Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Asheville!

This weekend was really fun! I think Ryan was surprised and happy with everything we did.

Friday we left around noon and drove 3 1/2 hours to Asheville. We checked into our B&B - it was gorgeous! We stayed in the Ralph Waldo Emerson suite. It had a jacuzzi tub and one of those huge showers that sprays waters from nozzles on the wall as well as above. The room itself was beautiful with tall ceilings, a stone fireplace and a huge bed with tons of fluffy pillows.

We met one of Ryan's friends for dinner at The Laughing Seed Cafe - an awesome veggie restaurant. I had the tempeh Napolean - yum! After that we went to this bar/art gallery and the boys had beer while I just hung out.
Later we went back to our room and had hot cocoa in the jacuzzi :)

Saturday we were served a huge 3 course breakfast - we had warm pineapple and cheese (surprisingly good!), oatmeal creme brulee and a nut pastry.
Then we went to The Grove Park Inn Resort and Spa (super turn of the century fancy shmancy feeling). This is the place I want to come and stay if I ever get to a huge goal like my goal size or finishing grad school - a reward for something huge. Ryan had an hour long golf lesson while I sat in the cart. Then he played 9 holes while I went in the clubhouse with my laptop and tried to get some work done for a presentation I had due for class Monday.

After that we went to a place called Marco's pizza for lunch - Ryan remembered it as being good and wanted to go there. I wasn't too impressed. I ordered broccoli and spinach on my pizza and it came out wet and soggy. But he was happy and that's all that matters - it was his b-day.
We went to the Fresh Market next door and picked up a few bottles of wine to bring back to the B&B.

That afternoon, Ryan had an hour massage while I did some more work.
We went out and walked around downtown, had Indian for dinner at Mela's (soooo good, but we took most of it in a to-go box because we'd eaten so much already that day) and then went back to the room to nibble some chocolate b-day treats we'd picked up downtown, have a glass of wine and enjoy our room.

Sunday, Ryan woke up not feeling well - he has a cold. What I'd scheduled for us was an all day homebrew (beer) workshop, but since he wasn't really up to it, we went to the place it was going to be at (Hops and Vines) and he picked up a few bottles of beer to take home. We canceled and signed up for another workshop for 3 weeks from now. This is a beginners workshop so it's actually going to work out better than the one that was planned for his weekend - which was intermediate level (which we're not).

We then walked around downtown, went back to Laughing Seed for lunch, and got on the road back to Tennessee.

I'm so glad we went. It was an expensive weekend, but I wanted to do something big for his 25th, and I think it turned out really well. Asheville is the cutest town! And now we get to go back soon :) This time we'll just stay at the Hampton or something - and probably just 1 night unless we decide to make another weekend of it and go see Biltmore on that Saturday - I will be on spring break.

I think I've been on a little bit of a post-vacation let down since we've been back. I have a lot of work due this week and next and we're doing all these tedious standardized tests at work - it's hard to get my energy up for it all, but it's all good.
I'm happy we got to do all those thing and happy to be back at comfortable home :)

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