On the Road with Reid 'Round Ireland: Bed, Breakfast, and Beyond (cont'd)

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It seems everyone is hanging out a B&B shingle these days—these are on the coastal road out of Galway—so you have to work harder than ever to find the truly special ones

On the other hand, the Lynburgh in Galway—or rather, just outside town in the Whitestrand beach community—was described as "Spacious residence overlooking Galway Bay. Beside Beach, walking distance to City Centre" followed by a brief list of amenities. It was a B&B in name only, in that it provided us with a bed and served us breakfast—the skimpiest "full Irish" of our trip, I might add.

I imagine the corner room across the hall probably got a sea view over the highway, but ours overlooked a clothesline and the roofs of a housing development, and cozy it wasn't; the rooms were antiseptic and basic—perfectly serviceable, but not in the true B&B spirit. The place was basically an itty-bitty hotel of six rooms—and clearly purpose-built to be a mini-hotel; not converted from someone's home to be a B&B. Oh, and the City Centre was a ten-minute drive away—the walk would probably take half an hour at least.

This, it turns out, is the "wrong sort" of B&B, as described to me by our very first host, Noel Harrinton of the pretty little Bank House in the Ring of Kerry village of Sneem. There are B&Bs that are opened out of a love of hospitality, he explained to me as we sat in his tiny living room, and many others where the people just see a quick and easy way to make some extra cash off the booming tourism trade. Sussing out which is which can be difficult.

Many folks finance that new countryside bungalow by renting half of it out, and it seems every fifth house in Ireland has hung out a shingle declaring it a B&B. But "Bed and Breakfast" is as much about a style and atmosphere as a description of services provided. It's about a warm welcome, a commitment to open your home to strangers, and sense of hospitality, not just a job in the hospitality industry.

In a perfect traveling world, if a place didn't have that B&B soul, it should be called just rental rooms and leave it at that. Perfectly acceptable accommodations...just not a B&B. But this isn't a perfect world, it's one in which the title "B&B" is as much a marketing tool as it a sign you'll get that welcoming family atmosphere, so the traveler has got his work cut out for him.

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