A Reason to Wake Up
A trip to a bed and breakfast can be like entering an old country home.
A warm fire in the corner, a beautifully made bed, and a room
decorated with all the niceties you could want. Breakfast is
icing on the cake.
Last weekend, the wife and I choose a
bed and breakfast
in Gettysburg for
our last child-free getaway. A weekend in a wintery, sleepy town is just
the kind of vacation we like. It’s really a chance to get away, quite literally.
We finished up the battlefield tape tour, something that we started about
three years ago and never completed. We also found our way to the
cyclorama, 360 degrees of fighting on a massive canvas. If only the real battle
had been that calm. There’s something haunting about this place and something
so peaceful. So many died. The horror of those three days has not and never
will be wiped clean from this small town. But you can sense
that this was the beginning of the end because, well, it was.
In the afternoon, we ignored the history outside to take in a just bit of
history indoors. The
local BnBs were offering a tour and we took it. A lot of the day was
spent traveling from one cozy BnB to the next, noting the differences
and sampling the homemade treats at each. Outside of our own
little BnB, our two
favorites were the
Battlefield BnB Inn and the
Herr Tavern.
Both were great for their very own reasons.
And that’s exactly what I like about BnBs: each is different — each offers
something else to the traveler. Hotels, in general just pale in comparison.
Why, you say? I’m glad you asked:
The proprietors want to work there.
The people running the show aren’t scratching and clawing at minimum wage.
There’s no front desk where a clerk can peer over the telephone at you
as if you are an interruption to his conversation. It’s not that at all. Instead, they are generally run and cared for by a married couple, a couple who
enjoyed or enjoy visiting BnBs themselves. They greet travelers and
welcome them to their humble abode.
The room is more than a bed.
Personal touches and memoirs line the walls. Great care is taken to make
each room unique. Common areas hint at the hobbies of the owners.
We’ll leave the light on for you, indeed.
Did I mention breakfast?
I love to sleep in. The sun is hardly an excuse to rise from the covers.
But all this breaks down when we hit a BnB. Let’s get up babe. That smell
wafting up the stairs is for us. We wander down to the table, grab our coffee,
and make some smalltalk with a couple of strangers. The meals themselves
are often great to boot.
Egg sausage souffle, banana walnut waffles,
baked apple pancakes with apple cinamin syrup – do I really need a better
reason to make it to the morning meal? Heck, we actually choose our
latest destination because of the fact that they placed fresh
Pennsylvania Dutch shoo fly pie on every breakfast table. Yum.
As you may guess, we had a blast. We didn’t even need the Christmas
carolers, complete in their civil war costumes, to stop by and sing
a couple of tunes. But we are glad they did.
Tina
December 21st, 2002 at 10:25 pm #
I’ve occasionally day-dreamed of setting up a bed and breakfast out in Western Maryland. Interesting guests, a chance to slow down and live out in the country, a chance to make wonderful meals. . .