Island Visitor
Reged: 12/19/02
Posts: 10396
Loc: Retraité
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Just returned from the Grove Park Inn and Spa in Asheville, North Carolina.
I first went to the GPI over twenty years ago. Since then, I have returned several times but this was the first time with the new spa. The spa is incredible. Really over the top.
Initially a stone mountain inn, the GPI has welcomed luminaries for generations. When expansions were done in the eighties and nineties, it went from a marvellous large inn to a fullscale resort and conference hotel. With hundreds of rooms, the GPI no longer has the small intimacy it used to have. But it is a gorgeous property, it handles crowds VERY well by spacing them out all over the enormous buildings, it has excellent service and one of the finest spas anywhere.
It has to be one of the great mountain hotels this side of the rockies and I recommend it for anyone wanting to get away to the mountains in the lap of luxury.
October when the leaves change can be particularly nice. But it is good year round.
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FirstTimer
Reged: 04/08/04
Posts: 20
Loc: Cary, NC
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My wife and I did our undergrad in the NC mountains, and are also big fans of the Grove Park Inn. Oddly enough, we recently found out through pictures and postcards, that my Irish great grandparents came to America for their honeymoon and stayed at the Grove Park Inn. It just shows what a truly small world we live in.
In addition, if you ever get over to Blowing Rock, I also highly recommend the Inn at Ragged Gardens. It is a B&B with a great restaurant, location, and extremely hospitable staff. A stay in Lee and Ann's Tree House room during a snowy North Carolina winter night with a roaring fire and a bottle of wine - hard to beat.
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bto
Reged: 04/10/03
Posts: 1437
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Funny...just today my chiropractor recommended this place (Grove Park Inn) for a getaway and raved about it.
Bev
Edited by bto (06/23/05 02:16 PM)
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Island Visitor
Reged: 12/19/02
Posts: 10396
Loc: Retraité
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Back In The Day, it was one of The Grand Places. Charlestonians have gone to Asheville in the summers since the plantation era to escape the heat and disease. And the Industrial Tycoons of the northeast discovered the Asheville area in a big way a hundred years ago.
The Grove Park Inn has been one of the favored spots of The Elite and has hosted many Presidents, government officials, stars of stage and screen and particularly artists and writers.
It is no longer the grand little inn on the mountain of a few years back. Now it is a full fledged resort offering EVERYTHING the discriminating traveller could desire. And while some places lose their charm when they Get Big, the Grove Park Inn has managed to enlarge gracefully. No, it is not the same small quaint place it was when I and my new bride honeymooned there with the hotel hosting half a dozen other people a few years back. But in its new grandeur, it has not lost the charming, romantic touch.
For a full service place that offers all the bells and whistles as well as the ambiance of a bygone era, this place is truly magic.
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