I got my bags packed on a roll heading out there and I'm ready to go looking real good

in my passport photo.

Image and Traveler episode 696. Today the Amateur Traveler talks about

mountains and mansions and musicians, hippies and barbecue and drum circles as we go to Asheville, North Carolina.

Welcome to the amateur traveler. I'm your host Chris Christensen. Stay tuned

after this episode for some recent news because there is some interesting news

going on this week.

But now let's talk about Asheville, North Carolina.

I'd like to welcome the show Music Journalist Bill Kopp

who's come to talk to us about Asheville, North Carolina.

Bill, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me on.

It's a treat.

I've learned a lot listening to previous episodes.

Well, and I was telling Bill before we started recording that I, about a week ago, had a trip plan to

Asheville that's gotten trumped by some other opportunities that have come up, but why should someone plan a trip to

Asheville? Ashville is really eclectic and funky. It has food, music, arts, performing art, something for everyone in Asheville and one of the things that's really remarkable about it is that it's not a big city, it's got a very human scale. Outside of a day trip trip everything here is either walkable or a few minutes drive

and it's a lot more artistic and cosmopolitan than one might expect of a city nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Excellent. Well, what are you going to recommend for us to do when we come to Asheville, North Carolina?

A one week itinerary, for example, I would suggest three days downtown, two days on the outskirts,

and then potentially two or three days worth of day trips because in an hour of here by car of course there's quite a bit of things to see and do that are different from the experience of being in Asheville proper.

Okay, well you started us downtown, what are we going to do downtown?

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