What's it like to stay in a B&B?

A small view of our breakfast buffet

People who stay with us sometimes ask beforehand how we compare to other B&Bs in New Orleans, or other B&Bs elsewhere. I've gotta be honest: we don't know.  

The bed and breakfast industry is made up of small owner-occupied-and-managed eccentrically individual inns, each with its own personality.  No two are alike.  I read a lot of reviews in my line of work.  

If you're planning to stay in a B&B, you should read a lot of reviews, too.  Individually, the reviews don't tell you much.  Every place is great!  Read enough of them, and you can discern a pattern of what each place offers, though.  Sometimes, the bed and the sheets set a place apart.  If that's important to you, stay there.  Sometimes, it's the breakfast.  Sometimes, most of the time, it's the hosts.  Good hosts make good company the way good guests make good company.  If a B&B has a dead blog, it's probably running on autopilot...like a chain hotel resting on its reputation or its brand.

As of this writing, we have 132 reviews on Trip Advisor.  That's pretty respectable for being open only two years (October 2014 marks our entry into our third year of being open for business).  I look at other New Orleans B&Bs and see that some have over 300 or 500 or 600 reviews and I think, "Boy, we're still pretty green."  Then I see that those 600 reviews go back more than ten years.  I guess 132 reviews in two years is pretty impressive.  We're still green, but that only means we're still enthusiastic about our profession.  We love what we do.

I'm waiting for somebody to rate us "Terrible."  No stars.  "La Belle Esplanade sucks."  We don't serve dry cereal for breakfast.  No Kellogg's Raisin Bran.  Nobody eats it and we end up throwing it away.  And, we don't offer other things we don't advertise.  No hot tub.  There's no ADA compliant ramp to the front door of our historic district mansion.  The city won't let us install one.  There's no elevator to the second floor.  There aren't any grab bars in the antique claw foot tub.  We don't serve breakfast in bed.  You have to come get breakfast yourself and take it to your suite yourself.  (We don't mind if you do.)  We don't offer in-house dry cleaning, though we do have coin-operated laundry facilities on the premises.  

We have tried to anticipate every need but we can't anticipate every contingency or flight of imaginative fancy.  If you ever have a question about what we offer, please ask in advance.  We sometimes serve sausage for breakfast.  If a guest chooses to tell us they are vegetarian for the first time when they sit down for breakfast as we are putting an artfully arranged sausage plate in front of them, we apologize for not knowing this in advance, but, really, how could we?  Most people aren't vegetarian and most people are happy with what we serve.  We do scramble to serve something different, and special, for that person the next day.

It's going to happen some day.  The 1*, one-star, poor-service, crummy inn, review is coming, like a buzzard that circles a fat calf in a field hoping it trips and can't run away.  Easy pickings.  Somebody is going to complain that we didn't accommodate them in some way, and they won't tell us while they're here, and we won't know how we could make their visit to New Orleans better until we read that dreaded review online, after the fact, posted for all the world to see.  Ha-ha!

I can't say that I stay up at night wondering how I'll respond to that review when it comes, but I know it's coming.  I'm sure it's going to be a doozy.  If you are reading this blog before you stay with us, don't be that person.  We do whatever we can to make you feel at home.  It's our home, too, after all.  Happiness loves fellow company.  If you have a request, make it known.  We'll go out of our way.  I'm going to buy a pint of skim milk tomorrow morning, after all, fully aware that most of that pint will be tossed in the trash come Monday trash day.

Use your melon

We went to Cowbell the other day.  It's a hamburger shack on the outskirts of the Riverbend, in Carrollton, at the farthest boundary of New Orleans proper, where New Orleans ends and Jefferson Parish, suburban sprawl, begins.  We probably won't have many guests who ask us about it.  It's not easy to get to.  It's worth a visit, though.  We went there twice, two days in a row, and your humble narrator isn't even much of a hamburger fan.  We went the second day to sample the vegetarian burger.  It was worth recommending.  In fact, we were talking to somebody yesterday, a vegetarian, and Frau Schmitt said, "You need to try the vegan Cowbell burger at Cowbell."  She's usually right about these things and she was this time, too.  That's the way most conversations go in our house. 

Cowbell is a quirky place.  It's got some nice original artwork in there, like the "Use Ya Melon" painting.  All the food and the cocktails are good.  Yes, cocktails for lunch.  This is New Orleans.

If you're looking for a B&B that has hosts who travel hither and yon throughout their fair city looking for the best that New Orleans has to offer, convenient or not, I have a place to recommend.  Is it like other New Orleans B&Bs?  We don't know.  I suppose they're all good.  That's what most of the reviews on Trip Advisor say, anyway.  It all depends on what you expect.  When you don't plan too much, you'll never be disappointed.  Be careful what you wish for...you might be ready for it, and then you, too, will fall in love with this magical city we call home.

Morning in New Orleans

That's the view I had when I was buying bread yesterday morning before any of our guests were awake.

You make your choice and you take your chances.  

We look forward to meeting you.

A votre santé,
La Belle Esplanade bed and breakfast.