So this is what they're all talking about.

My usual travel is work. I don't mean that I'm traveling for work, I mean that it's work to travel. Parking lots, passports, negotiating taxi fares, screeching loud-speakers in airport terminals. Long flights that make my backside flat and tingly numb. Disappointing seat assignments. Hotel air conditioners that whine all night. Farting air passengers. I could go on.

But, this week travel was different. I had the week off. My husband needed to go to a client meeting on the coast of Northern California in a town called Fort Bragg. It's just two hours north of our house. My work has kept me out of town a lot so I thought I'd go with. Twenty minutes of online shopping and I found a mid-week special at a B&B called the The Headlands Inn. No two night minimum. Yes! We booked it over the phone.

Denise, the owner, made my reservation. Her prices, features and location were about the same as everyone else but she gave good phone so I booked with her. I even told her she gave good phone. She didn't get it. She cheerfully listed the details of my stay while I fumbled around for my credit card.

It was a risk. We don't stay in B&Bs much. This is because the last time we did was for our first anniversary and we barely had time to visit with each other. There was a week long "breathing seminar" going on down the street and the old lady and the young former ballerina with the broken soul were determined to convince us that we didn't know how to breath. Breakfast conversation went like this:

The Ballerexic (that's a ballerina whose anorexic) leaned in over breakfast "It's like. Well... We come into this world and what's the first thing that happens?" She didn't give me time to answer "we're spanked and so the first experience of our breath is rooted in fear and abuse so this like totally defines how we relate to our lives, you know, fear and stuff. Oh m'god. You guys should totally come with us tomorrow. We're just going to sit with our fear and breath...for six hours. Once you learn how to really breath, you'll wonder what you've been doing all these years."

It continued.

She left literature for us that the innkeeper later forwarded to our home address. We swore we'd never stay at a B&B again.

But this place is different. It looks like a B&B. It's painted in pastels, it has a great deck that faces the ocean, lots of doilies, birds chirping, a cute couple who run the place. But there's one distinction that makes all the difference. NO COMMUNAL BREAKFAST.

And so, I finally get what everyone's talking about when it comes to B&Bs. Relaxing. Beautiful. Romantic. And, a chance to just sit with my fear and breath.