• Who: Patty, Marisa, Jamie, Lyndsi, Tara, Bridget, Laura, Greta
• Where: Rehoboth, DE
• What: Bagels and cream cheese/peanut butter, cereal, juice, coffee

There is nothing more powerfully alluring than a free continental breakfast. It doesn’t matter if you’re staying at a five star chateau in the environs of Paris, or a Hampton Inn on the lower Mississippi Delta, the free continental breakfast will provide you with ample justification for any lodging choice.

“Don’t worry, honey, this place is totally not as expensive as it looks! It comes with a free continental breakfast! Just think how much we’re actually saving!”

Or on the other side:

“Oh, I know this place is kind of disgusting, but I found out it comes with a free continental breakfast—totally makes up for it.”

The free continental breakfast can be a dangerous gamble, however. Unwilling to pay for an actual breakfast (because why the hell should we pay for something if we’re getting it free!?!?!?), the guest is subject to whatever random assortment of dry cereals, pastries and fruit that said hotel establishment chooses to offer. This is fine if you’re on a touristy open-top-bus site seeing trip, or headed to a 3-day team building meeting with your colleagues, but when you have actual serious business to accomplish that will require fuel and nourishment later on in the day, namely (see above) and (see right), the free continental breakfast had better do a body good.

So when our weekend getaway inn in Rehoboth advertised a free continental breakfast, we were all over that like the other patrons of the cANALside would be over a young Tom Colicchio. Setting our alarms to make sure we didn’t miss it, we eagerly trekked down to the cute little dining room to serve ourselves from a luscious array of breads, raisin bran and mini yogurt cups. As we learned, though, the tanning starts early in Rehoboth, and by the time we’d made it down to the food we had pretty slim pickings. This is where the brief moment of panic comes in: Do we skip breakfast and grab something on the way?? Maybe just have an early lunch? Are we really even that hungry after our 11:00pm dinner the night before?? Maybe we’re too tired and nauseous to need breakfast, anyway!?!? But we probably should eat something, I mean we’re going to be at the beach all day!!! It will be hot!!! And we’re going to be dancing later!!! And let’s remember, we already PAID for this!! This is part of the deal!! 

But then, the panic subsides. Who are we kidding? When you are a pack of 30-year-old girls on a mission, you don’t let something like this get in your way! You slather some peanut butter on the last sesame bagel and shove some Special K down the hatch. We’ve got skinny girl margs to drink and hairless boys to meet on the dance floor—a free continental breakfast is actually just what we need! cANALside Inn, you did great. Thank you for coming through!