Guest like hot tubs, too, though many don't use them. Elegant decor is appreciated, though many people (well, men) barely notice it.

But everyone eats — and remembers — a great breakfast. That's why B&B proprietors knock themselves out providing one for guests.

At madrigal dinners, channel portly Henry VIII in a Tudor castle settling. During Dickens dinners, wallow in 19th century England — the England of "A Christmas Carol,'' not "Oliver Twist.''

Which is to say, there's no gruel course. When I ate my way through the Victorian Progressive Dinner in the mansions of Dubuque, I dined on chicken salad in puff pastry, bisque, London broil and English trifle.

Braking for soft-serve ice cream is how I stick up for the mom-and-pop drive-ins that used to be in every little town until the arrival of a certain franchise.

The ice cream almost always is better, and the atmosphere is more fun. Or maybe it's that so many of us have fond memories of our hometown Tasty Freeze or Dairy Delite, where we'd go on a warm summer night and slowly eat our cones as softball teams and old folks and families fresh from the beach filed up to the little window to get their cones, too.

It starts with Norwegian lefse on Syttende Mai and continues to Finnish pasties, German pretzels, Czech kolacky, Danish pancakes and American pie. There will be music and parades and all kinds of goofy contests — rhubarb-stalk throwing in Lanesboro, the rutabaga shot put in Calumet — but mostly, there will be a lot to eat.

Like everything else in this country, chocolate truffles have been super-sized, and many consumers think that eating a $4 glob of butterfat is a gourmet experience.

But you don't need to eat a truffle the size of a baby's fist to be satisfied. In fact, you'll be more satisfied eating one small, high-quality piece. Europeans know this, and chocolatiers in this country are catching on, too.

It’s on the road to nowhere, a mile and a half off the highway that links Park Rapids to Walker. It’s not on a lake. It has virtually no houses.

It does, however, have a knack for hyperbole. In the 1920s, it tried "land of clover, the big white potato and the dairy cow.’’ It tried boasting of "the shortest state highway in Minnesota running through its downtown’’ and, until 1986, was "the smallest town in the United States with a bank.’’

A patch of grass, a plump sandwich, the warmth of sun on skin — this is what we look forward to all winter.

But some picnic spots are so great a picnicker might want to while away a whole afternoon there. Here are some of the best, along with good places to pick up a box lunch on the way. If you want the lunch ready when you get there, call a day in advance or early in the morning.

Oooooohh.

That's what the two dozen people on a house tour and progressive dinner in Dubuque, Iowa, kept saying as the tour progressed from one Victorian mansion to another.

They’ve been coming to the southern Minnesota town of Mantorville since 1854, even though it was bypassed by railroads and highways and should have shriveled up and died. It didn’t largely because of the Hubbell House, a former stagecoach stop that still is serving walleye and chops to busloads of tourists.

I remember how grateful I was on a cold December day in 1994, when my Florida sister and I walked into the Old Village Hall in Lanesboro, tired from a day of touring B&Bs, and were served plates of fettuccine — al dente! — with perfectly cooked vegetables and plenty of garlic.

The cheese, brats and beer for which Wisconsin is known are as robust as the Cheeseheads themselves, who invented the hamburger and the sundae but are best known for Old World flavors.

There was nothing very appetizing about early Chicago. The factories and slaughterhouses that made it grow also made it stink. Rotting carcasses made the Chicago River bubble; a glass of water came with a side of cholera.

Things have changed. One Memorial Day weekend, my husband and I ate at three of my favorite places and two newer ones, one of which definitely was worth a detour. A three-star culinary weekend on the North Shore — who knew?