float like a feather...: Asheville!

We went to Asheville last weekend to celebrate our anniversary. It was a second choice, of sorts, to Colorado - but that turned out logistically to be too hard on me...so, we decided to stay a little closer to home and make our trip a little shorter. It turned out perfect! Neither of us had been since we were in middle and high school so it was almost a whole new adventure for us. The weather was perfect and we just had a great time without a schedule to have to attend to.....and I loved every minute of it.

We stayed at this wonderful little Bed and Breakfast down in the old historic district near downtown Asheville. It was such a beautifully restored house with luxurious rooms. We stayed here. Our room looked out over the koi pond in the gardens so we opened up the windows and breathed in the fresh air and listened to the waterfall at night. Aahhh......I can still hear it if I close my eyes and ignore the distracting sounds in my own house.

Every evening the hosts would put out a fabulous spread of yummy hors d'oeuvres and wines and the guests would gather for about an hour and talk about their adventures of the day and where they were going to dinner that night. Every morning, the owners made a scrumptious 3 course breakfast of homemade, BEAUTIFULLY light pastries, fruit, and some sort of lovely main dish....like homemade belgian waffles with bananas foster, or an egg scramble with goat cheese and fresh herbs and a roasted beet and mixed baby greens and chevre salad. The owners were total food people so their food recommendations in town were the best too! Seriously, the food this weekend was amazing! I don't normally write about the food on vacation...but I couldn't get over how fresh, how local, and how amazing it all was....something we are severely lacking near our home. One of the guests commented on how the chocolate cake the night before was the best she ever had. (I agreed...very light, and a hazelnut cake interior...) Her husband piped up "and she's had a lot of chocolate cake". Hilarious.

We spent all of Saturday at the Biltmore Estate. J wasn't so sure about doing the whole house tour thing; he thought he'd get bored....he didn't. Let me first set the scene for you....it was the quintessential fall day; blue skies for as far as you could see, colors starting to change in the mountains, breezy but sunny, in other words: JUST GORGEOUS. From the minute we pulled up to the gate and started the drive through the grounds to the house, it was like an enchanted forest. I kept expecting to see a shire and a few hobbits running about. We spent about an hour walking through the gardens just in awe of the beauty of it all. We did the self-guided tour of the house and thought it was really cool and then walked down to the bass pond...another gorgeous trek. We hit the winery, had lunch on the patio while a bluegrass band played with a wide open meadow and the mountains as our backdrop scenery. Seriously!! I could hardly stand it.... I was in such a state of peaceful bliss. The night was topped off at this fabulous little quirky restaurant in town that served "mexican/californian cuisine" and had the best handmade habanero margarita. Weird sounding but seriously good.....

Friday night in Asheville was an art walk. Now, I used to participate in these ALL the time. My world was full of art openings, and art walks...oh, how I miss that. But, we stumbled into this gallery and found artwork by a Chicago-based artist Byron Gin. Funny he isn't an Asheville artist, but we both fell in love with his work, nonetheless. This is a great site with all of our favorites.

oh, one day...

I guess you get the idea. It was a great trip. The one downer side of it all....we went out to The Grove Park Inn on Sunday to take a gander and check out the views from the terrace for lunch, which WERE stellar...but the food was terrible and way overpriced and the hotel itself is way overrated (in my humble opinion.) But, it still an amazing LOOKING hotel from the outside anyway. But looks can be deceiving ...underneath the layers of pomp there isn't much substance. And that's my deep philosophizing for this blog post.

Pics below....