Condo Trip 2024: Knoxville & Lake Lure 4

 This is the fourth part of the posts about this year's condo trip. You really should read them in order. Here's a link to Part One. And here's a link to all the pictures from this year's trip.

All of my pictures, I believe, are captioned, so you don't have to just guess at what you're looking at. In some applications, the captions show at the bottom of the photo; otherwise, when you view the pictures in Google Photos, you'll see a little "Information" icon at the top right -- an "i" in a circle. Click on that to read the captions.

Part Four: Condo Week (cont'd)

Monday, May 20

 Well, this was a good, full day. First, the weather was much nicer than had been forecast; in fact, the entire week's forecasts have improved. We spent the morning here in the condo planning out our week, then headed up the highway to Asheville. After a quick lunch at a fast-food restaurant, we stopped by the Southern Highland Craft Guild Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway, just outside of the city. So many beautiful works of craftsmanship on display, and most of them for sale. I very nearly bought a very small oval glass bowl, but I remembered the truth of what I'd written in this blog not long ago, about what a slob my dog is....*

 The main reason, though, that I didn't buy anything was that the car was pretty fully loaded on the way up here, and I suspect we will be transporting some stuff that will later find its way to Colorado. But one of these days. One of these days....

Pinball Museum

Anyway, we stopped in at the Asheville visitors' center to get more information about certain items we thought might form a part of our day in town. Reorganizing our sightseeing sort of on the fly, we went first to the Pinball Museum of Asheville. Not a large place, but fun to see all the old pinball tables in the front room, and the early arcade video games in the back. You can play all day for a set amount; I think it's $15; or you can do like we did, and play certain games set aside for the purpose. I played a Godzilla-themed pinball machine (fifty cents) and have no idea how I did, but it was fun. I think I got some extra balls; if I did, it was pure luck, as I don't know a thing about pinball.

1st Baptist

 Then we decided to take a driving tour of architecture, because the public art tour we'd originally planned involved too much walking. So we drove around and around the compact downtown of the city, seeing a number of interesting buildings, mostly from the early 20th Century. The First Baptist Church, modeled on Florence's duomo; the City Building; the neighbouring Jackson and Westall buildings, which share an elevator; and so on (pictures in the album), ending at the Grove Arcade, and early version of a shopping center. 

 The Grove is quite a nice space. Upper floors are given over to apartments, and the second floor is offices. The ground floor is filled with small shops varying from arts and crafts to home decor of an upscale variety. Most were already closed for the day by the time we wandered in to admire the arcade's Venetian-themed architectural touches, but a gelato shop drew the four of us in as if there was a chemical trail we instinctively followed. I had a scoop of salted caramel gelato topped with a scoop of peanut butter, and was surprised that the peanut butter was the better of the two. (And having read in the Guardian this morning that a double scoop of ice cream in the U.K. now costs more than ten dollars, I feel like I got a bargain on the gelato, at about $6 for two scoops.) 

 We came out the south end of the arcade to try and locate several of the buildings on the tour that we couldn't get to in the downtown congestion; and while we were there we decided to have dinner before heading back to the condo. A passerby, who overheard us discussing the restaurants in sight, interjected her opinions about local cuisine, and managed to dissuade us from trying a rooftop Cuban restaurant across the street; I was dead-set against the poke-bowl cafe on the side street, and voted instead for the eventual winner, a "southern-inspired" cafe on the corner with outside tables. We had excellent service and pretty good food at Carmel's, despite the passerby's disparagement. (I rated it five stars on Google Maps because four and a half wasn't an option.) Mine was a mushroom pizza with sausage added, once again served on cracker-thin crust. Must be the current fashion. Sherry's was a chicken pesto pizza, very good but way too oily. Half of each went home with us.

 Once back to the car, we embarked on a search for the house Jeff's dad had been born in, on Brevard Road. The information Nancy got from a real-estate web site said the house there had been built in the 1940s, but it looks exactly like the house Jeff's grandparents had built there in the 1920s; so we believe it's the same house. Maybe there was some kind of update that caused the county records to be altered. But it is the same house. 

 Following that, we stopped at a drug store in the neighbourhood so I could get some cash at an ATM, then headed back to the condo for the night. 

* on May 13; see Part One, regarding the North Georgia Folk Pottery Museum galleries.

Tuesday, May 21

 Another great day! Gorgeous weather and lots of exercise. I had my leftover pizza for breakfast, and it was even better as leftovers. We gradually got ourselves together and headed out for our day. We'd planned to take a boat tour of the lake at 10AM, but we got there a few minutes after they sailed. So Sherry and I killed the interval in the town's Welcome Center, which had lots of brochures about things to see and do in the area; and it had a three-dimensional map of the area, which I enjoyed studying; and in the back room was a small history museum, detailing the minor events that took place locally in both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. There was also some coverage of more recent events, such as the founding of the town in 1927, the same year the first tourist buildings were constructed and the year the dam was built. It was interesting that the dam was a private venture, paid for by the sale of electricity. It paid off the dam in ten years, by which time the Great Depression had started and the Morse Brothers, whose vision gave birth to the town and the lake, were ruined. So only the bankers profited.

 We got on the 11AM boat tour; there were eight customers on board. The tour guide was excellent: knowledgeable, well-spoken and funny. She took us all around the lake, showing us various buildings of historical or architectural interest. If there are any famous people with houses on the lake, she was discreet enough not to mention them. She did, though, say at one point, "The people who live in this house don't like having their house stared at, so we of course pause here several times a day to look at it." Another house she showed us was the first built on the lake: five hundred square feet including a boathouse on the lower level. It's the smallest house on the lake, and was bought by the owner of the mansion next door to use as a guest house.

 She also pointed out places related to the filming of Dirty Dancing. There's not much left. The stars were housed in the 1927 Spa Hotel, which has been renovated recently along with two other Spanish Revival buildings on that part of the lakeshore. The cabins that were used as employee lodging in the movie, and where Baby met Johnny, were torched by an arsonist some years ago. One scene was filmed on the golf course by our condo. And the town has an annual Lift Festival, when competitors get into the water and try to lift their teammates out, as Patrick Swayze did with Jennifer Gray. (He was given cinder blocks under his feet, to give him a grip in the mud; competitors don't get that advantage.)

 A number of people have funiculars to access the lake below their houses. In some cases it's their only access to the water. Others have long slides that toss riders into the lake. She showed us the largest house on the lake, a fifteen-thousand square-foot French-style palace occupied by just two people. 

 When the Morse brothers went bust, all the land they owned around the lake was auctioned off; one man, a Mr Powers, bought 200 acres, which he gave to his daughter. She never built on it, and later in life gave half to two nephews and put the other half into a conservation trust. The two nephews ended up doing the same with their property, so now there are only 200 acres on the entire 24-mile-long lake shore that are undeveloped. 

 We found the entire cruise around the lake interesting and relaxing. So glad we did it. 

 Afterwards we went up the road a few miles to the village of Chimney Rock. The plan was to buy some sandwiches or whatever and have a picnic up on the mountain in Chimney Rock State Park. But because we'd missed the 10AM boat tour, it was past noon when we got to the chosen provider of foodstuffs, the Old Rock Cafe; so we just had lunch there. Glad we didn't have to carry food or a cooler around while we hiked. 

the tunnel

 Chimney Rock is a short stone tower that stands over the Broad River valley. The former owners, in order to bring tourists in, built an elevator 260 feet up to the level of the tower's top, and a tunnel into the rock to connect with the elevator. At the top is a walkway out to the belvedere on top of the rock. It has an excellent view of Lake Lure just a few miles away, and of the surrounding mountains. 

 From another point in the park is a trail leading to Hickory Nut Falls, which, at 404 feet, is one of the highest in the state. The trail is a mile and a half each way, improved but not paved. It took us a long time but it was worth it. The falls flow from a natural spring on top of the mountain, and it's been wet recently. We happened to be there just as the sun was above the falls, giving our view some special effects. (The final scenes of the movie Last of the Mohicans were filmed at the top of this waterfall.)

 After spending the afternoon in the park, we decided that the Fog & Scaffold Athletic Club should have its annual meeting, as there is a very nice miniature golf course laid out on the bank of the river. We had a business meeting first, in the bar there, and then hit the links. I had a two-stroke lead at the halfway point but ended up finishing third. Good enough. It was fun. 

 We followed this up with dinner at the Highlands, a pretentious restaurant with a balcony overlooking the river. The ambience was very nice. The food had highs and lows. For example, my prime rib sandwich was fine, nothing really special, but it was served with what I have to call steak fries, but cut in a way I've never seen, before being fried up perfectly. They end up looking like crescent moons. Sherry had fish tacos that I thought were so-so. I know it sounds odd, but they had a fishy smell. They were served with rice that was simply boring, undercooked and underseasoned. The service was mostly good, although turgid, but I suspect the waiter was overextended. There were long gaps in the service, when we were waiting for things. He apologised at the end, which leads me to suspect that the problems is either that he is stretched too thin, or that the kitchen is disorganised, or both. As for the prices, they were slightly higher than I would willingly pay were it not for the ambience. I hesitate to call it any kind of good value, but it was not outrageous.

the Riverwalk

 Before we left, Sherry and Nancy took a quick look at the Riverwalk the village is building. It's a work in progress. San Antonio has nothing to worry about here. Then we went to the condo and crashed.

Wednesday, May 22

 Today we went to the Biltmore Estate. This is the single biggest attraction in this part of the country, other than the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Biltmore is the gigantic house built by George Vanderbilt, grandson of the Commodore who was in his day the richest man in the world. It was built during the Gilded Age, that late-19th-Century era when a handful of robber barons first came to control a significant part of the wealth of this country. They were the Oligarchs of their day, though none were as wealthy, relatively speaking, as the richest people of our own time. 

 The house was originally to be a sort of Appalachian version of a Newport cottage: 6,000 square feet or so, maybe Greek revival. But his architect, believing that money was no object to a Vanderbilt -- and it seems he was right -- convinced George that he should build a house "worthy of the estate" he was acquiring in the North Carolina mountains, which eventually came to more than a hundred thousand acres. (The entire Pisgah National Forest began with 87,000 acres of estate land sold to the government -- at a very low price -- by his widow, in recognition of George's wishes.) The resulting mansion, at something like fifteen thousand square feet, is still the largest private residence ever built in the United States. It's built in a French Empire style, and looks like the chateau of Blois, with the stairs moved to the front of the house.

Biltmore

 

 

Blois

We had tickets to go in at 12:30, but the Asheville Visitor's Center employee told us we could go into the grounds at any time, see the gardens and wander around the miles and miles of remaining property before our timed entry to the mansion. We planned to do that. Naturally, it didn't happen quite the way we planned, because we weren't actually ready to leave as early as that would require. We left the condo around 9:30 and got to the estate a bit before 11am. After cruising around in circles trying to figure out where to park, we found someone who could give us advice on that point...even if we had to have him repeat it several times, and then I said it back to him to make sure I understood what he'd said. He has a local accent, I suspect.

the stables

 We only had time for an early lunch in the Stables cafe. The stable and coach house were the first part of the estate to go up, in 1889, and Vanderbilt would live in the top floor apartment when he came to check on the progress of construction. Now the building and its courtyard is given over to restaurants and gift shops. I had a wedge salad, made entirely from ingredients produced on the estate, and it was excellent and filling. Sherry had a chickpea sandwich called the "Not Tuna Melt." She expected hummus, I think, but it was chickpeas, intact. A little weird, but in a good way. It came with ordinary french fries. Nancy had a roasted chicken quarter, which she says was excellent, as were the smashed potatoes, while the coleslaw was too vinegary, and it didn't have a good colour. It looked a little wilted. Jeff had some kind of sandwich; none of us remembers what it was, and he's not here to testify at the moment, so we move on: into the house, where they give you an audio guide wand and let you loose in this massive place.

The entryway: grand stairs, lobby, winter garden

 George kind of rushed the construction so that he could host his entire family for Christmas in 1895. As a result, a number of the major rooms on the main floors were incomplete when the house was occupied, and some remained that way for the rest of George's life. (I feel you, George.) As the insipid audio guide puts it, the present appearance of the rooms is "an interpretation of George's wishes, based on extensive research." After a few rooms like that, I decided that the audio guide wasn't worth listening to. The woman who recorded the guide speaks unbearably slowly, and each room's brief lecture begins, "As you move as far into the room as possible...," as if she expects people to heed her; her voice is irritatingly breathy; the information she imparts consists of rare dollops of interesting fact submerged in a bathtub of drivel. "Guest" speakers were heard but did nothing to elucidate anything. 

 Anyway, after a few rooms like that I dispensed with the audio recordings. That made it easier to go through the house, taking photographs, and that made me look for things to photograph. (My digital SLR Nikon camera stopped working after half a dozen shots, so I had to switch to my phone. Irksome.) Considering how much time I wasted listening to the audio for the first 7 or 8 rooms, I doubt that I missed anything of real significance. On several occasions I spoke to docents positioned around the house, and found out the reason there are no working bathrooms inside the house: "120-year-old plumbing and no sinks in the bathrooms." I also learned that the 40 or so bathrooms in the house are all exactly the same, from the master suite to the lowliest servant's quarters. Vanderbilt ordered plumbing fixtures from England for all the bathrooms, the same stuff, and had all the walls done in the same white tile because it was considered (correctly) to be more hygienic than wallpaper, and easier to clean. But he wanted his guests to know the luxury of having a maid deliver a pitcher of hot water. (I suspect the maids got their own hot water, rather than delivering it to each other to taste the luxury.)

the staff dining room

 The areas of the house open to visitors include parts of the ground floor, the two floors above that (there's at least one more up there, but it's closed off), and one of the basement floors, containing an exhibit about the construction and the workers who built the house; a swimming pool and changing rooms for the ladies; a bowling alley; and two kitchens, one with the giant rotisserie and the other with all the other gear needed to feed the huge numbers of residents, guests, and staff. The entire house had central heat (which is being upgraded for air conditioning with the addition of a room-sized heat pump out back somewhere); I noticed that the main kitchen had two radiators, while other rooms had registers for forced-air heating.

 The whole place boils down to this: it's huge, and no expense was spared. It was expensive to furnish and too expensive to maintain, it's magnificent and beautiful and it was, and is, a point of pride not only to the family but to the people of western North Carolina.

the back yard

After viewing the house for several hours, we drove to the 73-acre garden. Jeff and I waited outside while Nancy and Sherry went in. Well, I started to go in for a quick look, until I saw how many stairs I'd have to climb just to see it. I decided the shade of a tree in the parking area was preferable. Then, before leaving, we drove all around the estate, a slow five mile trip, with lots of putative wildlife sightings, especially beaver, which were wandering through the grass or standing on a rock beside the road. In the end we decided they were the Biltmore Beaver, a small fluffy-tailed rodent resembling a squirrel or a marmot. We also saw some wild turkeys.

 Before coming back to the condo we stopped for dinner at an Italian place in Lake Lure. The service was excellent, the prices were reasonable, the ambience was good (it's on a hillside overlooking the town, with Chimney Rock visible in the middle distance), but the food was not very good. The garlic rolls were dripping oil, and my own lasagna is better than theirs; and I don't really do lasagna well.

Condo Trip 2024: Knoxville & Lake Lure 3

 This is the third part of the posts about this year's condo trip. You really should read them in order. Here's a link to Part One. And here's a link to all the pictures from this year's trip.

All of my pictures, I believe, are captioned, so you don't have to just guess at what you're looking at. In some applications, the captions show at the bottom of the photo; otherwise, when you view the pictures in Google Photos, you'll see a little "Information" icon at the top right -- an "i" in a circle. Click on that to read the captions.

Part Three: Condo Week

Saturday, May 18

 The unit we got this year is pretty nice. There are two parking places reserved for it, and a walkway crosses from the parking area to the front porch. The building has three units in it, and is set in thick woods of oak and maple, with dogwood and rhododendron understory. There's a bedroom and bath on ... let's call it "street" level. Half a flight up is the main floor: a full kitchen, with a pass-through to the living room. To the side is a dining area and fireplace, and beyond it is a large balcony looking into the woods. Half a flight down from street level is another bedroom and bathroom, along with a washer-dryer closet and a walk-in closet. There's what looks like a jacuzzi in the bathroom down there.

 As soon as we got the cars unloaded, I threw a load of laundry into the tiny washing machine and we headed off for dinner. We happened upon the Grey Hawk, which is as much a garden as a restaurant. Sherry and I ordered a charcuterie board (despite Sherry's best effort to make me believe I said "soup") and a mozzarella-and-tomato sandwich to split. The food was great; the atmosphere was great; the service was perhaps the best I have ever experienced. The overall bill, with taxes and tip (and a "non-cash adjustment"; aaargh) was about $90, but if you know me you will understand just what it means when I say I think the experience was a good value. (My review of the place on Google Maps was two words: "Six stars!")

 It was very late when we got back, but I had to wait up for the dryer, I thought. I ran that load of clothes through three dryer cycles before I gave up, started the thing a fourth time and went to bed. They were done when Sherry got up Sunday morning.

Sunday, May 19

 Breakfast this morning was at the Victory, which Nancy tells me is a Christian-themed restaurant. Not sure what makes it that. We got a later start than I'd thought (because I was looking at the clock on my computer, which is set to Central time) and as a result we missed the beginnings of all the final-day soccer matches of the English Premier League season. Turns out not to have mattered: there were no shocking changes to the standings. Arsenal still finished second, Liverpool finished third, and the three teams promoted last year were relegated again. The only real shock was Aston Villa's collapse, which had no effect on its standings but still was surprising. 

 So the Victory was pretty good. The coffee was good, and the food was pretty good. My breakfast burrito was a little on the dry side. The ambience was congenial, like a family gathering at grandma's house with a lot of cousins you don't really know. The service was good but uneven. Still, I'd rate it 4 out of 5.

 The weather, which was very wet yesterday, was merely damp this morning; but after we got back to the condo and watched our fill of soccer, and made our initial excursion to the grocery store, it got much nicer. Still mostly cloudy, but by the end of the day the sun was shining on the lake and photos were worth taking.

 The first thing we did in the way of sightseeing was to go to the Flowering Bridge, in the town of Lake Lure. (The town is long and skinny, skirting along the southern and eastern edge of the lake itself, so going "to town" is a surprisingly time-consuming journey along narrow, twisting mountain roads.) The Flowering Bridge was the brainchild of one of the lakeside residents. When a new bridge was built where the Rocky Broad River enters the lake, she convinced the town to make the old one into a pedestrian walkway through a botanical garden. It's not that long a bridge, but they've managed to get quite an assortment of flowering and non-flowering plants into the available space. Shockingly, neither Sherry nor Nancy took a single picture on the bridge. We're going to have to go back.

 Having had a late breakfast, we all skipped lunch and went straight to dinner, around 6:30 or 7 at a place called the Lake House, near the old dam that formed Lake Lure back in the 1920s. The food was good; not as awesome as what we had at the Grey Hawk the night before, but along similar lines. I had a southwestern bowl with steak on rice and corn and various veggies; it was good, and the big juicy chunks of steak were excellent (except that I'd asked for medium rare and they were more medium); Sherry had duck salad, which looked very good but I didn't taste it. I also had an ice cream and brownie dessert called a hullaballoo, which was good but unnecessary. 

the sun comes out

 The atmosphere at the lake house was very good, too. The tables are all outside, overlooking the water. The restaurant is at the end of an arm of the lake, and you look down that arm of water toward the main body of the lake. It was very pretty, and undisturbed by the kind of loud boating that is de rigueur at Lake Havasu. And when the sun came out it was gorgeous. 

 The problem with the Lake House is the service. These people are cheerful, mostly, and get the orders right, but they just have no sense of timing. Nancy asked twice to have the salads before the main courses. Both times the answer was, "Oh, sure, yeah," but the salads came out at the same time as the main courses. I asked about dessert and got a run-down of the options, then said which I would like. The waitress asked Jeff (who was still eating his main course) if he would like dessert, to which he said, "Yes, but I"m not ready yet." I had my dessert before he was done eating. And then, on the bill, in addition to their hefty "non-cash adjustment" charge, they have the gall to suggest tip amounts for 20%, 25% and 30%. I left ten percent and felt generous doing that. (We felt a slight tinge of umbrage, too, at the fact that the place is not accessible; but when Nancy asked the hostess about it she made reference to a ramp on the far side of the building; maybe it was intended as humour but came off as dismissiveness. We looked at the ramp. It's dangerously steep and has a step at the bottom and is covered with cleaning gear; I don't think it's intended as a wheelchair ramp in the first place. I think this place pre-dates the ADA and hasn't done any renovations that would require compliance.)

 

OKAY. I'd planned to just put up a single post to cover the entire Condo Week portion of this trip, but it's getting a little too long. So I'm going to break the week into two, or maybe three posts, and go ahead and publish this one. Look for the next installment in a few days.