The city of Asheville...
...features many colorful,...
We spent the 2012 holiday season in our home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to be able to enjoy this special time with family and friends. As Eric pointed out, the four of us, meaning parents and kids, hadn't gone on a trip together since our 2008 Christmas visit to Amsterdam, and so he decided to organize something during our stay. This sounded like a great idea, especially since Eric had missed out on our 3-country tour with David and Amelia during the summer.
Of course, there couldn't be any thought of taking off for several days; after all, we couldn't expect David to abandon wife and dogs for an extended period of time! However, it turns out that Amelia was very understanding and did not object to an overnight absence of her husband, and so Eric suggested a two-day trip to Asheville, a beautiful and artsy community some 220 miles (~350 kilometers) away. We set out at 7:30 on Friday morning and arrived in Asheville in plenty of time for lunch. We had chosen the Four Points hotel in downtown Asheville; this had the advantage that we could leave the car and explore the city on foot.
Click on any image to see a larger (1500 x 1000 pixel) version!
|
|
|
The city of Asheville... |
...features many colorful,... |
|
|
...quaint, or downright... |
...bizarre storefronts. |
|
|
Christmas decoration |
Fancy cafeteria |
|
|
Corner building |
The deer and the bear |
|
|
Cat sculpture |
Mural |
|
|
Modern building |
Older buildings |
|
|
Thirsty monk |
Seasonally decorated window |
|
|
Asheville street |
Bus café: Order below, consume above |
We did take the car the next day to drive to the Grove Park Inn, an imposing and a little bit creepy hotel that in some ways reminded me of the Overlook hotel in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. From the hotel, it is only a short walk to the Gallery, a shop that features a large selection of beautiful items, for the most part made by local artists. There is also an antique car museum where, among other things, I saw my first Ford Edsel, a car mostly known for having been a colossal commercial flop. Before heading back to Chapel Hill, we stopped for a truly superb cup of coffee (and a bag of beans!) at the Café Waking Life.
|
|
Near the Grove Park Inn Gallery |
The Gallery courtyard |
|
|
Sculpture |
Red bird |
|
|
Automobile museum: detail of an antique firetruck |
Ford Edsel (I had never seen one!) |
|
|
Metal blossom |
Announcing the gingerbread house competition |
|
|
The Grove Park Inn |
The main entrance |
|
|
The back of the hotel |
It was too cold to stay on the terrace |
|
|
One of the beautiful gingerbread houses |
Coffe break in town before starting the drive back |
We had a wonderful time on this trip! From listening to various playlists on my iPod, some new, some converted from cassette tapes already used during our road trips in Europe in the 1990s, to exploring a truly beautiful city where hippies don't seem to be creatures from a distant past, to playing Jass in a hotel room (and arguing over the finer points of the rules when things didn't quite go our way—as though any of us were experts!)... all the ingredients to make this trip memorable and remind us of family vacations of the past were united. Way to go, Eric! Thanks for making this one happen.
All photos on this page were taken with our Panasonic DMC-TZ20 point and shoot camera.
Home | Site Info | Family | The Area | Trips | France | Work | Rants | Photography | Odds & Ends
This page was last modified on January 2, 2013
Send feedback about this page to feedback@kiechle.com
https://www.kiechle.com/trips/asheville/index.htm
(optimized for Retina display)
All contents © 1999-2024 The Kiechles