When in Rome...

So on our last day of vacation we were staying at this bed-and-breakfast. The house was incredibly beautiful, with some gorgeous architectural features including 14" crown molding, heart pine floors, lovely period furniture, stone fireplaces...simply breathtaking. There were some huge - like at least five feet tall and I'm not exaggerating - antique mirrors, intricately carved built-in china hutches and similar built-in buffets, magnificent pocket doors - this house was beautiful enough to make you weep, seriously, and I am not a weepy sort of person.

But be warned: there isn't SQUAT to do in Rome, Georgia. There's actually like, negative squat. If you never get the chance to go to Rome, GA, trust me on this and do not die feeling unfulfilled.

I figured it would be similar (but on a smaller scale) to Athens, where Nancy lives, because there are two colleges in Rome. I thought typical college town would probably equal interesting shops, a cool bookstore or two, a nice local restaurant, maybe a friendly pub. In this assumption, I was very wrong. There isn't a town square, there's sort of two pieces of a main street, upon which 1/3 of the storefronts were vacant, 1/3 were closed, and of the remaining 1/3, 90% were dingy, uninspiring, and kind of creepy in a desperate sort of way. At the one local restaurant that looked kinda cool, we walked in and were ignored for some minutes. Finally a chick asked what we wanted and when we replied, "A table?" she told us they closed at 2:30. Oh. Sure, because college kids hate going out at night to eat and hang out and all. So we had a snack at the only other place that looked un-grungy; the food was decent (nothing special) but even it was kinda dive-ish.

We did find, totally by chance, a big Barnes and Noble so we browsed around there for a while and bought several new books, and a day that includes a bookstore visit is never a bad day. We found it by chance while we were driving around lost, which is easier to do than one might think in such a small town, because one moment you're happily motoring along on, say, Second Avenue, and suddenly, with no warning and nowhere to turn off to prevent this occurrence, you're unceremoniously dumped onto a highway, 5 miles from the next exit ramp. This can also happen when innocently motoring down Turner McCall Boulevard, Martha Berry Boulevard and some other crap street whose name I disremember.

We didn't even bother going out for dinner that night but instead stopped at a Kroger in the same strip center as the bookstore so I could pick up a bottle of wine, and we had a picnic in the room of our leftover bread, cheese and fruit from the Barnsley Gardens picnic, lounging about our gorgeous room perusing our new books. It was delightful.

This was the first time we'd stayed at a bed-and-breakfast and I am not sure how I feel about the whole B&B thing. It was totally worth it (even enduring the cloying desperation of the downtown area) to see that beautiful house but I felt a little odd. The innkeeper was very nice and seemed to want to remain unobtrusive, yet I still felt overmuch like I was staying at someone's house - well, I was, but what I mean is, I felt like we ought to tell him when we were leaving and announce that we were back like if we were staying with friends; I didn't feel comfortable strewing my toothbrush, contact case and cosmetics bag on the bathroom counter like I would in a hotel - which I realize is fairly nonsensical as I was going to pack it all up before we left anyway - but I dunno, I felt compelled to make as little of a mess as possible and as little noise as possible. At breakfast the next morning, I felt weird having him wait on me, like I should be asking where the glasses were and getting my OWN orange juice, if that makes any sense. It wasn't anything the owner did at all, I just got a major 'intruding on a private home' vibe. What about you? Have you stayed at B&Bs? Do you prefer them? Why or why not?