Traveler’s Journal: France : Bed & Breakdown : The idea was fetching but, in the end, these lodgings were too much like home

Our guest quarters at an award-winning B&B; in Washington state turned out to be a windowless room in the basement, the kind of place where you’d store a lawn mower. Driving away in a huff, my husband said, “I’ll never stay in another B&B.;”

Convinced that that must have been an isolated B&B-from-hell; experience, and seduced by guidebooks that raved about a new generation of superior B&Bs; in France, I pillow-talked Douglas into trying them. When he brought up a favorite inn near L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, I insisted that it was lazy of us to keep going back to places we knew and loved when there were so many great B&Bs; to try. Because Douglas has been studying French for 25 years and I’m adept at attaching myself to families, B&Bs; promised us an extra connection beyond the pampered lodging we usually opted for. Or so I told my husband, a man who likes his little luxuries.

An hour’s drive north of Avignon, circling the squirrelly streets of Vaison-la-Romaine, the Provencal spring day turned cranky-hot as we got our first French lesson in B&Bing;: A B&B; is a private house and can be as frustrating to find as a truffle in spring. “My fantasy of a B&B; in Provence is we’d turn off a shaded lane and come upon a sign that said B&B; L’Eveche,” Douglas said.

I jumped the curb, and parked in front of a boulangerie. While Douglas went inside for croissants and directions, I sat on the sidewalk, scraping the sticky rental-car banner off the bumper. Two friends of mine had just been carjacking victims (in Avignon and Mazan) and, taking their advice, I was removing everything that identified our car as a tourist-mobile.

Directed by the baker to the haute ville, we left our unmarked vehicle below and hiked up a 45-degree, narrow cobblestone road. A doorway flanked by pink geraniums announced we had ascended to our destination, a handsome two-story stone house. Speaking halting English, Jean Loup Vidier, our host, showed us to our room. Deep plum fabric covered the walls, the drapes were a green Provencal print, and our private white-tiled bathroom had a tub so long my toes didn’t reach the end.

“Can’t imagine we’ll find anything more perfect than this,” Douglas said.

At about $60, including breakfast, it was also an exceptional value. I relaxed. This was working out.

Then I sat on the bed. It squeaked--loudly. This had been one of my worst fears about B&Bs;: that something--I’d thought it would be wafer-thin walls--would broadcast our every intimate move, and feeling childish, like visiting my parents, we’d forgo romance the entire romantic holiday.

That evening Douglas, who mistakenly assumed we’d be dining with our host, was dejectedly studying the menu at an over-striving country restaurant with silk tablecloths. (Although in the United States one wouldn’t expect dinner at a B&B;, the French have such a thing for fine food that a multi-course evening meal is a perk many B&Bs; offer.) “That isn’t a true B&B;,” Douglas said. He mentioned the separate entrance, the private lobby, and said it was really a little hotel with four rooms.

“It’s their home,” I said. I pointed out how we’d heard their 17-year-old practicing his saxophone for his final exam, how I’d seen the family bathrobes hanging limply inside a hallway closet I’d opened, not entirely by mistake. I reminded him that the following night in Crillon-le-Brave, a medieval town of 370 people, we’d be dining with the host family. “That should feel more like a B&B;,” I said.

We washed into Crillon-le-Brave in the midst of a spring downpour that had flattened the fields of red poppies and heightened our appetite for the meal for which B&B; Clos St. Vincent is known. Immediately, we were told, sotto voce, that because of a “family situation” Francoise was not cooking. I felt let down, like a party had been called off and I wouldn’t be dancing next to the band after all.

Stretched out on the king-size bed in our pretty blue-and-white room, Douglas said, “B&Bs; are a gimmick. That’s fantasy stuff that you live with the family, eat with the family. We’re totally separated. The family’s watching the French Open behind closed doors.” They were.

Breakfast was served at 8 a.m., but on my way out for an early walk I caught the aroma of coffee. I asked the woman setting the table if I could help myself to a cup of coffee. With milk. She headed into the family’s private kitchen, muttering rude noises.

I’d trespassed the B&B; breakfast boundary and become a demanding guest. As one veteran B&B-er; advised, “You’re a visitor. Don’t ask for anything they’re not ready to give.”

Since we hadn’t been introduced, when the woman returned with the milk, I said, “You must be Francoise?” She nodded in a way that discouraged further contact.

Her downcast demeanor defined depression, an observation later confirmed by another guest who whispered that Francoise was real down because of problems with her daughter. The guidebooks that had steered us to these homes emphasized the energetic host-couple, the warm welcome, the friendly meal; they never hinted that the traveler wanting to experience life with another family might stumble upon a troubled household.

Still optimistic that out of the hundreds of B&Bs; in France we would find ours, we ventured south past meadows blushed pink with valerian, to the ancient village of Venasque. La Maison aux Volet Bleu, the smallish hillside home of Martine and Jerome Maret, matched more closely our idea of a B&B;, where hosts and guests mingle casually.

“Americans like this,” said Martine in Franglaise, as she snapped beans for our dinner. “They like the feeling that they’re in a real house.”

During a stroll, the evening air smelled of honeysuckle and thyme, but upon entering the Marets’ living room, which did triple duty as parlor and dining room, we were blasted by clouds of cigarette smoke from the nine other guests.

Sneezing and coughing, eyes watering, my husband and I, nonsmoking Californians, escaped to the terrace, where, self-ostracized and bundled in coats, we ate our first B&B; dinner in the company of Martine’s black cat.

After dessert, I hung around the kitchen to warm up and chat. “It’s so much work,” Martine sighed. “I can’t keep it up.” After eight years she was suffering B&B; burnout.

Travel is always about discovery--the discovery of place and of self. Nonetheless, I was still startled to realize that I’m not a B&B-type; person. I discovered that as a woman used to running a house of my own, I’m too attuned to the rhythms of a household; too sensitive to the fact that Martine, who markets every morning and cooks every evening, was still working at 10:30 at night; that Francoise was depressed. It wasn’t that B&Bs; weren’t enough like home; they felt too much like home and not enough like being away on holiday.

We left Provence, hurrying down to the Cote d’Azur, where, to my relief, my husband had made reservations at a swanky hotel, where the bed was quiet, the dining room large enough to have a smoke-free corner and if the staff was depressed, we wouldn’t know about it.