There seem to be two kinds of travelers in this world: those who love bed and breakfasts and those who loathe them. I fall into the first category.

I love going to breakfast and meeting people who change from strangers to friends in the course of a meal.

I love that the owners hover around the table like mother hens.

I love that when an owner hears you say you are going to check out the famous restaurant down the street, she tries to steer you away warning that its reputation is overrated and its prices ridiculous.

And even when you go ahead and eat there (after all, Gourmet claims it’s amazing) and the B&B owner turns out to be right, she just smiles and sends you to her favorite place, a quiet little neighborhood hangout with food that is great and prices that don’t give you heartburn.

I love when you find yourself at a tiny B&B on the west coast of Ireland and you get to spend breakfast listening to a man from Northern Ireland banter with the owner about “the troubles.” And later, when the same man sees you hitching by the side of the road, I love that he picks you up and takes you with him for the day.

The day turns out to be amazing because your fellow traveler is not just anyone. He’s the editor of the Belfast Telegraph, Northern Ireland’s largest newspaper. And he’s done a documentary about Ireland’s Blasket Islands and is back to show them to his son. And so you join them as they hire a dory out to these now-deserted, wind-blasted islands and as you hike, he tells you the story of the people who once lived there.

They spoke only Gaelic. They were cut off from the mainland except by boat. And cut off completely during bad weather. They were proud. Completely self-sufficient—until the day the government moved the last of them off their land after all the young people had emigrated.

And when you stop at the top of the biggest island, you know it is the only thing standing between you and America and you somehow understand the pain and desperation of the millions who left Ireland hoping and praying for more. And I love that you could have never known, or felt this, but for a chance meeting at a B&B.

When you return home and travel to our nation’s capital you have the great good luck to stay with a woman who rents out just a single room to travelers. And her house is fantastic—built in the 1800s, filled with family mementos and antiques—all within walking distance of the church where George Washington prayed.

And when you wake up in the morning, the owner is gone but she’s left you the key and a note telling you to make yourself at home. And at night, when she returns, she shares stories of her life working for a Congressman while her husband worked in the Senate and you learn more history sitting with her over tea than you could from all the guided tours and walks the Capital has to offer.

And later that week, when you call from Williamsburg to tell her that you and your husband have the stomach flu and feel so sick you think you are going to die, she tells you to come back. Then she nurses you to health and allows you to spend your worst hours, not in some anonymous hotel room, but in a home.

And you think … what could be better than a B&B? But then, like I said, I love B&Bs. Who knows what those who loathe them would say?

By Jamie Simons ©2008

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Learn more about offbeat adventures on the Emerald Isle with the Off the Brochure Travel Guide to Dublin, Ireland.