Asheville to Asheville, Dust to Dust

It has been many moons since I had summers off as a student, but still in August it seems even in the corporate world that more emails than not return an "out of office" response. In this spirit, I am kicking off an "out of office" blog series, detailing a few of our summer travels.

The temptation here is for me to drone on and on like any newly returned traveler worth their salt who has invited over for dinner a friend who is unsuspecting that food actually serves as a cover story for deluging the unsuspecting guest with copious amounts of dreaded photos.  I will endeavor to be succinct while interesting, though the beauty of the internet is that you can pop right over to Google as soon as you feel your eyes glazing over.

Entry 1: Asheville, North Carolina

With family in Alabama, we picked Asheville a bit haplessly, in the sense that its geographical position betwixt Virginia and Alabama served as its main selling point. Nonetheless, the area offered several interesting haunts. Given a steady rain that settled in shortly after our arrival, plus a fair amount of time waiting for either my daughter (1 year) or my nephew (15 months) to wake up from various naps, I'll spare you the enjoyed family time and skip to a few of the local highlights.



The Eats:
Tupelo Honey Cafe: Probably my favorite of the trip, a southern-food-turned-modern cafe with killer fried green tomatoes and goat cheese grits. My fish was rather overwhelmed by a heavy cream sauce, but all other dishes at the table were home runs.

Asheville Brewing: Solid pizza & brew, a casual and family-friendly restaurant in downtown Asheville. Family friendly is certainly our gig these days; in fact, I will take this moment to officially apologize to servers everywhere for the blanket of cheerios dropped under our tables.

Chocolate Fetish, Chocolate Gems, and French Broad Chocolate: We did a bit of a chocolate tour through Asheville (someone had to do it!), sampling the wares from all 3 places. Chocolate Fetish won for most interesting displays (handpainted chocolate seashells and such), Chocolate Gems won for my overall favorite (dark almond bark was phenomenal), French Broad won for best brownie (though a killer line to go with it).

The Ogles:

1. Biltmore: There's really nothing I can say to do justice to the largest home in America. The 250 room French-Renaissance style home was built by George Vanderbilt, the grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt.  The Commodore initially established the family fortune through steam ships and the New York Central Railroad. While the acreage of the estate is significantly less today than it was in George's heyday, it still offered beautiful gardens much more extensive than we could explore in an afternoon.

George was one of Commodore's younger grandchildren; the majority of the family wealth went to the eldest grandchild Cornelius Vanderbilt II, who created a similarly opulent summer home in Newport, RI, The Breakers.

2. Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway
We barely scratched the surface here, but enjoyed a quick hour-long tour on the Parkway before deciding that night-time on a unlit road with steep drop-offs probably wouldn't be the wisest life decision.

3. Craft Fair of the Southern Highlands: An extensive hand workshop-type fair, featuring crafts from woven cloth to hand-carved brooms and furniture. We wisely decided not to take two babies through the tight aisles and "you break it, you buy it" mecca: they enjoyed causing trouble outside the center.

All in all, an excellent trip!