My new reality

We were home from Italy just about a month before undertaking another trip, a more ‘local’ jaunt to the ‘Villes’: Asheville, Nashville, and Memphis (well, okay, 2 ‘villes’ and a ‘memphis’).  Our neighbors Steve and Andrea, veteran travellers, also were considering a trip to this area so we decided to go together.  This was another successful social experiment (Are we acceptable travel partners?  Do other people like beer as much as Greg?) and there are many shared experiences and memories which we revisit over occasional beers and which I recount here.  (N.B. after rereading my last blog, I promise to limit the use of the adjective ‘amazing’, although it was…)

Thanks to Steve and Andrea, the consummate travel planners, for organizing and planning this relaxed adventure for us.  We arrived in Asheville on the same flight out of Charlotte, picked up the rental car with Greg driving once again, and made our way to the Aloft hotel.  After checking in we took a stroll of downtown Asheville, noting the obelisk dedicated to Zebulon Vance (and not Cyrus as I tried to convince everyone).  We have since decided if any other children were to grace us, we would name them ‘Zebulon’ because ‘Bebernitz’ is not hard enough.  We passed a weaving supply store, of particular interest to Andrea, and then popped into the Basilica of St. Lawrence to see some amazing stained glass windows and interesting Catalan architecture.  A particular cafe was recommended to Andrea, so we continued our hunt for The Battery Park Book Exchange found within the Grove Arcade, a refurbished 1920’s shopping mall with ornate grillwork and trendy craft and gift shops.  Did I mention the Book Exchange also serves Champagne?  Andrea and I sampled the bubbly while Greg and Steve roamed the book shelves, waiting patiently because our next stop was the Wicked Weed Brewery, beer being their preferred fermented drink.  Take note as there will be a consistent theme running throughout this trip…can you guess?  Our first night’s dinner was at Curate, with the most delectable tapas selections (octopus, yum!) and some VERY good wine. Afterwards we headed to a club for some music although this particular night’s garage band was not the best of the trip

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The next day we split up and Greg and I visited Biltmore, the Vanderbilt mansion not 10 minutes from our hotel.  Cornelius’ grandson George built this Gilded Age palace in the Chateauesque style; it is a mere 178,000 square feet in size on 87,000 acres of beautiful Blue Ridge mountain farmland.  There was a lot of woodwork and Bavarian influence in the design.  A nice surprise was the Chihuly exhibit with glass sculptures scattered throughout the house and gardens.  It took us a full 15 minutes to exit the property on the meandering ‘driveway’.  We caught up with Steve and Andrea and headed out for an afternoon hike to Chimney Rock, a N.C. state park with an iconic stone promontory and views of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  The drive took us down switchbacks and over hills and through Bat Cave, N.C.; washout from the recent rains was evident on the hillsides.  A shuttle took us to the entrance and we hiked up the 1,000 steps to the top.  Unfortunately, the recent heavy rains forced closure of the upper trails to the top of the waterfall (although Andrea and I didn’t mind).  We hiked the lower trail to the bottom of the falls, enjoyed the refreshing water fall spray and headed back.  Our hiking chit chat centered around the classic Lindsay Lohan movie “The Parent Trap” and of the twins convincing their step-mom-to-be to (uselessly) ward off bears or mountain lions by tapping sticks together.  Even Greg caught the reference, thanks to our daughter Christina making us watch the movie over and over (and over and over…)  On our return to Asheville we visited the farmhouse brewery Turgua, basically a brewery in residential garage that served excellent beer.  We chatted with the locals and then headed back to Asheville for dinner at Limones, an upscale Mexican restaurant, a good choice!  Later, we went to a local juke joint for some real bluegrass.  This twangy down home music has a charm of it’s own and made me smile.

We departed wonderful Asheville, which I equate with a hipster version of Burlington, VT, and headed to the Great Smokey Mountains to hike to Charlies Bunion on the Appalachian Trail.  This 8 mile round trip hike took us to a rock outcropping high on the AT with outstanding views of the mountain range. Multiple groups of hikers were lounging on the narrow cliff’s edge and everyone was happy to take photographs for each other (just don’t back up!).  Andrea and I headed back to the car while Greg and Steve took an additional side hike to the Jumpoff and more outstanding views.  While hiking we enjoyed random conversations wiith passing hikers; we met Kansans and Alabamians and National Guardsmen and a family having a reunion.   We also determined each other’s trail names, an AT tradition:   Greg heretofore will be known as “Pops”, Steve as “T-map”, Me as “Click-Clack”, and Andrea as, OH!  I forgot Andrea’s trail name!!!!  New trail name for Andrea TBD.  Tired and sweaty, we moved on to Gatlinburg.  We all were in shock driving down the main drag:  Gatlinburg is possibly the most touristy place we have ever seen with the most obese population by far.  Having just hiked the natural beauty of the Smokies, the contrast couldn’t have been greater or more disappointing.  Luckily, we found our liquid courage at the Smokey Mountain Brewery and then headed to dinner at one of the many identical yet differently named chain restaurants.  Later we sat in rocking chairs on the hotel veranda and chatted with some Korean War Navy Vets having a reunion.  One of the vets was from Elmira and had vacationed in Tupper Lake as a youth, another had attended Paul Smith’s College!  It’s a small world!  I would like to add that the devastating forest fires of last year were not immediately evident but there were many trees that appeared to be savaged by the wooly adelgid.

We reconvened at the hotel breakfast and then headed out to another hike in the mountains and away from Gatlinburg.  On the way to loading the car I noticed some damage to the front end.  Apparently the one time we did not park ‘front end in’ someone backed into us but despite the notion of ‘Southern Hospitality’ that person failed to leave a note.  Oh well, we’ll deal with this later.  We drove west to hike the Little River/Jakes Creek trails.  I was tired and a little sore so luckily these trails were not too demanding.  The views on this trail were of the lovely river running alongside and the deep woods on the return loop.  No bears were seen despite all the warnings.   We hit the campground restrooms and started the drive to Nashville.

We stopped at the Tennessee Brew Works  in Nashville in an industrial area known as ‘the Gulch’; the place was crowded inside on a Saturday afternoon.  Did I mention the heat or the humidity?  It was mid 90’s and humid for our whole trip but we adapted (and good thing too, as it is mid-90’s and humid here in the Adirondacks as I write this.) Pops and T-map enjoyed their brews and Andrea ordered a green pea-hummus appetizer which was out of this world; she now has the recipe.  We even managed to watch more World Cup soccer (oops, football) which Steve appreciated; no matter since we also enjoyed watching the games.  Driving to our hotel, the lovely, updated Holston House, just around the corner from Bridgestone Arena and the Ryman Auditorium, we noticed many, many cranes and lots of construction, evidence of Nashville’s building boom.  Andrea, Greg and I thought we’d head to the rooftop bar and pool for a refreshing swim but there were so many people in the pool there wasn’t room for one more body!   Forgetting that health department nightmare, we left to prep for the evening’s events.  Greg and I strolled down Broadway and were surprised by the bar scene: about 4 blocks of multistoried bars each with bands playing on every level.  There were bachelor and bachelorette parties in abundance, dancing youth on wagons towed by tractors or on open air buses or on those conveyances where all the drunk people peddle as the one sober driver steers them around town.  This place is insane (or we’re getting old?)  We stopped for a drink and listened to some music and then pushed our way through the crowds to walk to the waterfront.   One surprising sight:  Nashville has those intersections where pedestrians can walk in any direction while all the cars are stopped!  The Cumberland River waterfront was very impressive with the Nissan stadium, a pedestrian bridge across the river, and the Ascend amphitheatre, an outdoor concert venue.  We met Steve and Andrea at Martin’s for some tasty BBQ ribs, brisket, chicken, and mac and cheese (no wonder the average BMI here is so high!) and then walked back to the Ascend for the Nashville Symphony playing the music of Pink Floyd. So good and so funny to see well dressed people our age rocking to the music but politely sitting in their chairs.

The next day we took a walking tour of Nashville with an amusing guide who could not get Andrea’s name correct:  is it Namdrea? Amdrea? Mandrea? He is still sending emails with the incorrect name which may affect his TripAdvisor review.  This tour was worthwhile as we learned so much more about the culture and history of Nashville as well as other cool places to visit beyond Broadway (e.g. 2nd Ave, Printer’s Alley (former ‘red light’ district), a refurbished Woolworth’s).   The city was bigger and better than I thought!  Then it was time for lunch, i.e. beer, so we drove to just out side town to the Pharmacy Beer Garden.  Jonathon the bartender clued us in to all the best music venues.  Seems that here most bartenders and wait staff are musicians awaiting their big break.  Back to the hotel to cool off and relax, then out for Mexican dinner at Saint Anejo and over to Printer’s Alley for some Blues music by Stacy Mitchell and his band.  A very enjoyable day!  Our last day in Nashville started with a morning visit to the Country Music Hall of Fame.  The building has beautiful, music-inspired architecture and exhibits of country music history as well as displays of various entertainers throughout the years. Fun facts:  Shel Silverstein, author of ‘The Giving Tree” also wrote “A Boy Named Sue” for Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson wrote “Bobby MaGee” for Janis Joplin, oh, and Willie Nelson once had short hair.  This museum is well worth a visit by anyone, whether a country music fan or not.  After lunch and some more soccer/football, we drove out to visit Vanderbilt University.  Unbelievably, with 4 fairly educated persons in our car and armed with GPS’s on each of our (dying) phones we could not locate the original campus!  Later, we walked back to the Gulch area to visit the Yazoo Brewery for pre-dinner brews and then a most delectable dinner at Enoteca Wine Bar.  For this night’s music we walked to The Station Inn (Jonathon’s recommendation) for their New Monday lineup: country music.  How apropos. We did not visit the Grand Ole Opry or do any linedancing.  Maybe next trip…

We left the next morning for our last leg of this wonderful trip: Memphis.  Our hotel, the River Inn, had views of the Mississippi and was not far from downtown.  We dropped our bags and Uber’d to Beale St.. Steve parted to watch soccer at a corner brewpub while Greg, Bananadandrea and I walked around town and ended up at the Peabody Hotel for drinks to watch the ducks in the fountain.  The mallard ducks are paraded to the fountain from their rooftop home daily by the Duckmaster and are returned to the wild after 3 months. This tradition was originated with some drunk hunters sneaking the ducks in the fountain in the first place.  From there we headed to our BBQ Food Tour of Memphis.  Although we sampled some delicious Memphis BBQ (smoked and dry rubbed, not ‘mopped’ with sauce) our tour guide Lance (long lost twin of Jon Lovitz) was so verbiose he talked non-stop for 4 hours and our ears were exhausted.  We did get to see a few different BBQ joints around Memphis and also some of the rebuilding going on in this gritty, old city.  The best part was that my cousin Jim and his wife Liming drove up from Oxford MS to visit with us.  Jim is a chemistry professor at Ole Miss and Liming also works there.  They endured the BBQ tour with us and then we spent some ‘quiet’ time together, finally getting to chat before they headed home.   Greg, Manandrea, Steve and I took an evening stroll along the Mighty Mississippi and then turned in for the night.  Our last full day started with a most interesting visit to the Civil Rights Museum located in the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.   As with any museum, we started out reading every word of the first exhibits and then after a few hours, started racing through.  I was fascinated with the yearlong Montgomery, AL bus boycott,  the Freedom Riders, and was particularly impressed with MLK Jr.’s letters to his followers to adhere to the non-violent principles of the movement. Amazing stuff.  Across the street was the boardinghouse where James Earl Ray took his shot.  This building is now part of the museum where they present the assassination ‘conspiracy’ theories and possible evidence.  Yikes.  We lunched at a nearby Greek diner and had some ice cream before taking the trolley to the harbor for our Mississippi river boat tour.  Pandandrea and I found some seating which allowed for some napping as the boat ride was a little long (and it was still SO HOT!)  We then walked over to the Bass Pro Shops mega-mammoth store in the mirrored pyramid formerly housing the Memphis Grizzlies NBA team.  Now this unlikely architectural behemoth houses an indoor-swamp replete with alligators, an hotel, restaurants, and of course, the Bass Pro shop.  It was worth a the visit and Steve and I (the two suffering from fear of heights) took the elevator to the observation deck for wonderful views of the Mississippi and the city.  At this point it’s brewery visit time, so Steve force marched us to Ghost River Brewery where we enjoyed some very good beers and participated in a trivia contest.  We left before the end but knew we really killed the ‘Wine’ questions!  Onto dinner at the trendy restaurant ‘Flight’ where everything is served as a flight: 3 appetizers, 3 entrees, 3 wines, 3 desserts or you could mix and match so selections were not lacking and all the choices were good!  We couldn’t leave Memphis without Blues music so we headed back to Beale St. (which from 6pm til 3am is closed off to traffic and becomes ‘private’ so you can open carry your drinks) and caught a really good blues band at, of course, BB King’s Blues Bar.

Our travels ended and Steve and Germandrea and Greg and I flew our separate ways; Demandrea promptly broke her foot stepping into a sidewalk pothole in Brooklyn (enroute to a bar to watch more soccer) and Greg and I flew directly home.  Our plan is to stay home and enjoy summer on the lake, but stay tuned to see if that’s all that happens!!!

(Note to Phalandrea, feel free to edit or comment or share x-rays. It was fun!)