A Food Fun Travel Guest Post
The best room we ever booked in Sighnaghi came with a balcony over the vineyards, a grandmother who fed us khachapuri at 10 p.m., and a chacha bottle on the nightstand that nobody explained. Our worst nights on the road have followed a pattern of their own: a cozy family-run place, a long dinner, and then a small itch around the ankle at 3 a.m.
Guesthouses, agriturismos and homestays are where food travel gets good. You sleep above the kitchen where tomorrow’s bread is proving. You walk to the morning market, then eat with the family who grows half the menu. Those same rooms also see a steady churn of backpacks, which is exactly how hitchhiking pests get around. Spend two minutes checking on arrival and you protect the part of the trip you came for.
Old guesthouses are full of wool rugs, woven bedspreads and carved wooden headboards, so you may find more than one kind of small bug. Bed bugs cluster in mattress seams, box spring corners and headboard joints. They leave rusty or black dots, as if someone touched the fabric with a felt-tip pen. Carpet beetle larvae are fuzzy and striped, and they feed on natural fibers. You won’t find their mark on the sheets. Look instead for shed skins near wool rugs, felt slippers and the edges of hand-loomed textiles.
The clues look the same whether the rug is in Tuscany or Kakheti, and a side-by-side guide on carpet beetles vs bed bugs in West Palm Beach homes shows the shed skins, spots and bite patterns clearly enough to hold up against whatever turns up in your room. Telling them apart changes your evening. Carpet beetles threaten your wool scarf. Bed bugs mean you change rooms tonight.
According to National Pest Management Association, a Harris Poll of 2,099 U.S. adults in April 2025 found that just 28% of travelers check their hotel rooms for bed bugs before staying overnight, and only 29% can correctly identify one. Those numbers come from hotels. A five-room farmhouse with no housekeeping department is no safer.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Americans who can correctly identify bed bugs | Only 29% |
| Travelers who check rooms for bed bugs before staying overnight | Just 28% |
| People who would leave their accommodation if they found bed bugs | Only 44% |
| Homes where pest professionals have treated bed bugs | 89% of single-family homes, 88% of apartments |
| U.S. states where bed bugs are present | All 50 |
The 44% figure surprised us most. More than half of people would stay put after spotting bed bugs. It’s late, the town is small, the host is lovely, and nobody wants to cause a fuss.
First, the visual check on arrival. Before your bag touches the floor, set it in the bathroom or on a hard chair. Pull back the fitted sheet at the head of the bed and run your phone flashlight along the seams and piping, then look over the headboard joints and inside the nightstand drawer. It takes about two minutes and catches most active problems. Its weakness: a light, early infestation can hide well past a quick look.
Second, luggage protection, which works whether or not you checked. These habits do most of the work:
- Keep your suitcase on the luggage rack or in the bathtub, never on the bed or a rug.
- Pack clothes in zip bags or packing cubes so nothing loose sits in the open case.
- Hang jackets on hooks away from the bed, not on upholstered chairs.
- Zip the suitcase shut every time you leave for the market or a cooking class.
The cost is convenience. Living out of zipped cubes feels fussy, especially on a slow week in an Umbrian agriturismo where all you want is to unpack and settle in.
Third, just ask. Before booking, message the host: how often are rooms deep-cleaned, and do they use a pest service? Good hosts answer plainly, and many family guesthouses in Georgia and Italy take real pride in their linens. But an answer is only a promise. It tells you about attitude, not about the mattress in room three this week.
Use all three. Asking weeds out the careless places, checking catches visible trouble, and luggage habits cover what neither can see.
The trip is over, and the suitcase is heavy with churchkhela, dried porcini and a bottle of Saperavi wrapped in a sweater. You’ll want to drop it all on the bedroom floor. Don’t. Unpack in the garage, a tiled hallway or the bathtub.
Take out the food and bottles first and wipe them down. Every piece of clothing, worn or not, goes straight into the washer and then the dryer on high heat for at least 30 minutes, because heat kills bed bugs at every stage of life. A delicate wool scarf from a Tbilisi flea market can tumble alone in a sealed bag. Finally, vacuum the empty suitcase seams and wheel housings, and store the case away from the bedroom.
Spot dark dots on a seam, or wake to a line of three bites a week after you get home? Photograph what you find and compare it with identification photos before you call anyone. Once you know what to look for, a shed carpet beetle skin and a bed bug look nothing alike. Keep that photo on your phone: it’s the first thing a pest professional will ask to see.
