Asheville, North Carolina Dispatch

My sister Donna and I decided to splurge once more on a local bed and breakfast in Asheville, a small, artsy city in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. We had booked quite a lovely place, but after making the long drive from Charleston we were hardly in the mood for the owner’s ‘guest orientation,’ which lasted more than an hour! As much as we enjoyed the story about the rare wood in the foyer, we really just wanted to drink some water and then hit the streets of Asheville. The owner is a nice guy, but it seems he should be running the Summer Olympics instead of his little inn, which is a bit oppressed by his fastidious management.

We did hit the streets at last and walked several blocks into the center of the city. It was while exploring and selecting a venue for dinner that we got the call from Elise that Jake had checked into a hospital for his dire throat condition from mono that prevented him from swallowing anything. I say this because it was quite upsetting and an uphill battle for any dining establishment to save the evening. The Lobster Trap managed beautifully with their oysters from the North Carolina shore. Donna and I ate four dozen; yes. Surely these were instrumental in Jake’s going home feeling better the following day, as the oysters were very near a conversion experience. This is probably a good moment to report that today Jake is symptom-free and a recent participant in the annual World Series of Poker tournament in Las Vegas.

The Asheville area was primarily an open hunting ground populated by the Cherokees until the 19th century. Loyalties to both the Union and the Confederacy gave the area only a small role in the Civil War. A railroad line brought prosperity to the city until the Great Depression. Economic difficulties plagued the region until late in the 20th century, when the city and its extraordinary deco architecture attracted artists, trendy boutiques, and tourists.

After a delicious, oppressingly organized breakfast at the inn, Donna and I took off for the main attraction in the area: the Biltmore House. This is a French chateau-inspired mansion of 250 rooms built at the end of the 19th century by George Vanderbilt, grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt of shipping, railroad and ultra-wealth fame. The family wealth only grew into the subsequent generation and enabled George to build an opulent estate designed by Richard Morris Hunt, similar to those of his siblings in Newport, Rhode Island and up the Hudson River in New York. Biltmore is the largest privately owned house in the United States today, though the resident descendants use another home on the sprawling acreage.

The three-mile driveway to the house gives the first impression of the magnificent forest that George commissioned from landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted. He is best known for New York’s Central Park. Acres of scrub brush were transformed into lush forest, farms and English and formal French gardens. Donna and I savored this arrival with the top down!

 

Here I am with one of the two best traveling companions in the world: Donna. (Newton shares the title.)

 

 

 

 

The grounds and gardens change with the seasons; it was too early for the gardens to be in bloom.

George Vanderbilt and his relatives were like today’s mega-stars, always hounded by the paparazzi in Manhattan, where Fifth Avenue Vanderbilt mansions were ubiquitous. George decided to build his “little mountain escape” to get away and to entertain his many famous guests in peace. Authors Edith Wharton and Henry James were among the artists, diplomats and politicians who visited. The house was run in a typical aristocratic English manor style. Every room was connected to servants’ quarters where bells signaled what was needed where. “Downton Abbey” came to mind as we toured because of its depiction of the servants’ interaction with the aristocratic residents and guests. George and his wife, Edith Stuyvesant Vanderbilt, entertained in several rooms, including the Winter Garden and the great banquet hall:

To this day the extended Vanderbilt family celebrates Christmas Eve in these two rooms with the families of all Biltmore workers to commemorate the initial opening of the house on Christmas Eve, 1895.

Here are George, Edith, and their daughter, Cornelia Vanderbilt Cecil:

The portraits of George and Edith are by John Singer Sargent.

George was an erudite, well-traveled man who immersed himself in literature, art and decoration. The rooms, art collections and furnishings one sees while touring Biltmore are the actual decisions and selections he made.

Here are the tapestry gallery and the library:

The lower floors have an indoor swimming pool and an early 20th century gym with torturous-looking equipment. The upper floors have guest rooms and servants’ quarters and an elaborate kitchen.

George died young in 1914 after complications from an appendectomy. Daughter Cornelia, who married an English aristocrat, opened the house to the public in 1930 to help remedy the effects of the Depression on the region. Even though the admission price and audio tour is over $60, the audio is just beautifully done and walks one through the house and through history simultaneously. I was fascinated. The tour generates interest in the Vanderbilt family tree, which branches out to television newsman, Anderson Cooper – son of fashion designer, Gloria Vanderbilt.

Donna and I had a wonderful two-hour, top-down, wind-blown drive to our last hotel, an airport chain type in Charlotte. We were flying off to New Jersey the next morning. Like the other bookend to our headlight parking fiasco at our first hotel, the scene this time had the two of us, exhausted, having dragged our suitcases into the hotel room and the door having slammed shut, blindly searching the walls and desk in sheer blackness for a light switch. The situation was so prolonged we even felt a bit desperate before we found the ill-placed switch on the wall (nowhere near the door) and stopped stumbling over our suitcases in the dark. Then we had a good Needham sister laugh!

Love,

Sandy

Charleston, South Carolina Dispatch

My sister Donna is the organized one, the reasonable, sane one, the positive, friendly one, and the best GPS interpreter on earth. Or I could say GPS translator, or I could say we were never lost on this entire road trip!! I did all the driving and she related in a clear, timely way (easily understood Oklahoma-plus-New Jersey accent) everything that the annoying GPS bitch was yapping about! For my own part, I managed to never put the automatic gear on the rental car into park at stoplights thinking I was putting it in first gear, like my stick shift in Brazil, and I didn’t run into anything or run over anything.

Charleston is an older city than Savannah, existing since 1670 in the English colony of Carolina. Its very active port began exporting deerskin supplied by Cherokee and Creek natives for European trousers, gloves and books. Once African slaves disembarked at this port and brought knowledge of rice and indigo cultivation, these followed as huge exports. After the Revolutionary War and the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, cotton became the most important export, as in Georgia.

The wealthy merchants and plantation owners of this region developed a rich cultural heritage, building the first theater in North America (and I’ll mention here that the city was preparing for the international Spoleto Festival while we were there). The Charleston Library Society was founded by colonists who wanted to stay abreast of the scientific and philosophical developments of the era; they also founded the College of Charleston in 1770 (and I’ll mention here that this erudite spirit helps to set this city apart from the rest of the state to this day). There was a diverse and tolerant array of colonists, not just from England, but from France, Scotland, Ireland, Germany – representing an array of denominations and religions, including Sephardic Jews. By the beginning of the 19th century Charleston had the largest and wealthiest Jewish community in North America. The largest segment of the population was enslaved Africans.

I know that not all of you used to travel to the Podunk Junctions of South Carolina, as I did, to print at the textile printing mills, and may not be curious about the reason so many motels are called “Palmetto Something.” South Carolina is the ‘palmetto state’ because the fort built at Charleston out of the hard wood of the palmetto tree proved impenetrable by the British cannons early in the Revolutionary War. Fortunes were eventually reversed: the Siege of Charleston resulted in the occupation of the city by the British for almost three years near the end of the war. Then fortunes were reversed yet again.

After another eighty years of mighty charming and graceful southern life in Charleston supported by cotton and the labor of slaves, the Civil war “between the states” began with the surrender of the Union’s Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. Charleston had much rebuilding and regrouping to do when the Union prevailed in 1865. A 7.5 earthquake in 1886 didn’t help. Eventually over the decades, through the Civil Rights era, economic slump and even Hurricane Hugo (the eye came ashore in Charleston Harbor in 1989), cultural and economic institutions were re-established and a significant commitment was made to historic preservation. Today the city enjoys designations such as “the most polite and hospitable city in America” (Southern Living magazine). I will vouch that the citizens are a friendly lot.

I’ll get back to my trip with Donna: we had decided to splurge on a bed and breakfast inn for one night in Charleston to fully immerse ourselves in the charm and grace of the historic center. We arrived at the lovely Meeting Street Inn in time for the charming and graceful wine and hors d’oeuvres reception for guests in the lobby and beautiful courtyard. We were flattered when a young, handsome couple we had met at check-in sought us out in the far reaches of the patio (well, the alternative was a large tour of even older people, rather stern looking). The couple was from an island near Savannah and celebrating their anniversary. We had a wonderful conversation with the personal trainer wife (she literally continues a regimen with clients after they return home from vacation in the South, through Skype workouts) and with the husband, who is a high school teacher for emotionally disturbed students. He had one hand bandaged up from intervening in an altercation between two students. I relished our conversation about education, the environmental pitfalls of raising children, and the challenge he loved of simply having to be on the spot and ready for anything each day.

Donna and I enjoyed a champagne and oyster dinner after wandering around in a light rain. The meal ran a little high with around 11% in tax (there is a 2% hospitality tax added in the city). It was worth it.

Our walking self-tour the next day was under a bright sun. We visited the Nathanial Russell historic house from the early 19th century. He was a wealthy shipping magnate and slave trader. The furnishings here were historically appropriate or reproductions, not actual furnishings of the original family, though the Historical Society took great pains to replicate the exact, exquisite wall colors and the architectural detail. Most notable about this house is the engineering wonder of the free-floating staircase that curves up to the second floor from the foyer. It has flummoxed architects and engineers for two centuries!

We made our way to the waterfront houses, enjoying en route the southern colonial style that prevails…oddly placing the homes sideways against each other in order to have shade on the open verandas and balconies. The lots are small and the homes a bit jumbled up because of this sideways orientation, though most have lovely gardens in back. These homes are all inhabited today. I only have photos of houses that face the water, so you’ll just have to take my word that many elsewhere face sideways…or just go to Charleston and see.

Donna and I had a seafood lunch on a pier in a most pleasant ocean breeze. And to live up to the requirement of great cities, Charleston offered up a most unlikely coincidence: notice the brunette woman’s bent head in the left corner behind Donna. Imagine the shock when Donna heard her named called out and discovered a fellow-retired friend from home (Lawrenceville, New Jersey), who taught at the same school where Donna worked in the administration!

We continued walking and shopping at the famous old market and along King Street until too late to realize how exhausted we were. Our reservation was just outside of town at a chain hotel on the way to our next destination. Here I am, bleary-eyed and physically spent, having had peanuts and a protein bar for dinner since we were too tired to go anywhere, about to fill the bathroom wastebasket with ice from the hallway ice machine to chill the extra bottle of wine leftover from the cruise. We were watching “American Idol” on television – my first ever. This photo is really more about the shoes than how ill-suited I am to prolonged shopping. Donna brought several nice pairs of shoes on the trip, but continually opted for these too-silver ones because of their superior comfort (aluminum foil?…or the material I had recently seen at Cape Canaveral on the exterior of the space capsule?). We had a lot of laughs by me making fun of these shoes and Donna agreeing while wearing them every day! She offered them to me for my pajama-clad corridor ice trip. Sure enough, superior comfort.

In the meantime, Newton was visiting the Great Wall of China:

Donna and I recovered and hit the road towards Ashville, North Carolina the next morning.

Love,

Sandy

Savannah, Georgia Dispatch

Mind you, I had already driven to the Orlando airport twice that Sunday after our cruise docked to pick up the rental car for the upcoming ROAD TRIP, and later to drop Elise for her flight home. Instead of consulting a map or, heaven forbid, trying to figure out the GPS, I simply trusted a random tourist I caught on my way out of the hotel. “Route 4, correct, to the airport?” “Yes, just over that way” (points). “That’s Route 4 EAST, right?” “Yes.” [Wrong.] My sister Donna’s flight was coming in from New Jersey in 40 minutes.

One hour and forty minutes later I pulled up at the airport arrivals and found Donna STILL THERE! I had not been so lost in decades. I was shaking, dying of thirst, my cheek was injured where the car door had hit it after I stopped to ask directions again. I had made every wrong turn in the book, not excluding a couple of wrong highways. Donna was all happy; her flight had been an hour late and she had just appeared there. You can already detect signs of Sandra traveling without Newton: direction challenged, GPS challenged, no internet on the phone to have checked the flight status.

Our road trip began and ended with especially comic, especially “Needham” scenes. Once we arrived at the hotel, thirsty and starving and wondering if they were still serving anything, we parked and removed Donna’s suitcase from the trunk. But the headlights were still on. How long does that last? And will the car start tomorrow morning when we begin our road trip?? After some minutes I decided to open the car up and try to turn the headlights off. They went off, I locked the car, but then, as we were longing to head for the restaurant, the car’s inside lights were on. How long does that last? Will the car start tomorrow? After a wait, I opened the car again and eventually found the switch that turns them off, which I had inadvertently hit when dealing with the headlights, perhaps? Now I lock the car again and the headlights are on again. Then they went off. We had stood ten minutes in the parking lot. We saved the laughs at ourselves for later and headed with the suitcase straight to the restaurant/bar. Still serving!! Here we are recovering and looking forward to our “Thelma and Louise” road trip to three beautiful cities of the South.

We arrived in Savannah, Georgia the next afternoon. This city was established in 1733 (our Europe!) as the capital of the British colony of Georgia. The Historic District retains the original town design laid out by British general, James Oglethorpe, founder of the colony. Those twenty-two heavenly town squares, full of sprawling oak trees hung with moss and surrounded by beautiful historic houses were my post-cruise sanctuaries! I stand by my decision: Savannah is the United States’ most beautiful town.

Our Best Western hotel was just one of the ubiquitous chains we landed on Hotwire or Priceline.com, but it was located smack in the historic district, was appointed tastefully, and had a crackerjack concierge. We had walking routes highlighted on a map in no time and headed out to the beauty.

Every inch of the district reflects the loving care with which it is maintained. The sidewalks and brick streets are in pristine condition, as are the mansions surrounding the drop-dead-beautiful squares - parks, really, canopied with the welcome shade of the oak trees. Savannah has one of the South’s first public museums, one of the oldest African American church congregations, the third oldest synagogue in America, and is one of the largest National Historic Landmark Districts in the US.

Here are the beautiful house of the Mercer family, best known for the composer, Johnny Mercer (Moon River) and the Sorrel Weed House:

I would typify everything we saw as “good taste,” apart from some closed down buildings along the ‘main street,’ which sports more of a mid-20th century style. But even the new library housed in an old 1950’s department store was beautifully done. The shops are full of lovely, unusual items; despite Savannah’s extensive tourism, there are no ‘tourist shops’ per se. The Riverfront development of 19th century cotton warehouses along the Savannah River is full of great bars and restaurants:

Donna had an exquisite, typical dish here for dinner: shrimp and grits. Grits (an indigenous creation) are the textured mush made from field corn for which the South is famous. Dessert was a tart influenced by the also famous pecan praline.

There’s an interesting story about the postponement of slavery in this one southern colony. The British had no qualms about slavery, they were simply concerned about the Spanish next door in Florida, who offered freedom to slaves in exchange for military service. If slaves were allowed in Georgia, they would most likely help the Spanish threaten the security of this new English colony. By the time Oglethorpe defeated the Spanish in 1742, some Georgians and particularly the experienced planters of South Carolina were ready to pounce on all that agricultural land and supply it with West African slaves.

Early on in the colony, rice production was prominent. After the Revolutionary War, the cotton grown on plantations by the slaves became the most important commodity, and its export from the Port of Savannah enabled the city’s European immigrants to become very wealthy. The port also supplied them with fine imported goods.

Back in our Sunday School days we learned about John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. What we didn’t learn is that he was an early resident of Savannah, invited from England by Oglethorpe to head the new Anglican parish. He returned to England after a bit of a scandal: he both failed to convert any Native Americans and got into trouble with a woman he promised to marry, but didn’t. The resulting lawsuit wore him down, so he returned to England and founded Methodism instead.

Here is Juliette Low’s birthplace. She was the founder of the Girl Scouts, and her home became the headquarters in 1912.

We loved this old restored Solomon’s apothecary, complete with a stained glass dome and converted into a very elegant café and restaurant. Students of SCAD – Savannah College of Art and Design, located in the historic district – run this restaurant as well as one of the best design shops I’ve seen, which sells the creations of current and former students.

One cannot escape being haunted in the South by its slave-owning past and well-deserved reputation for racism, but one of the most striking things I saw in Savannah was the dignity, the confidence with which its African American residents carried themselves. In a general way, one does not see this in the North. I concluded that these families have been in this state since the mid-eighteenth century and have the appropriate bearing of such a lineage, despite some unspeakable hardships over those centuries. I also strongly suspect that Savannah is not run by rednecks.

Donna and I were treated to the charm and friendliness for which Savannah is famous by everyone we met. I very willingly enveloped myself in the visual and interpersonal gracefulness of the place!

We had this delicious ‘good-bye Savannah’ lunch before heading off to Charleston, South Carolina:

Love,

Sandy