Saturday, April 21st - Asheville, NC
Neither one of us woke until almost 9:00 a.m. We were both up until nearly midnight the previous night and after our full day of activities, we were tired.
As I was getting ready for the day, The Husband brought breakfast to the room.
While picking up breakfast, he had to report that the lock on our room door was not working. I forgot to mention that in my last post. We returned to the hotel after the baseball game and The Husband pushed on the door, without using his key, and it opened! How special. Not!
We got ourselves ready for the day and gathered up all our dirty clothes. We spoke to our new friend Michael, from Maintenance, and he promised to fix our door. We told him we are not usually this needy when we stay in a hotel and he just laughed.
Typically we have good experiences at Best Westerns. This has been our worst in a long time. In addition to the leaky faucet causing a wet carpet and the malfunctioning door lock, we now have that lovely moldy/musty smell from the carpet. I know we could request another room, but what's the point now? We are looking forward to checking out on Sunday and moving on down the road.
We left the hotel at around 11:15 a.m. with the odometer reading 36,048.
We leisurely toured a series of antique shops located in a large warehouse at 120 Swannanoa Road, Asheville, NC. The shops were filled with pretty and interesting things, which were priced accordingly.
I have enjoyed checking out shops on this trip, because I'm comparing content, quality and pricing to what we see in Oklahoma and what I have in
my booths. Now, I need to find some flea markets, estate sales and garage sales for comparison purposes!
We stopped for lunch at
Village Wayside Bar & Grille, which is located in the historic 1896 train depot for Biltmore Village. We shared a tasty French Dip sandwich, with fries and macaroni salad.
It was rainy and cool when we finished lunch, so we drove around Biltmore Village to find a couple of local restuarants we were considering for dinner. Biltmore Village is nice, but is filled with chain stores. Coldwater Creek, Talbots, J. Jill, Jos. A Banks, etc. It would have been nice to see some unique, locally owned shops.
Afterwards, we headed to a local laundromat to wash 3 loads of clothes, because that's what you do when you've been on the road for a week!
Laundry completed, we returned to the hotel for a nap. First, however, we made a dinner reservation at
Rezaz.
We arrived at
Rezaz at 8:00 p.m. for our 8:45 p.m. reservation. After checking in with the hostess station, we moved to the bar for a cocktail. Jonathan made great drinks for us. We were entertained watching him make drinks for others and trying to obtain clean glasses for his bar.
We were escorted to our table on time and met our waiter. Mark was very personable and his recitation of the daily specials made our mouths water.
To start, we ultimately decided to share:
Crisp Shrimp & Calamari - Sweet Sour Spice Glaze, Scallions & Sesame Seed
It was fantastic. The Husband particularly liked the light breading and we both thought the glaze was outstanding. I loved the texture and taste of the sesame seeds.
For dinner, I elected to have the small serving of:
Paella Mariscos - Scallops, Shrimp, Mussels, Squid, Chorizo, Sofrito, Lemon Aioli
The Husband selected:
Hot Smoked Duck Breast - Tomato Risotto, Brussels & Leeks, Cranberry Vincotto
We both enjoyed our dinners. The food was expertly prepared and extremely tasty.
Mark was attentive, but not intrusive. We enjoyed a couple of laughs with him about the large bachelorette party (15 girls) in our area. Girls just want to have fun in those situations, but invariably the word "penis" is mentioned loudly and there are various "penis" shaped items that suddenly appear.
We had a lovely evening at
Rezaz and would happily return if we are ever in Asheville, NC again.
End of day odometer reading = 36,069.
We are moving on down the road on Sunday. Where do you think we will land?
