Travel Diaries – Asheville, NC

If you haven’t taken a trip with your best friends and their husbands before, I *highly* recommend doing so soon! We had the best time with my two best friends and their husbands – we live all over the place so it was so nice getting together and spending good, quality time with one another (and not just for a wedding or a bachelorette party haha)! It was so great for all of us 🙂

I am SO happy we all agreed on visiting Asheville, because it’s truly a BEAUTIFUL city, and when we went the fall colors were absolutely stunning! Highly, highly recommend visiting!

Arriving at Asheville:

Depending on where you’re flying in from, it may be significantly cheaper to fly into the Charlotte airport (CLT), and rent a car and drive to Asheville. This is what we did! Worked out nicely as all of our flights landed at CLT within an hour of each other, so we rented one large car and drove to Asheville together. It’s only about a 2 hour drive – not bad at all!

Asheville VRBO:

We stayed at a VRBO right by the heart of Asheville and it was perfect! Totally walkable to TONS of hot spots in the area, but also a super quick drive everywhere we wanted to go. Our 3BR/3BA VRBO had one parking spot included, and a lot of other parking options nearby if you happen to have more than one car. They also included a ton of basic necessities like shampoo, conditioner, soap, lotion, paper towels, and even coffee! We appreciated that they provided all of these things 🙂 Overall, we loved this VRBO and it was perfect for the 6 of us!

This VRBO was about a 6 minute drive to the Biltmore Estate!

Asheville Restaurants, Bars, and Breweries:

• Azalea – an off-beat brunch place we stumbled upon after not having luck with any of the super popular brunch spots we were recommended (we were starving and also on a time crunch to get to our Biltmore tour time). We all loved it though! The food was really delish, service was amazing, and very quick!
• West End Bakery – another off-beat bakery spot we hit on our way back to CLT Sunday morning, and they serve some AMAZING egg-sandwiches on delish sour dough bread with veggie sausage! Their Spiced Maple Latte was SO GOOD also! Definitely recommend!
• Biltmore Winery – a complimentary tasting is included with your Biltmore tour ticket, so we checked it out! Although, it wasn’t the type of tasting I had in mind — you just stand at a bar and they let you try an X amount of wines.
• Strada Italiano – so good!! A bit of a fancier spot but everything is made super fresh in house. Highly recommend their fig and goat cheese pizza!!
• White Duck Taco Shop – AMAZING. This place could *maybe* give Torchy’s a run for their money! Definitely get their white queso & chips, smoked gouda grits, Banh Mi tofu taco, Chicken Tikka Masala taco, and the Thai Peanut Chicken taco! You can also make any of their tacos vegetarian with jackfruit 🙂 SO good!
• Double D’s Coffee & Desserts – I’m unsure what the exact history is behind this double decker bus that they’ve turned into a coffee and desserts stop, but it’s really good! Def recommend checking out.
• Highland Brewing – the first stop on our LaZoom Fender Bender bus tour – nice and spacious, and we liked the beer selection!
• Wedge at Foundation – the second stop on our LaZoom Fender Bender bus tour – a lot smaller than Highland but it had a fun vibe!
• Wicked Weed Brewery – this one was SO lively and busy, and we really enjoyed it! There’s a restaurant upstairs and the brewery area is downstairs.
• Bhramari Brewing Company – I think this one was my favorite, in terms of beers! We didn’t get there until towards late evening so it had emptied out a bit, but thankfully we were able to get a table indoors cause of that since it was FREEZING outside.
• Chai Pani – a fan favorite, for sure! We truly enjoyed everything we got – it was all so yummy! Highly recommend trying the Matchstick Okra Fries, Paneer Tikka Roll, and Butter Chicken Thali (they also have a Saag Paneer Thali!). Drinks were delish also – we got the Jal Jeera and Pineapple Turmeric Margarita, and both were delish!

**Most restaurants/places in Asheville DO NOT take reservations, or don’t even let you call ahead to put your name down. We had to go put our name down in person at Chai Pani and our wait was about 90 minutes…thankfully our VRBO was nearby so we just walked home and hung out while we waited until they called us back! I will say that even though most don’t take reservations, a ton of them have incredibly quick service!**

Asheville Must-Do’s:

• Biltmore Estate – obviously a must-do in Asheville! A beautiful estate with tons of fascinating history – it was so cool to learn about it all! The self-guided tour is great, but be sure to wear comfortable shoes because there’s a LOT of walking and not a ton of places to sit until it all ends.
• Brewery Tour – my sweet friends booked the LaZoom Fender Bender bus tour for us, and it was so fun! The bus took us to two different breweries and had a live band ON THE BUS playing for us the entire time in between. Definitely a cool experience, and a great way to check out new breweries outside of the main city area.
• Hike – although we didn’t actually get to do this since it was pretty chilly when we went (mid-November), I’ve listed a few different ones in the section below that were highly recommended to us!

Other Asheville Recommendations (that we didn’t get to do):

Restaurants:
Name:	Recommended for:
Plant – Downtown Asheville	Top 10 Vegan Restaurant in US
Limones	Fancy Mexican Food
Hemingway’s	Cuban Restaurant/Rooftop
BiscuitHead	“For breakfast – we never made it here, but I heard its good!“ “Went here, ordered ahead the night before but still had to wait a while to get the food. It was SO good. Loved the different jams“
Vortex Donuts	“Amazing!! def get donuts there, they have picnic tables to eat at outside“
Hole doughnuts
SunnyPointCafe	“Great for breakfast/brunch”
Early girl eatery	“Went here for breakfast, long wait, good food, not sure if the wait was worth it but if you have time to kill it is“
Sunflower Diner	“Small place – all vegan – the girls like the waffles, tarak got “philly cheese steak” and I got biscuits and gravy – good for brunch ish, have to take it to go or happen to find a spot at a small table outside.”
Red Ginger Dim Sum
French Broad chocolate factory	“Delicious desserts, ice and cakes are so good! there can be a line, so try to go early ish. we went for dessert around 8pm and waited maybe 30 minutes. There is indoor dining or take to go outside. We went to the location not in downtown, no line, got ice cream and it was amazing“
Nine Mile	“Great vegetarian place! the portion sizes are HUGE! we couldn’t finish anything, but everything was SO delicious! we had an hour wait. We didn’t mind, but would have been nice to know. I think it’s worth it. We went to a location slightly further away but had a 15 min wait. Called before we left to find out wait times“
Laughing seed cafe	“All veg place, kids liked their cauliflower mac and cheese and they had good food.“
Hop ice cream
Gourmet chip	“Really good fancy potato chips like in different flavors and grilled sandwiches, panini type”
Rosetta’s kitchen	“Veg soul food“
Sonora	“Mexican food“
Asheville pizza and brewing company	“Huge tv screen with music videos playing. Get the Magic Dragon pizza – it was so good!! (hop ice cream is nearby here)“
Itto Ramen
Breweries/Wineries:
Name:	Recommended for:
Wicked Weed	“2 locations but the Funkatorium specializes in sour beers“
Devil’s Foot Brewery
Eurisko Beer Company
Burial Beer Co
Hi-Wire
Green man
Sierra Nevada	“This was closed for onsite dining when we visited but it’s open now and everyone says it’s awesome. You can spend the whole day there“
Catawba
New Belgium
Bars:
Name:	Recommended for:
Grove Park Inn	“For sunset. They have a good bar there and used to have live music, not sure about right now. We went here for sunset and drinks one night, sunset was beautiful, great atmosphere“
Yacht Club	“Tiki Bar w. Live Music“
The Montford	“Rooftop Bar #views #vibes“
Battery park Book exchange champagne bar	“Can get wine and champagne and look at books“
Hikes:
Name:	Recommended for:
Craggy Gardens Pinnacle	“Hike 1.4 miles total – relatively easy hike. Wear old shoes because it can get muddy“
Chimney Rock
Mount Mitchell	“Highest peak East of Mississippi. you take drive to almost the top and walk about 0.2 miles to the top point. Worth it! Did this, beautiful views“
Looking Glass Falls: Pisgah forest.	“Drive right up to it and can get really nice photos without having to walk too far. Then we did Moore Cove Falls Trail which was just up ahead. We were trying to get to sliding rock but couldn’t find it and did this trail instead.“
Catawba Falls	“Great hike, relatively easy dirt path, a little tricky to get to the falls at the end, but worth it! Absolutely loved this!!! It was beautiful. It was on our way home so we did this on our last day coming home.“

Our Eat, Drink & Be Merry Recommendations:

Eat: Chai Pani – see above for recommendations!

Drink: All the breweries! Brahmari was my favorite 🙂

Be Merry: Visit the Biltmore Estate

I hope you found this guide to Asheville, NC helpful! We really enjoyed our trip and I’d definitely plan another one back maybe over the summer or earlier fall to enjoy better weather and see more of the beautiful city!

xo,

gopi

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