Christmas in Asheville, NC

Travel dates: Thursday, Dec. 22, 2016 - Sunday, Dec. 25, 2016

I debated about whether or not to even do a blog entry since we kept things pretty low-key.  There’s not a whole lot to report! Then I decided, why not?

We repeated a couple of eating establishments like Rocky’s Hot Chicken Shack and Vortex Doughnuts.  Rocky’s didn’t have the same appeal as last time.  I don’t know if they changed, we changed, or the novelty just wore off.  Vortex might’ve been better this time but let’s face it, we don’t need to be eating doughnuts anyway.

We tried a couple of new places – The Blackbird for brunch and Rhubarb for dinner. The Blackbird was worth repeating but Rhubarb was overpriced and in our opinion, overrated.  I was also feeling unwell at that time due to consuming an abundance of rich food.  We sort of planned to eat our way through town but I quickly discovered that I couldn’t hack it.

We left a day earlier than scheduled because our remaining plans were to have two very decadent meals, one of which was to be very expensive.  I couldn’t imagine eating and I certainly didn’t want us to waste money on a meal I wasn’t likely to enjoy.

We stayed in a very nice basement apartment that we booked through VRBO.  It’s in a fantastic location; we walked to/from Downtown easily.  It was kind of funny because we discovered fairly early on that our host isn’t very personable. She wasn’t required to be but we found her efforts to ditch interaction very amusing. Despite her lack of friendliness, we did make a friend in town.  We don’t know if it’s a he or she and we don’t even know his or her name, but not surprisingly, considering it’s us, we briefly adopted a neighborhood cat.  I like to call him or her Eve since we met on Christmas Eve.

It was one of the most pleasant and relaxing parts of our trip.  After a brief and quick introduction the three of us made ourselves comfortable on the porch.  Evan and I were in chairs, Eve was sprawled on a side table between us, and we were just hanging out and watching the sun’s slow descent.  It kind of broke my heart to know that Eve doesn’t have a permanent home but s/he is well-fed, clean, and friendly so someone or multiple people take care of him or her.  Eve really is one of the sweetest cats I’ve ever met.  I hope we get to see each other again one day.

We saw another kitty cat wandering around the premises but s/he didn't seem as interested in getting to know us.  S/he looked a little rougher around the edges but still cuddly.  

Another new and pleasant encounter was hiking up Chimney Rock in Chimney Rock State Park, only about forty minutes by car from Asheville.  

We had to climb 500+ steps to reach the summit but it was worth it.  It was a beautiful day and a good workout.  Our only regret is that we didn't do the research beforehand to know that there are multiple hiking trails that we could've explored. Next time!

Here's part of the stair network we had to climb:

The summit:

Of course we weren't going to leave town before we saw the National Gingerbread Competition at the Omni Grove Park Inn! It was still awe-inspiring but I do think the presentation last year was a notch better.

Some highlights:

One of our favorites from last year was done by locals from our area.  I'm pretty sure it's the same people who did this project this year:

And that's all folks!  I think we learned a lesson in trip planning, which is that we won't center trips around food anymore. Good food is good fun but it shouldn't be the focal point of a vacation.  Going forward I think we're going to focus more on activities like hiking and being active.  Good food will follow.