over a breakfast of delicious scones fresh from a bakery down the street, the owner, a left-leaning woman in her late fifties, fretted about American military adventurism, the wasting of California’s water, Berkeley’s horde of panhandlers, the neighborhood’s overdevelopment, and other problems. “I’ve been thinking I’d like to move to Oregon and raise goats and live in a yurt,” she said.

With a slice of life like that to occupy a B&B guest’s attention, a mint on the pillow would be superfluous.