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Tips from the Publisher: The Ups and Downs of B&Bs

Bed and Breakfasts are not always what they're cracked up to be, so a little advanced homework will help you get the room and stay you're looking for.

Once upon a time a Bed & Breakfast was an extra room in someone's home--a space that opened up when the kids got married or went off to college; a friendly, low-cost alternative to overpriced hotels or nondescript motels. Today, many B&Bs are as expensive as the most venerable country inns, with Jacuzzis, high-speed modems, four-posters, and matching Laura Ashley toilet seat covers and window shades. For those with big pockets and expensive tastes, this is a blessing; for the rest of us, it's enough to make us hunger for a good old Motel 6.

My main complaint with B&Bs is the innkeepers who assault you with their friendliness and ignore the virtue of good old-fashioned anonymity. I suppose it can be fun making friends with strangers, but please, not before morning coffee. More than once I've been forced to tell the story of my life to strangers around the breakfast table, a fate I wouldn't wish on anyone.

Not all B&Bs are alike, but you wouldn't know it from reading most of the B&B guidebooks. Did you know that the innkeepers, who pay a fee to be included, write almost all of them? Exactly how objective can they be? If you'll allow a plug for the Unofficial Guides (published by Frommer's), let me say that they are written by professional travel writers whose only obligation is to the truth. If a B&B has smelly rooms with used cottonballs in the corners, I promise you we don't pass it off as "charming" or "softened with age." We'd like you to use our guides, of course, but whether you do or not, please, do yourself a favor and speak to the innkeepers before you arrive and find out which room you're getting. Life has enough surprises.


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