Wednesday, October 26, 2016

2016-10-22 New Belgium Brewery

A Fun Saturday
Henderson County, NC and
Asheville, NC
Saturday, October 22nd, 2016 

Amy and Jack by a Waterfall on Private Property

"Asheville vegetarians and vegans rejoice! For the entire month of October many of Asheville’s best restaurants will be participating in the “Asheville Face-Off”; a plant-based vegan competition that will challenge restaurants around town to create innovative & delicious plant-based dishes for the entirety of the month." 
http://eatingasheville.com/plant-based-culinary-competition-taking-place-this-month/

Neither Amy or I have any plans to convert over to a Vegan Diet.  However, our good friend Brenda and her husband Wendell are Vegans.  So we decided to get together for dinner at one of these restaurants that normally do not have a whole lot of Vegan offerings.  We decided on Strada Italiano!

Since Asheville is a long drive just for dinner, Amy and I decided to make a whole day out of it.

First up was a nice 2.0 mile "Amy Approved" hike to an awesome waterfall located in Henderson County about halfway between Spartanburg and Asheville.


This one is on private property and I have been asked not to post the name, directions, and/or GPS coordinates!



After our hike we had a nice lunch at the Mosiac Cafe and then on to the Asheville Outlet Mall for some shopping.  The shopping part of the day is for Amy, but fortunately the Outlet mall has an Awesome Beer Store that always has some interesting offerings on draft!


So while Amy hit the Dillard's Outlet, I did a little Beer Sampling.  I really liked the Sweet Water Smokey and the Brett Sour IPA!  The Urban Orchard Habanero Cider was also really good!

Next up was a tour of the recently opened New Belgium Brewery in Asheville

Me at the New Belgium Brewery

Amy and Jack Cell Phone Selfie at the New Belgium Brewery


The 1.5 hour tour was Free, Interesting, and included some beer sampling along the way (my favorite part).  And our Tour Guide was a hoot!

Amy's favorite part of the tour was the slide!  Apparently if you drink enough beer while designing a brewery you come up with ideas like using slides instead of stairs to descend floors!

Amy takes on the Slide!

Our Tour Guide by the Slide

I was originally planning on sampling a few more in the tasting room after the tour.  However, I am not a fan of crowds and that place was packed!  Saturday Afternoon is NOT the time to visit the New Belgium Tasting Room!  So we continued on to downtown Asheville!

We had a little over an hour to spend exploring the streets of downtown Asheville before ending our day with a wonderful meal at Strada Italiano with Brenda and Wendell.  Note: neither Amy or I went with the Vegan offerings, but Brenda was very impressed!

This was a really fun day!

The complete set of photos is posted here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/8146392@N05/albums/72157674315678911

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Meet Zoey

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