I am a bit tired to be honest right now, it is after 2am on Wednesday and spent most of Tuesday recovering from an 11 hour drive on Monday. Julie had been working very long hours at her job and I decided Valentine’s weekend was as good as time as any to spend a long weekend in the Blue Ridge mountains.

We drove to Asheville, North Carolina after work on Friday and reached the bed & breakfast I booked around 3am. Speaking of which, I can highly recommend the Inn on Main to anyone looking for superior bed and breakfast lodging in the Asheville area. The Inn is actually in Weaverville, about 10 minutes north of downtown Asheville, but the access to nearby roadways was awesome given how secluded it felt.

The rooms at the Inn were very well kept by Nancy and Dan and staying with them was like having our own personal travel guide to the region.

I had been to Asheville around 1998 or so but only spent an evening in the downtown area. The city seems to have grown a bit, but it is still a vibrant hippie college town. In particular there was plenty of vegan food for us to eat. First of all, the Inn on Main served us great vegan food – they server carnivore friendly fare as well but happen to cater to specialized diets.

Downtown’s best vegan offering seems to be the Rosetta’s Kitchen. Rosetta’s stays open to 3am several nights a week, serves “wholefood soulfood“, and has a killer gravy. Usually I hate non-homemade gravy so trust me on this one.

Also on the food front, Sweat Heaven serves up some decent (but not great) soy ice cream till about 10:30 every night but Sunday. And, like most places in Asheville, they have live music on a couple nights.

Asheville even has a local hockey team now (or again as the locals tell me), so very random. I didn’t have a chance to catch a game nor did I want to as this was suppose to be a relaxing, romantic weekend.

Anyway, I can still recommend Asheville and I’m strongly encouraging friends/family to think about staying at the Inn on Main – or at least considering a bed & breakfast environment in general. They tend to cost more upfront but you actually save money on food and in my case the innkeepers were a huge time saver and source of knowledge.