Asheville NC 2009
We recently took a quick trip to the wild wooly mountains of western North Carolina. We took some photos, and we also want to highlight the highlights of our trips in case anyone else wants to duplicate our efforts. First, the photos are located at picasa at this location. Now that we’ve got that over, let’s have a little bitty summary of what we did!
The trip out is long. It’s about 4.5 hours from Raleigh, but it’s nice straight I-40 the whole way, so it’s easy not to get lost (if you have a propensity for such things.) On the down side, it’s easy to get a crick in your neck if you don’t occasionally look around since it’s mostly straight driving. You can also stop by the JR stores in Burlington if you want to get the best, lowest, craziest prices around (on things like cigars.) Otherwise, the trip should be uneventful, until you joyfully reach the mountainous places and realize that there really are mountains in N.C.!
After arriving at the Guesthouse International, we went out for dinner to La Paz, a restaurant in the historic Biltmore district (which happens to be in walking distance from our hotel.)
On Saturday we got an early start and went out on the Blue Ridge Parkway to the northeast. We went to Craggy Gardens, and sort of got rained out. We returned to Asheville in the early afternoon. Later we went to eat at the Laughing Seed Cafe in the downtown district. Afterwords we went back to the Biltmore district for ice cream.
On Sunday we went back out the parkway and climed up to the top of Craggy Pinnacle, this time without the rain. Later we went on up the parkway and ate at the Mount Mitchell Restaurant. Finally, we worked our way back around to I-40 and headed back home.
Now for the highlights and lowlights:
Highlights
- La Paz Restaurant
This was a really nice Mexican restaurant with very good food, fast service and friendly staff. It’s more than just your normal Mexican food; they have nice veggie options and also excellent “other” options. - Biltmore District
A small shopping district; it’s nice to just walk around a relax. It’s not hard to find parking, and it’s not paid parking. It’s fairly quiet. - Blue Ridge Parkway
The roads were under construction, so it was a little bumpier than usual, but all in all it was nice. It was a bit cloudy while we were out there, but you can’t predict the weather in the mountains.
Lowlights
- Mount Mitchell Restaurant
“Fine Dining” at its very worst. Please, PLEASE don’t waste your time or money. Poor service, horrible food, and high prices. I guess you could say we should have known. - Laughing Seed Cafe
Decent food, but we felt it was over hyped and expensive (more than was justified by the food). There are probably other, better vegetarian options in Asheville (at least we hope so!) - Asheville
Aside from the downtown and historic districts the town seems a bit trashy and not very nice. Yes, the mountains give it a certain charm, but the city needs to take more steps to make things more attractive. I think Raleigh probably is nicer overall, and that’s not really saying a lot.
