Asheville, North Carolina

Asheville Regional Airport (AVL) is 16km from downtown. Asheville's downtown is an extraordinary ensemble of 1920s-1930s Art Deco buildings — the Jackson Building, the S&W Cafeteria, City Hall, and the Asheville Citizen-Times all survive in near-perfect condition from the boom years before the Great Depression halted Asheville's development and inadvertently preserved its architecture. Pack Square Park is the center of downtown with the extraordinary Vance Monument and the surrounding 1920s streetscape. The River Arts District (RAD), along the French Broad River south of downtown, has 200 working artist studios and galleries in converted industrial buildings. Walk the RAD for the afternoon; it's the most authentically creative neighborhood in Asheville. First dinner at Curate (Chef Katie Button's Spanish tapas restaurant in a 1920s building) or Chai Pani for Indian street food — both are Asheville classics.

The Biltmore Estate's main house — a 175,000-square-foot French Renaissance château commissioned by George Vanderbilt II and completed in 1895 — is the largest private residence in the United States, with 250 rooms including 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and a 10,000-square-foot banquet hall with a 70-foot ceiling. The house tour includes the extraordinary library (10,000 books in floor-to-ceiling shelves around a two-story room), the winter garden (a large palm house adjacent to the house), and the servants' quarters and kitchens that tell the other side of the gilded age story. The formal gardens — designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (who also designed Central Park), with 75 acres of managed landscape including the walled Italian garden, the English walled garden, and the shrub garden — are extraordinary in every season.

The Blue Ridge Parkway, the most visited unit of the National Park system, runs 469 miles along the Blue Ridge Mountain ridgeline from Shenandoah to the Great Smoky Mountains, passing through Asheville. The section near Asheville is among the most beautiful — the Craggy Gardens (milepost 364), where the ridgeline meadows are covered in Catawba rhododendron in June, and the Mount Pisgah section south of Asheville have the finest views. The Parkway is designed specifically for scenic driving — no trucks, no billboards, strictly enforced 45mph speed limit — and the experience of traveling along the ridge with 180-degree mountain views rolling by is uniquely American. The Folk Art Center at milepost 382 has the finest collection of Appalachian traditional crafts in the country. Chimney Rock State Park and Lake Lure (the location of the Dirty Dancing finale — "Nobody puts Baby in a corner") are 45 minutes southeast.

Asheville has more craft breweries per capita than any city in the United States — over 50 independent craft breweries within the city limits. The French Broad Beer Fest in November and the Brewgrass Festival in October are national events; year-round, the tasting rooms are the social heart of Asheville. New Belgium Brewing's Asheville facility (river-facing, beautiful building) and Sierra Nevada's East Coast home (Chico, California-style campus with excellent restaurant) are both extraordinary visits for craft beer fans. Wicked Weed Brewing in the River Arts District and Burial Beer Co. in Biltmore Village are the most acclaimed locals. A French Broad River tubing or kayaking afternoon gives the water-based perspective on the valley. Dinner at Buxton Hall Barbecue for the finest whole-hog BBQ in the western NC mountains.

The Omni Grove Park Inn's spa is one of the finest in the Southeast — a 43,000-square-foot subterranean facility carved into the mountain below the inn, with underground pools, waterfall grottos, and 35 treatment rooms that use the mountain mineral springs and Appalachian herbal traditions. The inn itself — built in 1913 from 120-pound boulders quarried from Sunset Mountain and assembled without mortar into two enormous fireplaces visible from the main lobby — is a masterpiece of Arts and Crafts architecture, designed to blend into the mountain. F. Scott Fitzgerald stayed here repeatedly while his wife Zelda was in the nearby Highland Hospital; the ghost of his presence pervades the Great Hall. Norwood Park's Saturday farmers' market has the most complete collection of Appalachian mountain produce available: ramps (wild garlic), pawpaws, persimmons, and Sourwood honey.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park — the most visited national park in the US with 12 million visitors per year — is 75 minutes from Asheville. The Smokies' name comes from the blue haze produced by the trees' volatile organic compounds, which gives the mountain ridges a blue-purple appearance in any weather condition. Clingmans Dome (6,643 feet, the highest point in the park and the highest point on the Appalachian Trail) is accessible by road to a parking lot and then a 0.5-mile paved trail to the observation tower with extraordinary panoramic views. Cades Cove in the Tennessee portion of the park is a historic valley where white-tailed deer, black bears, and wild turkey are regularly seen in the meadows. Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail is the finest driving loop in the North Carolina portion, passing old-growth trees and waterfall-laced mountain streams.

Asheville Regional Airport connects to Atlanta, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, and other major hubs. A final morning in the River Arts District — the gallery-studios are open by appointment with most artists and the open studios on the first and third Saturdays of each month are the best way to buy directly from Asheville's working artists. Pick up Sourwood honey (one of the finest American honeys, unique to the Appalachian mountain bloom), hand-thrown pottery from one of the River Arts District studios, and a six-pack of Burial Beer or Wicked Weed for the journey. Asheville combines mountain beauty, creative energy, and genuine Southern warmth in a way that no other Appalachian city quite replicates.