Black and white and beautiful?

If my world wasn't so colorful, would it be beautiful still?

Disclaimer: This picture wasn't taken on a B&W film, just a quick conversion to blank & white in picasa.

I converted this picture to a black and white image to see how it would look without the color. I've heard such good feeling toward B&W photography among serious photographers - its almost a holy grail - for those who attempt B&W are in an entirely different league! We had tried our hand at one B&W film for our Canon Rebel a few years ago and nothing significant came out of it. Now of course, B&W film + developing/printing is expensive than color - so we let it go at that. But it has been at the back of my mind since then.

I've seen beautiful B&W photographs in the Central Pennsylvania Festival of Arts held each year in State College, PA. Renowned photographers converge in the happy valley (home to the Penn State Nittany Lions) each year for this festival and strut their art. While I have marveled at the B&W pictures, I've also realized that not all pictures would look good on a B&W film. So I tried converting a lot of different kind of pictures (people, flowers, buildings, sea shore etc) in my collection to B&W and most of them just looked pale and uninviting. This picture however, which I took on Cape Cod last year, became mildly more interesting than its colored counterpart. Here's the colored version - take your pick!
Do we like color or B&W? Does it convey a different emotion? As I've said before - I'm a fan of sunlight - and when we take away the color - we take away the light almost! But beauty is in the eye of the beholder... Try some on your own... Authentic B&W film if possible, but digitally converted at least...