February 8, 2010 at 6:39 am
· Filed under Asheville B&B, Asheville activites, B&B alternative, Lovers' Loop Retreat, vacation rental ·Tagged alternative B&B, Asheville, Asheville activities, Valentine's Day
Here are a few more Valentine’s-related events happening in Asheville (see our blog posted Feb. 2). Lovers’ Loop Retreat, our Asheville bed and breakfast alternative, is close to each of these activities.
Heads up to a chocolate and wine tasting on Friday, Feb. 12 at Malaprop’s, the popular independent bookseller that’s part of downtown’s heartbeat. Malaprop’s does things with style, so this no doubt will be a fun event. Who can resist two of life’s finer tastes?
For some laughter with your love, check out the Feral Chihuahuas Valentine’s show on Friday, Feb. 12 and Saturday, Feb. 13 at the new Funny Business Comedy Club downtown. The Feral Chihuahuas are local comedians who have built a following, both local and afar. The group just played at the Chicago Sketch Comedy Festival.
Experience a lighthearted evening with cabaret-style burlesque entertainment with the Bombs Away Cabaret. Their show on Feb. 12 and Feb. 13, “Eat Your Heart Out: A Knockout Thriller”, at the Asheville Arts Center is a mix of theater that will keep your blood pumping.
Enjoy your Cupid weekend in Asheville!
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February 2, 2010 at 7:45 pm
· Filed under Asheville, Asheville B&B, Asheville activites, B&B alternative, Holidays, Lovers' Loop Retreat, vacation rental ·Tagged alternative B&B, Asheville, Asheville activities, Asheville NC, Asheville night life, Blue Ridge Parkway, free stuff to do, free things to do, Lovers' Loop Retreat, Valentine's Day
Valentine’s Day is not only on a weekend this year — Sunday, Feb. 14 — it’s also a holiday weekend for many lucky people who are off work on Monday, Feb. 15 for Presidents’ Day.
Experience your Valentine self in Asheville this year. Romance awaits you! We at Lovers’ Loop Retreat, our Asheville vacation rental, are happy to do our part by suggesting some activities perfect for nurturing a close connection between you and the apple of your eye.
Take a hike, drive or bike ride along the Blue Ridge Parkway – right next to Lovers’ Loop Retreat – and let nature amaze you and yours with its mysteries, magic and gorgeous mountain views. Using the parkway is FREE. Or take a walk at the North Carolina Arboretum, beside the parkway in Asheville, and enjoy the pretty grounds that adjoin national forest land.
Stroll around downtown Asheville, with a special stop at the French Broad Chocolate Lounge. Chocolate and love go together, right? Then hold hands in a safe, dark place at Asheville’s Fine Arts Theatre, the local art house theater downtown with great flicks year-round.
You also can visit breweries, wine bars, coffeehouses and a wonderful variety of independently-owned restaurants downtown for a Valentine’s taste of Asheville. One of our favorite coffeehouses is Filo, a Greek bakery and café not far from Lovers’ Loop Retreat.
Opera always has some romance. Experience a different blend of both on Feb. 12 with Destino, a Canadian trio of tenors who mix opera, soul, pop, gospel and who knows what other ingredients. They’ll be at the Diana Wortham Theatre in downtown Asheville.
For some love and live music, check out the 15th annual Bluegrass First Class festival Feb. 12-14 at the Crowne Plaza Resort in Asheville. This big deal features a range of nationally-known performers guaranteed to put some pep in your step and stars in your eyes.
Or be swept off your feet on Feb. 13 at The Grey Eagle club in Asheville. Multiple bands will perform a 69-love song Valentine’s show, inspired by the Magnetic Fields album.
“My Fatal Valentine,” a dinner theatre mystery, will be performed at the Renaissance Asheville Hotel on Feb. 13 (and again on Feb. 20) if you want a little mayhem with your romance.
All of these events and activities are 10 minutes or less from Lovers’ Loop Retreat, our Asheville bed and breakfast alternative, where we salute love’s many splendors and forms.
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January 27, 2010 at 11:31 pm
· Filed under Asheville, Asheville B&B, Asheville activites, Asheville seasons, B&B alternative, Lovers' Loop Retreat, music, vacation rental ·Tagged alternative B&B, Asheville, Asheville activities, asheville music, ballet, dance, Lovers' Loop Retreat
Here at Lovers’ Loop Retreat, February is a heart month with Valentine’s Day smack in the middle. It’s a great time to plan a getaway with your favorite companion. We’re happy to note that as of last fall, we’re in our fifth year of business at Lovers’ Loop Retreat, our Asheville, N.C., bed and breakfast alternative. We look forward to five more years of hosting guests from all corners.
Wintertime really is hopping in this fun city, as a busy January winds down. There are lots of events going on in February, too, so read on. The range is wide in live music offerings alone: Elvis, opera, women’s music, Celtic, bluegrass, Grateful Dead, folk. February also brings vaudeville, a symphony orchestra, Shakespeare, ballet and contemporary dance.
Whether you come to shake a leg or sing along, be sure to put Asheville on your itinerary this season. Lovers’ Loop Retreat, an Asheville vacation rental, is within 10 minutes of nearly all of the festivities, so we’re convenient but also quiet and private when that’s what you want. Winter is a wonderful time to be in the mountains here, with great, clear views and a freshness to the air. This time of year, we enjoy sharing our mountain views at Lovers’ Loop Retreat.
Events are posted for 2010 on our Web site, www.loversloopretreat.com, and we update the site regularly. Use the Web site to check out what’s going on whenever you plan your trip to Asheville and Lovers’ Loop Retreat. You can link to our blog, http://loversloopretreat.wordpress.com, on the home page.
February starts off with fiddlers Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy at Diana Wortham Theatre downtown Feb. 1-2. The Ultimate Elvis Tour follows on Feb. 3 at Thomas Wolfe Auditorium downtown. The Asheville Vaudeville Show is Feb. 4 with a Celtic bash Feb. 5. And why not Shakespeare? “As You Like It” will be staged Feb. 5-6 at Diana Wortham Theatre.
Indigo Girls fans will want to check out singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile on Feb. 9 with the Indigo Girls’ Amy Ray at the Orange Peel club downtown. Or, you can truck to the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium downtown Feb. 9 to catch the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir and Phil Lesh.
Put some pluck and strum into your Valentine’s Day weekend with the 15th annual Bluegrass First Class concert in Asheville Feb. 12-14. This gig includes some great acts. Also Valentine’s Day weekend is an evening of love songs on Feb. 13: the Magnetic Fields album’s “69 Love Songs” performed by nine bands at The Grey Eagle club in Asheville.
On Feb. 20, there’s a different kind of culture with “Swan Lake,” presented by the Moscow Festival Ballet at the Asheville Civic Center downtown. If you dig dance, check out the Nicholas Leichter dance group Feb. 26-27, a little African, a little Latin and who knows what else – at Diana Wortham Theatre downtown.
To end the month, give yourself a treat Feb. 26-28 by attending the 48-Hour Dance Project, a swirl of creative impulses and movements at the Asheville Contemporary Dance Theater, one of the city’s arts organizations that values diversity in its shows. The show features dances created collaboratively in just 48 hours.
A sneak preview shows that March in Asheville is no slouch either. The month starts with Arlo Guthrie and his family March 3-4 at Diana Wortham Theatre. And stay tuned for Bela Fleck, the Moody Blues, Ani DiFranco, a comedy weekend and lots more.
All of these events and activities and more are listed on our Web site. Please pass along our muse-letter to your friends. And join us at Lovers’ Loop Retreat. See you in Asheville!
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January 21, 2010 at 9:59 pm
· Filed under Asheville, Asheville B&B, Asheville activites, B&B alternative, Lovers' Loop Retreat, vacation rental ·Tagged alternative B&B, Asheville, Asheville accommodations, Asheville breweries, Asheville NC, Asheville night life, Bele Chere, Lovers' Loop Retreat, Shindig on the Green
Last October, Lovers’ Loop Retreat, our Asheville bed and breakfast alternative, entered its fifth year in business. It’s hard for us to believe!
In that time, we’ve greatly enhanced our lodging space with comfortable furniture and a queen-size pillow-top mattress, piles of much-appreciated information about places to go and things to do, funky books, wireless Internet and such features as a Ping-Pong table that many guests have loved to use.
Over the years, we’ve hosted guests from around the United States – from Oregon, California and Montana to Michigan, Indiana and Ohio to Maine, Florida and nearly every state between Maine and Florida. We’ve had repeat guests and a visitor from Vancouver, Canada. Some guests have stayed for a week and longer.
One aspect of Lovers’ Loop Retreat that many people have thanked us for is the Web site we’ve developed with a calendar of events and a list of resources. We let you know what’s happening. We post blogs regularly on the Web site to personalize the area for visitors. And we’re now on Twitter, too, so accessing our blogs is just a sweet tweet away.
Some of our guests have never visited Asheville, and others come as often as they can. Some visitors have come to Asheville for specific events – concerts, conferences, poetry readings, their own anniversaries, the Bele Chere street festival downtown, the Shindig on the Green free traditional music series, holidays including Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. They’ve enjoyed exploring the fantastic and always-entertaining downtown Asheville, experiencing the vast Biltmore estate, biking and hiking the beautiful mountain terrain here, dancing at the many and varied dance venues, swaying to the drum circle downtown, checking out the area’s extensive and amazing arts and crafts heritage at galleries and studios, satisfying their taste buds at the growing and renowned diversity of restaurants, wetting their whistles at Asheville’s 10 breweries.
So many reasons to come to Asheville, and we at Lovers’ Loop Retreat are happy to host you for any reason you decide to visit. We love to greet the world through our guests. Visitors appreciate that we take time to answer questions and acclimate them to the area, suggesting restaurants, dance halls and clubs, hiking spots and attractions.
When you plan your trip to Asheville, put us in your plans. See you at Lovers’ Loop Retreat, our Asheville vacation rental.
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January 16, 2010 at 5:52 am
· Filed under Asheville, Asheville B&B, Asheville Food, Asheville restaurants, B&B alternative, Lovers' Loop Retreat, beer, vacation rental ·Tagged alternative B&B, Asheville, Asheville NC, beer, Lovers' Loop Retreat
The much-awaited Lexington Avenue Brewery (LAB) in downtown Asheville has just opened, and it’s a fun place to be. We checked it out last week, and the place was packed. When you visit our Lovers’ Loop Retreat, an Asheville vacation rental, you’re 10 minutes from LAB, the 10th brewery in Asheville. That’s a lot of breweries in a small city, and residents and visitors alike cherish Asheville’s growing brewery diversity.
The Lexington Avenue Brewery offers a full menu with some locally-grown foods and ingredients, and it soon will feature live music. It’s the biggest brewery in town that also has a full-scale restaurant. There’s a nice variety of beers on tap – from pale ales to chocolate stout and Belgian.
The building, which dates to the early 1900s, has a serpentine bar with colored lights. Lunch and dinner are served, with brunch to be offered soon.
Raise a toast at LAB when you stay at our Asheville bed and breakfast alternative, Lovers’ Loop Retreat.
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January 10, 2010 at 7:07 am
· Filed under Asheville, Asheville B&B, Asheville Food, Asheville activites, Asheville restaurants, B&B alternative, Lovers' Loop Retreat, vacation rental ·Tagged alternative B&B, Asheville, Asheville activities, Lovers' Loop Retreat
Asheville Food Tours is a tummy tour of downtown that will delight your taste buds. Asheville’s reputation as a food destination is well-earned. New restaurants have opened downtown recently to delicious success to add to the blend of ethnic, vegetarian-organic-gluten-free, Southern and funky favorites that distinguish downtown as a place to go when you’re hungry.
Guests at our Lovers’ Loop Retreat, a vacation rental in Asheville, are within an easy 10-minute drive of many mouthwatering options.
Asheville Food Tours offers a year-round, two-hour guided stroll in which participants meet chefs and owners and try signature dishes and specialties at restaurants, gourmet shops and microbreweries. What could be better?
Enjoy this great city for foodies when you stay at Lovers’ Loop Retreat, an Asheville bed and breakfast alternative.
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January 4, 2010 at 6:05 am
· Filed under Asheville, Asheville B&B, Asheville activites, Asheville restaurants, B&B alternative, Lovers' Loop Retreat, music, vacation rental ·Tagged alternative B&B, Asheville, Asheville activities, Asheville NC, Asheville night life, Lovers' Loop Retreat
What’s good for the winter’s cold, the summertime heat and everything in between is the weekly contra dance at The Grey Eagle near downtown Asheville. There, you can warm up, chill out and groove on the big energy that fills the comfortable, no-frills dance hall. Some of our guests at Lovers’ Loop Retreat, an Asheville bed and breakfast alternative, have had a blast exploring the active, diverse dance scene here.
The Grey Eagle dance is a longtime, year-round event that attracts locals and people from several other states, from college students and younger to elderly people. You’ll see tennis shoes, high heels and boots on the floor. Everyone dances together and shares the joy. The popular music hall is an easy drive from Lovers’ Loop Retreat, and it’s worth a visit. Inside the hall, the cozy Twin Cousins Kitchen offers a creative menu of Louisiana-style food – including vegetarian fare — and locally brewed beers.
Check out the contra dance when you stay with us at Lovers’ Loop Retreat, an Asheville vacation rental.
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December 28, 2009 at 9:16 pm
· Filed under Asheville, Asheville B&B, Asheville activites, Asheville restaurants, B&B alternative, Lovers' Loop Retreat, vacation rental ·Tagged alternative B&B, Asheville, Asheville activities, Lovers' Loop Retreat, new year's
People flock to downtown Asheville for New Year’s Eve festivities. There’s lots of live music and live, stand-up comedy at restaurants, clubs and the Asheville Civic Center, which will host the Avett Brothers. Guests at our Lovers’ Loop Retreat, an Asheville bed and breakfast alternative, are 10 minutes from downtown activities.
DJs, bands, balloon drops and champagne will keep the night hopping at the Grove House, where partygoers will have admission to all three clubs inside. Mo Daddy’s will feature “Salvation and Sin,” with live music, some burlesque dancing and costumed patrons.
The oh-so-popular Afro-pop band Toubab Krewe will play for two nights, Dec. 30 and Dec. 31, at the expanded Orange Peel club, which will offer a midnight champagne toast. For laughs, the new Funny Business Comedy Club will have live shows to entertain the crowd.
Larry Keel and Natural Bridge will perform at The Grey Eagle, a very homey and cool concert venue.
Other bars and restaurants will have music and activities, too, so ring in the new decade in Asheville!
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December 22, 2009 at 7:03 am
· Filed under Asheville, Asheville B&B, Asheville activites, B&B alternative, Lovers' Loop Retreat, newsletters, vacation rental ·Tagged alternative B&B, Asheville, Asheville activities, Asheville NC, Lovers' Loop Retreat
In the brand new year that’s approaching, January is a good example of life’s quirky and festive mix here in Asheville, N.C. Really no dull moments for those with an active sense of wonder and a healthy curiosity. At Lovers’ Loop Retreat, our Asheville bed and breakfast alternative, we try to keep our wonder, curiosity and humor handy.
January starts with Asheville’s brand of vaudeville and lots of gingerbread castles and ends with Willie Nelson and light opera. January also is the month for one of Asheville’s signature testaments to funkiness, the annual fringe arts festival. In January and beyond in 2010, there’s a great variety of entertainment already lined up at venues downtown and elsewhere in the city: fiddler Natalie MacMaster and singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile in early February; Arlo Guthrie, the Moody Blues, bagpipes and ballet in March; Celtic music and lyric opera in April; singer Norah Jones in May. Also in May, the inaugural Spring Beer Festival debuts in Asheville, a city that now claims about 10 micro-breweries as it collects accolades for its beers nationally.
All of this fun stuff is within an easy 10-minute drive when you stay at Lovers’ Loop Retreat, an Asheville vacation rental. We have events posted into 2010 on our Web site, http://www.loversloopretreat.com/. Use the Web site to check out what’s going on whenever you plan your trip to Asheville and Lovers’ Loop Retreat.
Before 2009 ends, there’s the New Year’s Eve Downtown Countdown in Asheville, and a lively downtown will be even livelier with year-end celebrations. Through Jan. 3, there’s still time to see the gingerbread house display at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville. Also through Jan. 3, the Christmas at Biltmore estate extravaganza in Asheville is open.
The new year brings the Asheville Vaudeville Show Jan. 7 at the Asheville Contemporary Dance Theatre downtown. That’s also the location for the Asheville FringeArts Festival Jan, 21-24; expect a circus.
The annual Winter Warmer Beer Festival on Jan. 23 in downtown Asheville is a popular event among the many people who enjoy the creatively-concocted brews that the Asheville area is known for. Actor Jeff Daniels is also a singer-songwriter, and he takes his tunes to the Diana Wortham Theatre in downtown Asheville on Jan. 23. Asheville Lyric Opera’s “Don Pasquale” will be staged Jan. 29-30, and Willie Nelson plays the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium downtown Jan. 30.
Taking a glimpse into February, fiddlers Natalie MacMaster and Donnell Leahy will have their own pep rally at the Diana Wortham Theater on Feb. 1-2, the Asheville Vaudeville Show roars again on Feb. 4, and singer Brandi Carlile will perform at the recently expanded and hopping Orange Peel nightclub downtown.
All of these events and activities and more are listed on our Web site. Please pass along our muse-letter to your friends. And join us at Lovers’ Loop Retreat. See you in Asheville!
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December 16, 2009 at 9:51 pm
· Filed under Asheville, Asheville B&B, Asheville Food, Asheville restaurants, B&B alternative, Lovers' Loop Retreat, vacation rental ·Tagged alternative B&B, Asheville, Asheville NC, beer, Lovers' Loop Retreat, vacation rental
Two restaurants opened recently just down the road from our Lovers’ Loop Retreat, an Asheville bed and breakfast alternative. Both eateries are within a few minutes drive of our guest suite, and they’re great additions to the nearby food mix!
Nachos & Beer offers California-style Mexican food at reasonable prices with many selections on the menu. They have the best bargain we’ve seen on one of the Asheville-brewed beers. The wait staff and owners are friendly people.
Nearly next door to Nachos & Beer is Piazza, which, of course, is an Italian place. Piazza offers many types of pizza, plus design-your-own pizza, as well as sandwiches and traditional entrees. Their house-made potato chips are truly tasty. The owners of Piazza operate another established, well-loved restaurant south of downtown Asheville, Rezaz, which features Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern cuisine.
In the same commercial hub near us are a Chinese restaurant, sub shop and burger place. There’s also a grocery store, pharmacy and bank with an ATM machine. When you stay at Lovers’ Loop Retreat, an Asheville vacation rental, these conveniences are right around the corner!
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