Back in August my mom and I decided to take advantage of the long weekend this October and head down to Atlanta where my older sister lives to visit. I pushed to extend our trip a little and drive up to Asheville, NC. We made that our main base for a few days while we explored Western North Carolina and the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Asheville, North Carolina

Like I said, we used Asheville as our home base while exploring the mountains of western North Carolina. Asheville was not really what I was expecting. Which ironically, I’m not too sure of what I was expecting. First of all, we did not visit the Biltmore. We opted out of the states number one tourist attraction because I really would love to see it decorated for Christmas one day, and I don’t think you need to visit it twice. That being said, we also have the Vanderbuilt summer homes just two hours from us and I’ve gone twice in the past year to visit those and who needs to see another mansion.

When I think of Asheville, I think food, art and culture. I do have to say, the food was amazing, and the art on point. We were visiting mid-week so I was a little disappointed in the lack of live music in the different restaurants and bars, but it may have just been the time of week we were visiting. From the amount of street musicians that we saw, I can only imagine how many live music performances they have.

The first night we were in Asheville, we decided to do a little food tour. We started at Cucina 24, an Italian restaurant on Wall St., where we split an escarole prosciutto potato pizza, which apparently is a super popular pizza in Tuscany. Wow! Just as I realized our food was taking a little longer than I expected, I looked toward the open kitchen and they were slicing the prosciutto fresh onto the pizza. The server must have realized the time also because he came out and gave us a dish of buffalo mozzarella served with sweet pepper relish and a dish of warmed, rosemary olives and I basically died right there on the table.

Our meal at Cucina 24 was so good, my mom tried to get us to go there again the next night.

The next day, after driving the Blue Ridge Parkway, we stopped in Biltmore Village to do a little shopping and grab dinner. Here we ate at Village Wayside, a much different vibe than the upscale Italian restaurant the night before. Wayside sits right along the train tracks and it super casual. My mom started with the French Onion Soup and while she was eating her own, she ordered me one because “I needed to have one.” For dinner I had the fish and chips which was awesome and a White Zombie White Ale from Catawba Brewing Company.

We spent the evening walking around town looking at all the street art. Downtown Asheville is super walkable and we actually walked from the hotel we stayed at. We were given a ton of other restaurant and dessert suggestions from locals, but there just wasn’t enough time to try everything. I put together a list of restaurants below that I really wanted to try.

• Double D’s Coffee & Desserts – a cute little coffee shop inside a little double decker bus straight out of London. Super instagramable, but opens at 10am (not prime coffee time). Cash only if you’re going here!
• Old Europe Pastries – local coffee
• French Broad Chocolate Lounge – locally made chocolate and coffees. They even have a tour you can take of their factory.
• Sunny Point Café – In west Asheville, one of the more popular brunch spots, but get a reservation. We couldn’t even find parking let alone get in.
• Biscuit Head – I don’t think they do reservations, it’s a little more casual with counter service, but be prepared to wait. We were starving so we had to head out also

Blue Ridge Parkway – North Carolina

Now you may remember from my cross-country road trip two years ago that we did part of the Blue Ridge while driving threw Virginia. This time we started in Asheville and headed north to Lineville, NC. From mile marker 384, north to 316. You may think 68 miles isn’t that far, but when you’re driving an average of 35 miles per hour and stopping for pictures every couple of miles, those 68 miles took us five hours.

The Blue Ridge is stunning. You have views of the Blue Ridge Mountains on either side of your drive, and in the distance, you can see the Great Smokey Mountains. We made a stop for lunch in Little Switzerland, a small town about three hours north of Asheville with a cute little café, book store and coffee shop, and a popular Inn with amazing views from their gardens.

Pro Tip: We also stopped in little Switzerland because it was the first stop, we found gas since leaving Asheville. Something we didn’t really pay attention to when we were leaving town. Make sure you take a peak at your gas gage before hitting the road.

While Little Switzerland Inn had a restaurant, which came highly recommended from a few locals we ran into, I would recommend packing a lunch and eating somewhere along your drive. There are plenty of picnic areas along the way and stopping for a quick bite keeps you out in nature, and the food will probably be a little better.

Once we hit Lineville, we stopped at Lineville Falls Winery. You all know I’m a sucker for a good winery so I needed to try what North Carolina had to offer. They seem to do their fruit forward wines pretty well, so their whites were super popular but I always lean toward a good red so their Barrell Aged Cabernet Saviounge was my favorite.

Dillsboro, North Carolina

Just outside of the Great Smokey Mountain National Park is a cute little town of Dillsboro. After driving for a few hours from Atlanta airport, I pulled to the side on a whim solely because I needed to stretch my legs, and we ended up staying for an hour.

This cute little mountain town is a stop along the Great Smokey Mountain Railroad, a sightseeing train ride that you can pick up in Bryson City, NC.

In Dillsboro we wandered their local shops, picked up some jewelry, taste tested in the olive oil shop and ate some of the fresh fudge at the chocolate shop.

Helen, Georgia

I’ve heard of Helen, GA before but never thought I’d end up in this north Georgia mountain town that full of cute Bavarian-style buildings, making you feel like you’re right in Germany. The most similar that I’ve experienced is Solvang, CA, a cute little Dutch down I used to visit while living on the west coast. We were visiting the second weekend in October so they were celebrating their Oktoberfest and the town was wild. There were people everywhere and restaurants had an hour to hour and a half wait.

Helen has a ton of outdoor activities that you could spend a whole weekend exploring the little town. During the summer you can go tubing down the Chattahoochee River, and you can even go alpine sledding down the Georgia Mountain Coaster. This was super nostalgic for me since my family used to go alpine sledding every summer in Vermont growing up.

Just outside of town are a ton of trails you can hike through the Chattahoochee National Forest. We did the super simple Anna Ruby Falls hike which is less than a mile round trip and paved all the way to the falls. It was absolutely stunning, but pretty packed so I would recommend getting their pretty early if you could.