Writer's Notebook - James Rafferty Blog

Walking in Asheville

This past week, I spent several days visiting Asheville, North Carolina. It's a great city for walking and I stayed in an apartment which wasn't too far from the downtown. I found myself taking long walks on most days, either in the city or nearby. On my first full day, the rains came. Merrimon Avenue filled with water on either side and I decided to wait out the storm in a fine music store called the Musician's Workshop. I tried out an Ibanez hollow body electric guitar and messed around with a crazy pedal called Superego + that had multiple effects and even allowed overlays of one effect on another. It was fun, but really getting the most out of this kind of effects pedal would take more time than I currently have. Maybe someday. 

When I looked up, the rain had stopped and I decided to take a walk at the Botanical Center right next to UNC Asheville just down the road. Normally, a quiet stream curls through the center, but not on this day. Here's a glimpse of the churning brown waters of the stream that afternoon. 

The next day, I walked into downtown late in the morning. Most of the trees in town were still green, but here's an exception I saw along the way walking on Broadway.  

My favorite stop in downtown is the Malaprop's bookstore. This week I had a gift card at the store, so I had the luxury of browsing through titles in various sections of the store.  I did my research on one day, then bought the books on another day.  I like science fiction books, so I looked at those possibilities, but I also checked out books of regional interest and the general fiction area as well. The store is replete with other sections such as Banned Books and Staff Picks, so those books are also worth checking out. On prior visits, I had seen books such as 1984 and the Just Kids memoir from Patti Smith that I later read.  

But since it was lunchtime, I walked downhill toward the Green Sage on Broadway. This restaurant has great coffee and tea selections, and also has innovative fare for lunch or breakfast.  On this day, the temperatures had dropped a bit, so I wanted a lunch with both hot and filling foods. After asking a few questions when I got to the head of the queue, I made my selections and they were brought to my table a few minutes later. My sandwich was called a Rainbow Wrap and its mix of veggies included beets, carrots, lettuce and alfalfa sprouts, augmented by olives and small hunks of feta. Very tasty. My soup was intriguing and warm -- lentils served in a curry-based soup.  The piece de resistance was a spicy chai cider which brought the rest of the meal together and whose hot spicy taste felt like a pure burst of autumn. Green Sage is a magnet for a diverse group of people -- single, couples or in groups -- and ages ranging from students to retirees. Across the street, a new building is being erected, which will house a mix of condos and hotel rooms; the city continues to evolve from the one I first encountered about 8 years ago, with a big push toward providing more rooms in and around the downtown. 

Later on the trip, I took a ride up into the hills of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Asheville has beautiful views even from the downtown, but it's magnified up on the parkway. Here's a couple glimpses of what I saw:  

 

 Back in Asheville, one can encounter some surprising sights. Here's the side of the original Moog studio off of Broadway:  

 Whether it's music, books, food, wine. beer or the outdoors, it seems there's always another adventure lurking around the corner in Asheville.  

Mountain Hospitality

I spent last week with my family in the area in and around Asheville, North Carolina.  We had a great time.  Part of what I noticed was the friendly attitude of a lot of the people that we met.   We also found lots to do. 

Highlights for the week included riding the Blue Ridge Parkway in the area around Asheville, visiting the famed Biltmore Estate and just hanging out in the downtown area. 

I previously blogged about the Blue Ridge Parkway here.  I have no new pictures to add -- my camera battery ran out of charge -- but we did drive an additional 30 miles or so though the southern part of Asheville.   Over by Craggy Gardens, where there are great views on both sides of the road, the shadows of the fall season gave the area south of us a totally different look than I remembered seeing in the spring.  As you come down off the 5000 foot elevations to around 3000, the views of Asheville residential areas running up to the sides of the mountains are spectacular.  Most of the leaves were down, but there were still some very pretty rust, pale yellow and auburn colored leaves.   We then continued on, passing several side roads before getting off of the blue roads about 10 miles north of Asheville airport.  

The Biltmore Estate was all decked out for Christmas. We did the tour of the main building, which included view of some seventy plus Christmas trees, but the building itself is still the real star on this interior tour.   Here's a photo of the Biltmore when rendered as a gingerbread house. 

 

After the tour of the house, we booked our place at the Stable Cafe.  The stable from the estate has been re-purposed as casual eating establishment and the stalls have been converted to booths.  Just as I remembered, the food was wonderful.  I had a lamb burger with lots of tasty trimmings and my family members also enjoyed hearty choices such as a meatloaf sandwich and the hefty Heritage Burger.  This became our main meal of the day.  Afterwards, we walked on the grounds, taking a very colorful route through pathways that eventually brought us to the glassed-in conservatory.  

Here's a view that caught my eye. 

  

On the weekend, we'd gone to a local church in Asheville called Jubilee, where the minister preached about winter gardens, a fine metaphor for the work of the winter season, where root vegetables burrow deeper and trees extend their roots, awaiting the brighter seasons.   Here at the Biltmore, we saw how the gardens of spring turn into a toned down version for the fall, in preparation for the fallow months ahead. 

Here's a glimpse of unusual hothouse flowers seen inside the conservatory.  

 

 The grounds of the Biltmore were designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the amazing landscape architect who also played a large role in the development of New York's Central Park and Boston's Emerald Necklace.  Here's a view of what the main house looks like when seen during a walk in the gardens.    

   

Later, we got in the car and drove along the long, twisting road that heads toward the exits.  On the way, we stopped off at the Biltmore Winery.  We'd noticed that the estate didn't miss a trick when it came to commercial opportunities, but the winery was almost purely commercial.  Our tickets did give my wife and I access to a wine tasting.  We queued up -- sometimes this felt like Disneyworld for adults -- then a group of us were led to a long oak bar for a tasting.  The selection was ample, with a broad choice among whites, reds and roses.   We tasted their Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Zinfandel, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon.  All of the wines were of reasonably good quality; the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir were my favorites for this round of tastings.  

Throughout the visit, downtown Asheville served as both a destination and resource. We ate several meals in town, including lunches and dinners, and took advantage of the eclectic cuisines available.   Two favorites were:

Mela, which had a fine selection of Indian food, including some spectacular custom flavored Naans (the delightful flat Indian bread) and variations on favorites like lamb curry that sated my appetite.  All of this was complemented by a fine pale ale from the local Pisgah microbrewery.   

Mellow Mushroom, which has a nostalgic late sixties vibe and makes terrific pizzas with a wide selection of possible ingredients.   Here we continued our symbolic tour of the local microbreweries and enjoyed more of the local products, guided by a friendly waitress.  

Asheville is also a great place to connect to the cyber world.  My youngest son and I each carried our Ipods with us and usually were able to connect to the 'Net using one of the ubiquitous wifi connections to be found in restaurants, bookstores and just about anywhere else in the downtown.  Want to check the upcoming weather, check the New York Times for the day or otherwise link up?  No problem.  

I'm now back in the Boston area and the dreary late fall weather, but I'm still buoyed by our one week sojourn to one of the most interesting destinations in the southern US, Asheville, North Carolina.  I'm already looking forward to the next visit. 

Writer's Notebook: Road Trip

Road trip.  The very words still set me a-tingle.  This summer has been a time of several trips and I've seen a lot, ranging from mountain vistas to vineyards to tossing seas.  As a writer, I've always mined my trips for material and one of my favorite things to do in a novel or short story is to take the reader to a place that I've been and try to bring it to life.  Set the scene, paint the details, sketch the moment.  Ah, that's part of the joy of writing.  

Tomorrow I go on my most common type of roadtrip, an airplane trip where I do a flyover of the countryside.  You see a lot less during the trip itself, but I find the many hours aloft are a fine time to dive into the details of writing extended scenes with few distractions.  I do most of this kind of writing longhand, which is highly portable and can be done at any time during the flight.   No need to boot the looseleaf notebook or close the pages just because the pilot wants to land.  

My last few trips were on the road.  I took my oldest son to college in western North Carolina recently and he and I drove through ten states over two and one-half days.  For me, the new places were in the middle:  Route 81 crosses from Pennsylvania into Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia in short succession.  

We started the second day in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the very name a harbinger of what was to come.  For on that day, we started in a rainstorm, then cleared a mountain passage on Route 78 and watched at the clouds broke, revealing the road which lay in front of us.   Within an two hours, the clouds had vanished and sun accompanied us for the rest of the trip.  

Around lunch time, we passed into West Virginia and decided to look for lunch in Martinsburg.  My wife family had settled in that area about 300 years ago, so we were curious about the town.   We drove through a residential area for about 10 minutes and began to wonder where the town center was, but finally discovered it.  The local architecture is beautiful, a mix of art deco and victorian styles, without a lot of more modern changes.  Here are a couple of samples of what we saw: 

After lunch at a Mexican restaurant downtown, we explored further -- the railroad station was just a few blocks away.   Martinsburg has a heritage of railroads and we saw an example in the roundhouse that was just across the tracks from the more recently modernized station.  

 

As all railroad buffs know, the roundhouse is where you would turn around the train in order to be able to change directions and go onto another track.  A much smaller example is found in San Francisco with their cable cars, but I'd never seen a fully enclosed building for this purpose.  Martinsburg clearly does not have a booming economy, but the people were very friendly and opened up when we mentioned the existance of family in the area.  

The road trip continued.  Our most spectacular day was on Friday morning, as we rode from Roanoke, Virginia to Tennesee and then into western North Carolina.  Here are a couple of glimpses of our vantage points:  

 

The mountains awed us as new scenes leaped up after each turn.   The two samples here are just examples of the many beauties to be seen on a drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains.  

I recently mentioned to my writing friends how remarkable I found these mountain vistas to be.  I have a feeling I'll be seeing mountains jumping into my fiction very soon.   And now, time for that next road trip.  

American Versailles: The Biltmore Estate

What if a gentlemen with unlimited resources joined forces with a world famous architect and the genius who designed Central Park and built an estate over hundreds of acres in the mountains.   George Vanderbilt did exactly that when he initiated The Biltmore over one hundred years ago in the hills of western North Carolina on the edges of the city Asheville.  

I've seen the Vanderbilt summer cottage in Newport, known as The Breakers, but the Biltmore estate was much more ambitious.  Like The Breakers, the huge mansion is heavily influenced by then current trends in Italian and French architecture, but the piece de resistance is the remarkable estate surrounding this home and the scale on which the estate was envisioned.  

I drove into the Biltmore and went at least 2 miles before we even got close to the main Biltmore House.  When designing the landscape, Frederick Olmstead deliberately built the long winding roads that pass by lush forests and local rivers, so that guests would realize they were passing into a different kind of experience.  Suffice to say, it works.  On this day, crews were out with chainsaws repairing the damages from a storm the prior evening, but the many trees and plants along the edges of the roads still enchanted, bringing a calming effect as the drive continued.    

Today, the estate has been preserved by the Vanderbilt family, so it is a hugely popular tourist spot that needs the satellite parking lots about a quarter of mile away from the main house.   I joined my fellow tourists on the shuttle bus and we were dropped off by the front door.  But on this way in, here is the view of the main Biltmore House:  

 

I took the walking tour on my visit. Inside, each of the major rooms is distinct.  Sitting rooms often have art from world renowned artists of the day including Whistler, John Stewart Sargent and Renoir.  

Looking out, you can see the views which Olmstead sought, where the house stands above the fields below, but also looks on to the Smoky mountains in the distance. 

 

This is the kind of place where even the nooks and crannies are special.  The exterior of the main house brought to mind another famous French building -- Notre Dame in Paris.  Like Notre Dame, the exterior of the house had a variety of carefully sculpted gargoyles who did double duty in serving as water spouts to drain water away from the house in the event of rain.  No sign of such rain this day; the temperatures pushed 90 degrees even in the morning.  

The interior rooms for the family members were huge.  Each room had a different style, though variations of double posted beds were common.  Here again, I saw the influence of Versailles in the attention to detail, be it in special wallpapers, imported furniture and, in one case, a fireplace taken from Europe and reconstructed here.  

Tying the house together is the Grand Staircase which winds upward in a style much like the one featured in Gone With the Wind.  Here is a glimpse of the staircase looking down from the top floor. 

 

As distinctive as the interior of the house is, the exterior grounds designed by Olmstead offer an even more colorful and varied set of views.  

On the left of the main house, the collection of carefully tended gardens begin.   Looking forward from the Libary Terrace is the Italian Garden.  Here, a combination of leafy green plants, ivory statues and stone bordered pools create an oasis of beauty which contrasts with the wilder appearance of the forests soaring skyward behind it.   

 

Next, I began the walk downhill toward the conservatory and was immediately distracted by magnificent hanging gardens.  On a cooler day, I can imagine sitting under the vineyard style trestles and reading for hours.  

On this day, the scorching heat made me think it was time to find water and lunch, not necessarily in that order.  But first, a quick walk down to the walled gardens seemed essential.  Which looked like this: 

 

And putting the garden against its backdrop, revealed this pastiche:  

 

The walk through these gardens provided a feast for my eyes, but the heat from the sun was unrelenting, so I bid adieu to the gardens and returned to the main house of the estate.   I circled back to the other side of the house and checked in at the front desk of the stable cafe.  The place was very busy, but I was able to get a seat almost immediately.   A waiter quickly came by and brought me a large lemonade and ice water, which I began to drink to get rehydrated.  Looking around, I noticed that the tables were set in the former horse stalls and built of polished hardwood and wrought iron.   Like everything else I experienced at the Biltmore, the drinks were excellent and gave me a chance to scope out the menu.  The variety of choices left me with a tough decision, but I opted for Lamb Sliders based on the description provided by my attentive waiter.  Shortly afer this, he came by with hot cornbread.  Perfect to whet my appetite. 

I wrote up a few postcards and then tended to the food when it arrived.  The sliders were excellent, silver dollar sized slices of lamb on a small toasted bun with a horseradish sauce.  I added a taste of catsup and the blended taste was outrageous.  

So ended my trip to the Biltmore.  I had an appointment after this, so with great reluctance, I returned to my car and followed the 4 mile loop through more forest and past the Biltmore winery, finally exiting the estate.  I got my money's worth on a discounted ticket and definitely want to go back again with my wife and family to share this amazing treasure built into the hills on the outskirts of Asheville.  

Walking in Asheville

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.  

Carolina Times and on to Virginia

Today my family and I flew to Raleigh, North Carolina.  We're down  here for a visit to see two colleges and see a museum that has a strong connection with my wife's family.  This is the second time in nine months that I've travelled en famille and it is so much different than the usual business trip.  For example, I know the airline security drill by rote, but I had to coach my family through the various details of how to get our stuff through onto the gate side of Logan Airport, so that we could get on our way. 

Logan does have one pleasant feature that betrays a New England flavor.  There are white rocking chairs situated in a spot which looks out onto the airfield and the far edges of East Boston beyond it; my family enjoyed a few minutes of rocking before we moved over into the regular gate area.  

After a short delay, we got onto our regional jet.  It's pretty tight for space, so we needed to check our biggest bags at the end of the jetway before getting on the the plane.   The flight was uneventful, but we didn't get to our rental car until about 2:15 in the afternoon.  We were all tired and ready for lunch by then, so we drove west on Route 40 in search of a diner that was recommended in our travel guide. 

We got off at the recommended exit and drove about a bit, but the directions were not too clear.  So we pulled into the next shopping plaza, drove up to a restaurant called Fuddruckers and declared victory.  It was the first time any of us had been there, but they served burgers and other food with a minimum of fuss and bother and we were all generally pleased with the quality of what we got and we now ready to continue our journey.  

The car came with the Hertz Never Lost GPS system, so it was time to check that out.  Without too much effort, I figured out how to punch in our destination in Roanoke Virginia and we were informed that we had 155 miles and about 3 hours on the trip ahead of us. 

I drove the first half hour and then my oldest son relieved me.  The traffic levels weren't too bad, but we found Greensboro to be fairly busy for a Saturday and it took us a while to make our way through this sprawling city cum exurb and head up Rt 220 to Roanoke. 

About 40 miles later, Rt 220 crossed over into Virginia and the terrain started to undulate.   In the distance, we got our first glimpse of the Blue Ridge mountains.  As we continued to drive North, the views got more spectacular and we particularly enjoyed the sunset, where banks of clouds rose up above the mountains, pink underlacing the gray puff above and the panorama near took our breath away.   Rt 220 winds all over the place and soon it was time for my wife to take the wheel.  She drove the rest of the way, but the hills got steeper and we had to be very careful coming down the backside of mountain roads as they twisted in turned in several directions.  

At last we found ourselves driving through Roanoke and got a preview of the town that we'd be seeing the next day.  I'd done a bit of research in our AAA guide and convinced the family we had to try our a place called the New Yorker Delicatessen and Restaurant.  It turned out we didn't even need to get back on the highway.  Our GPS took us to Williamson street, which is lined with both restaurants and the occasional bail bonds and check cashing places.  About a mile down the road, we got to an old style place that looked very much like the deli restaurants we knew from the New York area.  

The menu was old school in all respects.  The food was classic New York: Pastrami, Reubens, Nova, and all kinds of suitable side dishes.   We all placed our orders.   Soon, plates stacked with food arrived at the table.  I dug into my Reuben and was very pleased with the lean and very tasty pastrami.   Other food we ordered like a Bagel with Nova, fresh brown beans, a turkey sandwich and a concoction of Bratwurst and sauerkraut called the Germantown special, all proved to up to very high standards and priced at bargain levels we had not seen in many years.  The boys topped off the meal with desserts of cheesecake and strawberry ice cream and we all walked out full.  The trip is off to an auspicious start.