Year 3 of our yearly jaunt to beautful Asheville, North Carolina, for their annual
Bele Chere Festival is now in the books and it was another great trip. This was the 30th anniversary for this wonderful (basically free) festival held in downtown Asheville every last weekend of July. And we do mean "downtown. " They block off dozens of their main streets for this event and stick music stages at the end of several of them (photo above) along with crafts, food vendors, etc. tucked in every nook and cranny. The real beauty of this festival is that it embraces dozens of unique downtown stores and restaurants and most of them stay open for the festival and don't gouge their prices during it either...in fact some of them run really great bargains (Ashlee bought a couple of really nice tops in a small retail store)...and the biggest bargain of all is....BEER.
There is an amazing array of beer for sale (domestics, imports, hand-crafted local microbrews) and they can be consumed while walking down the streets enjoying the festival, or sitting on a restaurant patio watching the crowds go by. The prices never exceeded $4 that we could find and the bargain of the night came late when we followed a suggestion to check out the "Weingarten Store" who were selling huge pints of English
ale for $2. (photo below - Ashlee's cell phone has been placed beside one of these monster beers for scale).
We listened to some great sets of music by "13 Stories" and "Cowboy Mouth" who have an incredible amount of energy onstage. We ate dinner during the festival at a downtown vegetarian spot called "The Laughing Seed." Rob's skepticism quickly passed (besides the fact that they had a locally-brewed IPA on tap for $3.50 a glass) when the delicious food arrived and filled us up quickly.
Despite the amount of beer flowing and the big crowds, the festival always feels very safe for all ages. There isn't a ton of security at least visible either, but the reasoning is probably more about attitude. In our opinion, Asheville is "Key West with Mountains." There is a laid-back feeling in this little city hidden in the mountains very similar to Key West, another of our favorite places to visit, which is kind of "hidden" way down at the end of Florida. Folks in Asheville and Key West just seem to "get it," They know how to enjoy themselves and life without bothering their neighbor. They share a love for life that just seems to come without much effort at all.
We woke up Sunday morning just in time to have brunch at the very popular West End Cafe in W. Asheville near the university. This local institution is great and their homemade pimento cheese pannini's are to die for. After another great meal in Asheville we headed a few miles north to Whisper Mountain to take a look the Southern Living Idea House on display there. The house was stunning and the fact that it and the new development it was built in are every eco-friendly and "green" made it all the more amazing. We cruised on eastward (make that WESTward - thanks Craig, edited 7/28) after that through the mountains and wound up in Cookeville, TN, right about dinner time. Wanting to continue our streak of great eats we found "Crawdaddies" near the square which had been recommended by our friend, Woody, and Woody was right on the money. What a great little restaurant and the food was superb. Authentic jambalaya and garlic shrimp were the choices and the were both exceptional. Great weekend, great food, great beer, great time.
We scored a couple of free tix to attend the live taping of "Larry the Cable Guy's Star-Studded Christmas Extravaganza" special at TPAC in Nashville for CMT that will begin airing in late November (the 22nd to be exact) and then coming out for sale on DVD just in time for Christmas this year. It was quite enjoyable with great comedy, good music and a rapid pace despite being filmed (i.e. there were very few do-overs). Larry's low-brow humor has always been kind of a guilty pleasure for us, so it was great to see him live and he did not disappoint whether the camera was rolling or not. Live guest appearances included singing legend, Tony Orlando (he and Larry are a strange comedic combination together but it works); comedian/actor Fred Willard (of Best in Show and Everybody Loves Raymond fame); SNL veteran, Victoria Jackson; Joey Fatone (of n'Sync and Dancing with the Stars fame, but we loved him in My Big Fat Greek Wedding); country music duo Montgomery Gentry played a couple of songs including their Robert Earl Keen, Jr. cover of the hilarious "Merry Christmas from the Family" (very appropriate for this type of show), another Christmas song by young country star, Rodney Atkins; and the amazing singing ventriloquist, Terry Fator.
Meet-up.com strikes again as Ashlee found a wine-lovers group who were getting together a bus to take to Clarksville for the Beachhaven Winery's Jazz on the Lawn. $22 each got us a comfortable seat on a nice clean little van/bus driven by Albert (what a nice guy), round-trip transportation, some complimentary wine and finger foods and ton a comraderie.
We arrived early before the music started to grab a good spot on the lawn in front of the stage since this is a very popular event, and then made our first Beachhaven wine purchase of the evening, the Viognier (pronounced Vee - Own - Yay). It's a dry chardonnay-like white wine with excellent flavor made from the grape of the same name. We ended the evening with another dry white purchase, the Seyval Blanc. Much drier than the Viognier with a nice green apple flavor. The music wasn't anything to write a blog about but it made for a nice background for good conversation among the group. Most of the group descended on a nearby Waffle House when we arrived back in Nashville because nothing goes better together than snooty Tennessee wine and some covered and smothered.