3.5 hours and 221Miles (360 Km) later, we arrived in Asheville. Checking into the Super 8 we decided it best to try and get an early night before exploring this little town Greg had recommended we visit. I'm glad this was recommended as we had a wonderful time, but I'll get to that in due time. Another suggestion of Greg's was checking out Bojangles www.bojangles.com. Which was one of his not so reciprocated recommendations! It must have been about 8.30pm so we had more or less the entire greasy chicken store to ourselves. But that still seemed like a massive inconvenience to the 40 year old man behind the counter. Obviously he had better things to do like get another tattoo on his wrist or check the oil in his tractor outside. Never the less our language barrier didn't aid the situation and we each repeated our sentences multiple times. In the South they don't "traditionally" use bread buns for burgers, more so a scone-type substance for the roll. So I had a Cajun piece of what-once-may-have-vaguely-resembled chicken which had now been beaten into a flattish paste, crumbed and deep-fried. Casey's 2 piece feed was mostly oil, no flavouring, and possibly a largish pigeon. Delicious. Perhaps if everything hadn't have had the same pale yellow colour to it and empty taste, I would have been more impressed. The sweet-tea, which is similar to Lipton Ice Tea and also a favourite of the South, was the meal's saving grace. A "nice" experience of the South, but not something we'll be clicking our tongues in anticipation for in a rush anytime soon. Sorry Greg!
Continental breakfast was included with our room so down we headed down to feed 3minutes before it closed. The breakfast was fine and plenty of everything left, except for coffee. Which was probably the only thing we actually needed because in the breakfast room the television set was on (what I can only presume to be) the Idiot Channel and there was an American breakfast show on. I personally find Australian breakfast tv to be somewhat of a strain at times, but American breakfast had me ready to march into Walmart and put a shotgun barrel in my mouth within 20seconds. The moronic gibberish that came out of these peoples mouths!! The woman seemed to somehow turn every single topic they discussed on to her family, frequently punctuating her tosh with 'likes' and excessive hand gestures. While the male host seemed genuinely interested in what this goose had to say and would add ridiculous statistics into the mix such as "40% of people accurately diagnosed themselves by using web MD" which were not helping detract the audience from the massive gap he was sporting between his two front teeth. There's a reason some people are on television and some people should not.
After raging out at the television for a solid 3 minutes, it was switched to the Weather Channel which was somewhat more soothing. The fact that America seems to be absolutely incapable of predicting the weather whatsoever made me wonder why they even had a channel dedicated solely to lying.
Temples throbbing with anger and frustration, we checked out and headed off to the largest house in the United States; The house of Richie Rich and Hannibal's Pigman; Biltmore House www.biltmore.com.
Built between 1889 and 1895 on a mere 8,000 acres and having 250 rooms, including the first indoor heated pool and bowling alley, Biltmore House is a piece of architectural accomplishment. The winding road up through the garden was lengthy but gorgeous, and apparently all the trees were planted by the landscaper (Or presumably, the landscapers understudies). Touring through it we were not aloud to take any pictures, but I cannot recommend visiting this house enough. As a child watching Richie Rich weekly, I was particularly excited by some of the rooms we toured through. Just like in the movies! Having only seen Hannibal once, I couldn't relate the house very confidently back to this film... Which is probably a good thing! Although I did start to crave bacon...
Hunger creeping into our bodies we headed into the town of Asheville for another Gregammendation; Salsas, a Mexican Caribbean restaurant www.salsas-asheville.com with amazing food! I am prepared to say this is the best meal I've had in the US. Not overly greased, fresh, wholesome and delicious! And spicy habanero margaritas! Hi-fives Greg!
Belly's full, we wandered around the town for a while, until finding a funky craft-beer bar called the LAB (Lexington Avenue Brewery) http://www.lexavebrew.com/. A tasty Porter later we tottered out to commence the second leg of our road trip; 294miles (473km) with a predicted time of 4.5hours. Through the fog and rain into the mountains we went!
Stopping an hour before destination at Cookeville to satisfy Casey's Pho craving, we hit Taiko Noodle and Sushi Bar, which was had a massive sushi selection and scrummy noodle soups which and gave us just enough energy (although perhapes it was the unlimited supply of Sweet Tea) to burn through the 128kms remaining on our journey...
Arriving safely at Millennium Maxwell House Nashville (www.millenniumhotels.com/millenniumnashville) we checked it, took our boots off and threw on our new crazy animal hats to have dreams about being forest animals!
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