Alive and Kickin’

True Confections

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to just wander downtown Asheville, something I haven’t done in several months. I must say…I was surprised at all of the new businesses that have opened up. True, some have closed, and there are a few empty shop fronts, but all in all, downtown is ALIVE and KICKIN’.

The Chocolate Fetish

We started out visiting one of my favorite pastry shops, True Confections, for a piece of fudge and a latte’ (decaf of course). While we paid, the friendly cashier and I shared recipes for a cucumber salad…typical Asheville, friendly folks and never know where you’ll meet a fellow budding chef. It would be easy to eat my way around downtown but today wasn’t a foodie trip, just wanted to stroll and see what was new. Chocolate Fetish has expanded, looks as though it doubled its retail space and it was still crowded- not surprising since it has won all sorts of awards…I get weak in the knees just walking in the door. Several doors down on Haywood Street is the new

The Tea and Spice Exhange

Spice & Tea Exchange. If you grew up like I did, thinking salt always came out of the blue container with the little girl and the umbrella- you are in for a surprise…there are rows and rows of different types of salt, as well as spices, teas and custom blends of each and wonderful specialty items.

Lexington Avenue Brewing

Ok, I promised it wouldn’t all be food, but it is getting hard to bypass all the new restaurants. We did stop in Urban Outfitters, also on Haywood, which has the distinction of being the only downtown chain store. We have proudly preserved our “independent” reputation up to this point, but I honestly don’t see UO as a “big box” contender. Plus, it may well draw a younger age group to our downtown who may have only thought of shopping at the mall….time will tell and I’m all for bring new faces (i.e. shoppers) downtown. Across the street at is an organic cotton clothing store. Unfortunately, it was closed but there was a really cool dress in the window that may require further investigation. Down College to Lexington…wow, has that changed. The Green Light Café- an organic café, Edge- a new high end hand crafted furniture store, a new brew-pub-The LAB, the list goes on.

On of my favorite pastimes are vintage clothing stores- and Lexington Ave has a great selection- my favorite is Hip Replacements- I could spend hours and plenty of money in there and the owners were kind enough to let us wander even though it was past closing time. Her comment…”we have plenty to do, so enjoy”…and we did!

More to come….

Suzanne

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 11th, 2010 at 2:11 pm and is filed under Ramblings from a Realtor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.