Carriage House Bed & Breakfast, Winona

We stayed at this bed and breakfast during our recent bicycling vacation from Minneapolis to LaCrosse. We stayed at 3 B&Bs along the way, and this one was by far the worst. When we arrived (on bicycles) no one was there to greet us. An envelope with our name on it and room key was just clipped to the back door. Directions inside to where our room was in the carriage house. Bad start--in my opinion it is totally unacceptable for a B&B to have not a soul there to greet you. Even a Days Inn does better than that. We couldn't figure out where to store our bicycles, but eventually stuck them in a garage that didn't look like it was intended for guest use, but again, no host was there to help us out. We stayed in the Toy Room. It seemed fairly small compared to other B&Bs along our route. I thought the kitschy, cutesy decor and faded toy covered wallpaper was awful. The carpeting was cheap, industrial carpeting, and the towels were worn. A spider also fell down from the ceiling onto me. Ick. Everything about the B&B seemed designed for the owners to be able to make a quick buck without having to do any actual work. The teddy bear on our bed and an afghan on the wall for labeled with prices for sale. Ugh. Not classy at all. The common room downstairs had menus for many restaurants in the area, but since we were on foot none of them worked for us. Too bad no innkeeper was there to recommend a place. The "free guest wi-fi" was also not working. Overall, we were extremely disappointed, left hungry (we went out to breakfast again right away), and feeling like we had just wasted $100 bucks on this Bed and Breakfast disaster. A woman appeared in the morning who told us her name and put the food on the table. We were served a fruit bowl, a croissant, and coffee. Unfortunately, the fruit was completely covered in salt. One of the other guests tried to alert the woman to her error, asking for fruit without the salt on it. She corrected him, "You mean the sugar?" And being nice Minnesotans no one had the heart to continue to push the error. The croissant, luckily, was edible, but overall the breakfast was pretty skimpy for a B&B. Especially since we were biking, we hoped for heartier fare, something more than we could get from a grocery store bakery section. The breakfast woman asked when we were going to be gone and left.