I Wish I Could Say I Was Surprised

Posted by Tony @ 12:15:00 am |

Will one of you kind people please tell me what the hell kind of tree this is? The pictures didn't come out very clear, but it's no longer blooming so I really can't take any more. I swear I think I saw some 25 footers of the same variety up at Julian Price on the Blue Ridge Parkway - the one in our yard is about 12 to 15 feet tall.

Anybody?

 

Friday, May 6, 2005

Those of you who've known me for more than five minutes or have read more than one of my blog posts probably won't be surprised if I tell you that I'm one opinionated son of a bitch. I don't hesitate to offer up opinions and even recommendations on things from CDs to movies to restaurants to beers. However, I realized this past week that I hesitate to recommend hotels for the simple fact that if you take my advice and buy a CD I recommend and you hate it, you're only out $16 or so and you can sell it to the used record store and get a least part of that back. But a bad recommendation for a hotel can kill a vacation or destroy a honeymoon and I really don't want to feel responsible for that, so I might tell you places we've stayed that we liked, but I'll stop short of recommending them.

All of that being said, I'm going to go out on a limb and tell you that sometime before you shuffle off this mortal coil, you owe it to yourself to spend a couple of nights at the Grove Park Inn and Spa, preferably in the 90+ year old main building (they added two huge wings to either side a few years ago). It manages to be manly and rugged while somehow also being a great romantic place to take your sweetie. Built of huge local granite boulders and furnished with Arts and Crafts and leather and sporting a Donald Ross-designed golf course, it's about as old money comfortable as you can get - if a building can look like a good pipe smells, GPI manages. If you're smart and a little flexible, you can get some good room deals through the web, either their i-Deals or 3 nights for the price of 2 as long as one's a Tuesday. Also we've found that May is a slow month for them so you might just get a free upgrade, which we did this past week. Every previous time we've stayed before we've been in the old part of the hotel, but this week we were signed up for a room in one of the newer wings. As we checked in, the wonderful young lady at the registration desk traded us up from two doubles to a king - what we didn't know until we got to the room is that she'd put us in the room that I'm convinced has the best view in the entire hotel - a corner room on the top floor with a view out one side of Asheville and the Blue Ridge Mountains and a view of the spa and the hotel from the other. Just spectacular. Oh, it was the Peter Vidmar suite if you're interested - many of the rooms have plaques on the door with the names of previous occupants. For example, last time we were in the Charles "Cold Mountain" Frazier room. I don't recommend the F. Scott Fitzgerald room as the view isn't great - he is reported to have liked it because it overlooks the carriage entrance and he could check out the "talent" that was checking in.

I don't care for the spa treatment stuff the way JennySlash does - no facials or Shiatzu for me - but I do dig the spa pools and hot tubs and steam room and sauna. I tend to leave the Inn looking something like a raisin after being submerged for most of a couple of days. There's also a lot of excellent food, both at the hotel and about 50 feet away at the Grovewood Cafe. And did I mention the Donald Ross-designed golf course? And the views?

Go check it out and let me know what you think. And you can even blame me if it sucks.

 

Given the infrequency of my posting lately, you probably didn't notice that we've been out of town all week celebrating JennySlash's mumbledieth birthday (which was actually Monday). I didn't forget - just ran out of time to get the post out before we left, so here it is: happy dang birthday to my sweetheart!