Easter Weekend in Asheville

We took a little mini-trip to Asheville over the weekend to meet up with my mom and tour the Biltmore Estate. I have been there before but not for a few years, and as my company is their wine distributor they set us up with a bunch of fun extras for free.

We stayed at the Sweet Biscuit Inn, which might be our best B&B experience yet. We arrived earlier than I'd told them we would, so our room was not quite ready. The proprietor quickly found out I was in the wine business and brought out a tray with cookies and wine to the front porch and chatted with us for a half hour or so while we waited for the room. The owners are from Bavaria and spent 9 years running an inn in Provence before moving to Asheville to be closer to their son. They were a total delight. Here is Benjamin on the front porch.

Personalized welcome!

Our room is billed as the smallest in the house but it was large and roomy!

And this bathtub! I took an extra bath on Saturday afternoon just because.

On Saturday it was a chilly and wet day, but we managed to fit in a visit to the NC Arboretum during a break in the rain.

This is the quilt garden.

There was also an interesting bonsai exhibit.

And lots and lots of tulips! It is basically summer here in Raleigh but the early spring stuff was just starting to bloom in the mountains.

After the Arboretum we tried to go to a place called Craggy Gardens, but the Blue Ridge Parkway turned out to be closed for repairs. We did stop at an overlook. Such a grey day!

On the way back down into town I saw a freaking BEAR running along through the trees about ten feet off the road. Benjamin did not appreciate my screaming while he was navigating curvy mountain roads. It was exciting, though! Come on! Bear in the wild!

We grabbed lunch at the Laughing Seed Cafe, one of Asheville's oldest vegetarian restaurants. We have been there before but only for brunch. I got an enormous taco salad.

Mom got an equally huge quesadilla.

Benjamin got a tempeh reuben but refused to let me photograph it.

After lunch we wandered around downtown Asheville for a while and then went back to relax in the B&B until dinner, which was at Curate.

There is no restaurant more acclaimed in the entire state right now, and I was anxious to try it, especially because the menu is Spanish tapas and, you know, we went to Spain a little while ago. I found the whole experience really confusing, though! The menu turned out to be exactly what we found at any sidewalk cafe in Andalucia, and while it was all very well done, I don't understand what is being considered so revolutionarily fantastic. It's as if the chef went to Spain and wrote down all the most common tapas and then came home and compiled them into a menu. I've talked to some people since and apparently the original menu was much more creative & unusual; I'd be interested to know why she went back toward more traditional. 

The B&B gave us jelly beans for Easter!

And our Easter breakfast was intense - they baked an entire ham in pastry, which is apparently a Bavarian Easter tradition, and then we had a third course of made-to-order crepes. I was going to pass on the crepe due to having eaten that whole thing of jelly beans before breakfast even started, but then I came to my senses and had a banana Nutella.

We picked up my mom and headed to the Biltmore bright and early, as they were having Easter egg hunts all day and we were warned it would be busy. Guess what. It was busy. Lots of kids.

We did the basic house tour first. The twirly staircase is my favorite.

Then we did the butler's tour, which takes you behind the scenes to the service areas. It was really interesting, definitely better than filing along in the big line of people on the main tour.

We walked down to the gardens briefly. So many tulips!

And then we drove over to the winery for a personal wine production tour and reserve tasting. All for free! Sometimes my job really comes through for me. 

It was a great weekend! Even with the rainy weather, it was a memorable and fun trip. Asheville is, if nothing else, always interesting.