Weekend in Asheville

Matt and I had a wonderful time exploring Asheville this past weekend!  I hadn’t been since Matt had an interview there in 2006 and boy has it changed.  I had heard that the restaurants are really good, but was totally blown away by the food scene, especially because of the gluten free options!

My parents watched Emerson for the weekend and we took Avery with us – traveling with a baby was no big deal compared to traveling with a baby + toddler.  Avery is still taking one long nap and 3 shorter naps during the day, so we lucked out that she slept during a lot of our meals. It was chilly (not sure why I wasn’t prepared for this!), and I’m so glad we brought the stroller insert for Avery and our down coats.

When we arrived on Friday, it was snowing!  We checked into our hotel, The Foundry, and gave Avery some time to roll around before putting her in the stroller to look for dinner.  We had planned on stopping into Wicked Weed for a drink and maybe an appetizer, but it was crazy packed. Actually everything was crazy packed (and not super kid friendly).  We decided to stroll a bit, but with the wind and snow we started to worry that it was too cold for Avery.  So we ducked into the first restaurant we saw, Rubarb! Lucky us, they had a cancellation and we got a table right away.

We ended up having an amazing dinner!  I had a shiitake mushroom old fashioned that was awesome! We had the goat cheese burrata (with house made GF bread!), a mushroom cassoulet, tilefish over squash, and grilled shrimp over grit cakes.  Oh, and a GF brownie batter with cashew butter and chocolate ice cream for dessert!!  It was incredible and also wonderful that we were back at the hotel and in bed by 10.

We debated a hike on Saturday, but 30 sounded cold, so Matt went and got us coffee (London Fog for me) and we just relaxed and played with Avery in the room.

We were thinking about going to Biscuit Head for brunch, but then an Instagram follower told me about a completely GF cafe called BimBeriBon. As soon as I saw the pastry case, I was giddy with excitement!  We ordered the giant cinnamon roll as well as a Mexican egg dish served over corn cakes.  Both were awesome!! We also got a chocolate torte and a power bite for later.  This might have been my favorite stop in Asheville!

The nice thing about traveling with Avery is that she had us up early, so we were able to fit so much into our one full day.  After brunch, we strolled around downtown, looked in some shops, and got Emerson a few gifts to bring home.

Then we made our way to Wicked Weed (which was still insanely packed) and got really lucky to find an empty corner on the communal table (the stroller is behind us).  We had a quick beer and then set out to find another brewery that wasn’t so loud and full of drunk people:)  There was literally a brewery on every corner!

We moved on to Twin Leaf where there was live music!

After resting up in the room, we headed to our dinner reservation at Limones.  I’d called ahead and let them know we had a baby, and we got a intimate table in the window that wasn’t near any people.  Avery fell right to sleep with a little white noise.  We had perfect spicy margaritas (carrot habanero for me and cucumber jalapeño for Matt) plus lobster nachos, fish tacos, and a stuffed pepper.  We even got a bit of bubbly with of check because they said our reservation had a note about an anniversary (I made the reservation, so I know it didn’t:)). We ended the night with the BimBeriBon chocolate torte and another early bedtime.

Sunday morning we had an early brunch at Posana, another GF restaurant right downtown. The menu was incredible and I wanted to order everything!!!  We settled on the donut holes which were divine, and then a spinach benedict on a biscuit + a fried chicken sandwich with jalapeño aioli on herb focaccia. What a treat for someone who never gets to eat any of the above!

I’m ready to plan our next trip!!!  I think next time we need to do the Biltmore or a hike so we don’t just eat the whole time:) But it was a super relaxing weekend! I told Matt I may have enjoyed it more than our babymoon because I felt better, could drink, and enjoyed having Avery safely out of the womb and with us:)