A Month in Asheville
We enjoyed our stay in Asheville so much last year that we immediately made plans to stay again the same place, a year in advance! After our adventures in Peru, it was lovely to come back to “our” familiar condo in the historic Asheville Times Building in the heart of Downtown. We rearranged the living room furniture a bit for easier TV-watching, but otherwise every detail of the place was as perfect as we remembered it.
It seems there was always something happening in Downtown Asheville. There was a May Day Rally soon after we arrived, with people marching for a variety of causes including public school funding, workers' rights, immigrant safety, and healthcare access.
On Saturday mornings, the Farmers Market popped up just around the corner. Across the street from our condo, Pack Square was a popular site for community events. Downtown After Five was a monthly event with art vendors, food trucks, and free concerts. (We watched a salsa band perform on Latin Dance Night, but unfortunately the sound system was lacking.)
We walked to the little movie theater for a couple of matinees - so convenient!
Our good friends Hope and Dave drove up from Greenville for a visit, bringing a bottle of truly excellent wine, a gift from our friends Karen and Jimbo. Steve made crispy chicken for dinner, and Dave made omelets for breakfast. We visited the North Carolina Arboretum (read about it HERE) and talked and laughed for hours. Every get-together with Hope and Dave is a treat!
We saw more good friends when we flew to New Jersey for our 40th college reunion. As the plane left Asheville, I enjoyed the view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was fun seeing the massive Biltmore Estate from the air! (Read about our last visit to the Biltmore HERE.) It was quite a different landscape from the Port of Newark, an industrial sprawl with the Manhattan skyline in the distance. Read about Princeton Reunions HERE.
During our last week in Asheville, we squeezed in a few more activities:
We attended a marvelous concert at the Sierra Nevada Brewery’s open-air amphitheater. It was a perfect night to sit outdoors and the perfect place for bluegrass music. Read about the concert HERE.
I visited the Black Mountain College Museum, in the Asheville Times Building right below our condo. BMC was an avant-garde arts school near Asheville, with many influential artists as students and faculty. Read about BMC Museum HERE.
We dined one last time at our favorite Asheville restaurants. Read about our top spots HERE.
On the surface, Asheville seemed to have recovered after the devastating floods from Hurricane Helene twenty months ago. Downtown restaurants, shops, and galleries were open (though a few beloved spots had closed forever). On the weekends, markets and festivals brought in crowds. Tourism in Asheville is finally rebounding. But residents still feel lasting effects from the storm, such as nervousness when it rains. A Lyft driver told us that the worst impact of Helene was the loss of his circle of friends, since most of them re-located to faraway places. Another resident observed that the storm brought neighbors out to help one another, bringing back a spirit of community that had previously dwindled. We were happy to play a small part in Asheville’s continuing economic recovery, and we plan to return to this wonderful place as often as we can.
