We only had a few hours for our family’s Asheville North Carolina Day Trip before we headed back to Atlanta from Johnson City,Tennessee. We searched Explore Asheville online for some direction. We figured we’d walk around downtown a bit, see what there is to see, grab some lunch and head home.
We quickly realized that a few hours was NOT going to be enough time. First we drove over to the Asheville River Arts District, parked and strolled the streets. The district was beautiful with lots of murals and art installations on the buildings.
The Grove Arcade was our next stop. I must admit the teens were a little salty, feeling misled by the word “Arcade” in the name of the building. It’s a shopping arcade, no games to be found, but they warmed up soon after we entered. The gorgeous old building (originally opened in 1929) is full of small shops selling furniture, local arts and crafts, unique clothing, CANDY, books even fresh produce and more.
Our first stop was into a shop with candles, gorgeous wood furniture and various tchotchkes. It was one such tchotchke, a cat sculpture, that got my daughter’s attention and lured us into the shop. We left about $80 lighter and went on to explore the rest of the Grove Arcade.
The kids were drawn into Nutz About Fudge by the amazing aroma coming from the shop. Nutz About Fudge is a small shop filled with the most delicious, hand crafted fudge. They had such a wide variety of fresh flavors it was hard to choose so we did A LOT of tasting in store and we bought a ton of fudge home with us. Red velvet, blueberry cheesecake, butter pecan, dulce de leche, tiger butter -we bought a whole bunch of flavors and it was all fantastic. That’s just scratching the surface there were so many to choose from. Definitely give them a try if you visit Asheville.
We walked around outside of The Grove Arcade to visit “Carmel’s”, a restaurant that was recommended to us by a shopkeeper we chatted with earlier. My daughter ordered the crab cake sandwich for her meal. I was impressed with how large the crab cake was, and it was full of crab, not filler.
I ordered a BLT because …BACON! I was not disappointed
The side walk outside of The Grove Arcade is lined with kiosks full of vendors selling a wide variety of crafts. We purchased a few souvenirs on our stroll back to our car.
On our way out of town we passed through Biltmore Village, a planned community outside of the Biltmore Estate. The architecture in this town is AMAZING! It all looks like a storybook village with structures reminiscent of a French hamlet or rural English village. Even the fast food restaurants sport these designs.
It’s all very sweet and quaint. I’ve heard great things about Biltmore Estates and the surrounding gardens, I hope to get back to Asheville soon to do a more thorough tour. An Asheville North Carolina Day Trip is simply not enough, this mountain town deserves much more time.
