We arrived at Asheville, North Carolina about mid-day yesterday. Our Hertz GPS was totally baffled by the instruction to go to Woodfin Road and dropped us on a country mountain road. Nope, no sign of our hotel there. We re-synched and headed back to on HWY 541 until we got to Rt 25 (aka Biltmore). We went about a mile to find the Athena cafe. They had a variety of Greek items on the menu, plus things like pizza for the less adventurous. Three of us ordered variations on the Gyro platter. My version came with thin slices of cooked lamb on strips of gyro bread, bracketed by a healthy-sized Greek salad. Yum. My youngest ordered pizza, which he demolished with a little bit of help. Hungers sated, we were ready to explore the town.
It turned out our hotel was on the other Woodfin Road, not far from Biltmore, so we decided to park at the hotel and avoid any extra parking charges. We settled in at the hotel and immediately felt comfortable. The view from the 10th floor looked like this:
The weather had turned cool and windy, so we dressed warmly for our walk around the downtown. Our guidebook talked about the Urban Trail, so we decided to follow that. The man at the front desk at our hotel was very helpful, suggesting we go to the Art Museum to get a map of the trail. Nice idea, but when we got to the monument in front of the museum, we discovered it was closed on Mondays. We were told that the trail was marked on the sidewalks, but must have looked confused, since a group of college age kids came up and asked if they could help us. One girl in particular was very helpful, giving us tips on which streets to follow and suggesting we find our way to Grove Plaza.
We began walking from our start at Pack Square and soon found pink stones embedded in the sidewalk marking the walking trail. We also discovered that the city's reputation for having very well preserved Art Deco architecture was quite accurate. We also saw other unfamiliar sites, such as a Five and Dime store. One building after another had stunning architecture, so we didn't mind the cold weather so much. We turned a corner and then found a red and gold sign for F. W. Woolworth. We stepped into the erstwhile department store and found an old style soda fountain, meticulously restored, adjacent to a series of booths housing work of local artists. The art was phenomenal and much of it had clear connections to the remarkable cityscape and the surruounding mountains of Asheville. My oldest son loves art, so he just reveled in the many different types of art available for viewing. We also discovered that there had been a water main break downtown, so the soda fountain was closed, along with my of the nearby restaurants.
We resumed our walk and found more of the pink stone markers, which led us to a pedestrian walkway known as Wall Street. It looks like this:
We were impressed by a very new building we saw at the end of that block, but our street markers had vanished, so we decided to start looping back. Turning the corner, we encountered the recently refurbished Grove Plaza:
This spectacular example of Art Deco at it best was built in 1927, but had languished for many years when the building had been taken over by the Federal government for its National Weather Center. The current version of the building re-opened in 2002 and now houses a variety of intriguing shops. We strolled into a combination high end grocery and wine store and couldn't resist buying some fruit snacks and other items for the rest of our trip. Beyond that store, we walked through an inner atrium which simply amazed us with its intricacy of design, clean lines and remarkable use of light.
We took advantage of the respite from the chills of the outdoors and a woman proprietor told us about the history of the building and how it nearly had been torn down, before being rescue re-furbished in its current form. She was very friendly and gave tips on places we should consider visiting in light of our son's interest in art.
We continued the tour outside and soon encountered an amazing Basilica, featuring what is reputed to be the largest domed roof of its kind in North America. Nearby, we walked into the civic center, which has bronze statues of musicians in full stride in front. We walked and walked, finding more trendy restaurants of many different cuisines (while making mental notes for later) and finally got to the part of the tour where the symbol was a red angel. Yes, we were about to encounter the footsteps of a famous native son, Thomas Wolfe, whose novel Look Homeward, Angel, borrowed much about Asheville for that novel. There were imprints of his footprints, proving that Wolfe was a large man, and not only for the amount of words that he could spew on a page. We'd reached the end of the walking tour -- a yellow boarding house that had served as the backdrop for Wolfe's novel. Since it was Monday, it too was closed.
That night, we circled back to Walnut Street, walked up a steep hill and stepped into Zambra, a restaurant featuring Spanish cuisine, in the style of a Tapas bar. With the help of our waitress, we ordered small plates: a delightful salad of pears and local greens, a second grassier set of greens, curry flavored albondigas -- a kind of meatball -- and two larger dishes of Paella and trout. The food challenged our palettes, but was well worth the effort. So ended our night in Asheville.