Location is just one perk of B&B
May 25, 1997
BY SUSANNE HOPKINS
Los Angeles Daily News
 

SAN DIEGO -- Carol Emerick swung open the Cottage's oak-and-leaded-glass door and beamed a welcome. "Come on in," she said. "I'm on the phone, but your room is right down there." She waved toward a doorway a few steps away and vanished into the office to resume her phone call.

I dragged my bags through the portal -- and into a private little world. This was the Garden Room of the Cottage, a small -- just two rooms, one a cottage -- bed-and-breakfast inn tucked away in an old residential area of San Diego. The walls were spearmint green, the large window was dressed in lace, and the furniture ran to the 1920s era: a walnut dresser and a sideboard that doubled as a bookcase. A floral bedspread in greens and browns covered the king-size bed.

Her phone call finished, Emerick reappeared to explain the secrets of this little room. "You have your own private entrance," she said, pointing to the redwood door, which led down a well lighted garden path. "And if you want to watch television. . . " With a small push, she shoved aside the mirrored top of a sideboard that was mounted on the wall. And there was the TV, perched in a nook in the wall. Behind the door, there was a small refrigerator. The bathroom, with its hand-painted floral border on those spearmint-green walls, was just across the way.

Emerick pointed the way a few blocks up the street to a neighborhood of ethnic restaurants. The 1913 redwood structure was not only close to a bevy of restaurants, art galleries and shops, but just a mile away from Balboa Park and the San Diego Zoo, two miles from the bay and Old Town and three miles from Sea World.

That's a plus for the guests who have stayed here over the 14 years Carol and Bob Emerick have opened their doors to tourists. They started the bed-and-breakfast inn in 1982, when a recession forced them to close their antiques-refinishing business. They had leased a small cottage behind the house.

"We'd stayed in bed-and-breakfasts in Northern California and I thought, well, maybe we could do that," Carol Emerick said. So, at first, they rented out just the little house. When their kids were grown and gone a few years later, they opened the Garden Room.

Guests are invited to roam the herb garden and enjoy the profusion of antiques, which includes Victorian-era pianos, a crank Victrola and a variety of furnishings that range in era from the 1840s to the 1890s.

The Emericks live upstairs; they have no plans to expand the number of rooms they offer to guests. "I think that's why I've been able to do it -- I've stayed small," Emerick said. Sometimes, small is definitely better.

IF YOU'RE
GOING
Where: The Cottage, 3829 Albatross St., San Diego, Calif. 92103.

No smoking or pets permitted.

Information: 1-619-299-1564 anytime.
Source: "America's Best Bed & Breakfasts" (Fodor's, $18)

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