Blue Ridge Parkway is such an incredibly beautiful drive and well worth taking a few minutes out of…read morethe way to enjoy this lovely detour. It should be a crime that the government wants to privatize all national parks and it's a shame that we may not be able to enjoy this stunning area of the United States much longer. Take the long way during your roadtrip and drive through the Blue Ridge Parkway with the windows down, you will not be disappointed! The fresh air and calming scenery is healing to the soul! There are plenty of overlooks, as well. Take your time, enjoy the ride!

The Blue Ridge Parkway spans several hundred miles long and a good chunk of it was unfortunately…read moreclosed when we came through due to hurricane damage but we were able to do a few hours on the road from the edge of the Smoky Mountains NP all the way to Asheville and it was GORGEOUS. The open stretch was in higher elevations (hence not impacted by the hurricane) which meant we had some really spectacular views of the mountains and terrain. It really was wonderful. There are a ton of scenic overlooks and a few maintained spots where you can pull over and enjoy a picnic or use the facilities (they're barebones restrooms but they have them) but aside from that amenities are few and far between so be sure to pack some food, drinks, and make sure your tank is full of gas so you can enjoy the views and explore stress free! The only trouble was there wasn't a lot of information available on what we'd find on the parkway (meaning what stretch was closed, what was open, must see overlooks, hiking trails, etc) as the visitors centers were closed and the Smoky Mountain NP visitor center we stopped into didn't have any brochures or maps or anything. Luckily once we got onto the parkway we were able to find a scenic overview with some signage that had a map so we took a picture of that and was helpful. The good news is is that I believe right after our trip they reopened another large stretch of the Parkway northeast for Asheville (which I believe has has all the amazing waterfalls) so we'll have to come back another time to enjoy all those views!

What a terrific addition to the roster of Must-Do Activities in Asheville. This isn't just for…read moretourists, either! We are locals, and this experience made us feel the magic of being tourists in our own town. Looking down several stories and gazing out several miles, both, gave us such unique perspectives of the City. And yes, you can go to these rooftop bars on your own, but the Asheville Rooftop Bar Tours provides endless historical and architectural anecdotes of the area. Sam even shared numerous photos dating back to the 1800's, giving unique snapshots to the past while you gaze upon the present. You also gain access to the reserved premier seating on the decks, dedicated wait staff, and oftentimes off-menu craft cocktails and mocktails. Ask for the witty and charming Sam, but if he is busy, you will have fun with the rest of the staff! Ten outta Ten!!!

We loved our sunset rooftop bar tour ! Not only beautiful views and a memorable experience, but we…read morelearned so much about Asheville and its history from our fantastic guide, Melissa. Highly recommend!

If you like music and breweries, the fender bender tour is for you! Our host Glen, curated the…read moreexperience, with the music of Uni-Horn as we were transported through Asheville as we visited 3 breweries, and had a rocking good time. Highly suggest this tour, even locals told us, they do the tour at least once a year, because it's so much fun. My pro tip , split a flight of beer at each stop so you can try as many beers as possible.

We decided to go on the Friday 5:00pm LaZoom Comedy Bus City Tour. It was well run and very…read moreorganized. The City tour is Family friendly and packed with good silly fun. The Comedian(s) are punny and shared some fun facts about the city. There was one bathroom stop at Green Man Brewery. Overall a fun time.

The drivers are good about explaining each point of interest along the route. Our hotel was near…read morethe visitors center and we were able to walk there. There was no sidewalk as the entrance is in the back of the building. Plenty of parking if you drive there. We had to walk in the road. The stops were communicated but not well marked and no map to show exactly where they were located. We had tried walking to a stop but with no specific street address it was not possible. We returned to the place we were dropped off at a few minutes before the time the trolley was scheduled to leave and the trolley was pulling out. We were able to flag down the driver to finish our tour. The pass is good for 2 days so we may try to return to another area although it might be simpler to just drive. If Gray line posts maps with specific locations and adds a walkway at the visitors center it would vastly improve the experience.

Looking for a way to see the city and get some good info. This tour checked all the boxes. Our…read moredriver Matt was cool. Fun information. Highly recommend this tour. Very much worth the price.

Geoff is quite possibly the best tour guide on Ashville. We had no idea what to expect, but Groovy…read moreAshville over delivered. What a great way to see the city. Wow! Seriously...been on tours all over the country. This. One was incredibly unique!! #74 VW BUS!!!!!

Such a great and personable experience! We got a great tour of the downtown area and so much more!…read moreHe gave us so much insight into the Asheville experience! I have made a short visit before, but after this tour I realized I was missing out on all of the culture that Asheville offers! We had so much fun, with great music and great knowledgeable company! I highly recommend taking this tour if you want to see what Asheville has to offer and getting some history about how it got to where it is today! I can't say

On a recent anniversary trip to Asheville, my husband and I enjoyed Eating Asheville's historical…read moredowntown food tour. We decided to splurge for The High Roller option as it was only around $10 more a person and included beverage parings with the food. Included is up to 6 stops at restaurants, bars, or desserteries with at-least 3 alcoholic beverages pairings and then other non-alcoholic options. The tour lasts about 2.5- 3 hours. This is a walking in food tour, so you have to be able and willing to travel on foot some. It wasn't a ton of walking, but did work up a little sweat as it was a warmer Friday afternoon (this tour is offered Thursday- Sunday). We had a small group of 6 people plus our tour guide. She was very sweet and personable. I think she may have been semi new at this as her story flow was a little jumbled, but it didn't bother me too much as honestly she was trying and I was interested in food way more than history. She did point out some important sites along the way and give us some fun Asheville facts. Great thing about these tours is they do vary. While the company has a number of places they work with which ones are selected for you, depends on the day, time, season etc. So you could honestly do these tours more than once and experience new things still. Our tour began at Asheville Charcuterie where we each enjoyed a personalized board of meat, cheese, cracker, fruit, and a local spicy honey. It was also served with a Bold Rock cider. This was a cute shop where you can get a drink or snack there or take items with you to go. Next was to the Grove Arcade where we hit Bebettes, a New Orleans coffeehouse with fresh out the oven beignets with a warm chocolate dipping sauce, served with a shot of coffee. So yummy. I felt bad about all the power sugar I got everywhere. Gotta love a dessert on stop 2! For the third s location was Strada Italiano. The food here was excellent. We sampled one of their arancini balls and a grilled Florentine ravioli. Both were delicious bites and executed flawlessly. Great Italian fare with some red wine. My husband and I agreed we want to come back here for a full Italian dinner experience on our next trip. Starting to feel a little full at this point, not gonna lie but things continued to get more hearty at The Rhu. We got to enjoy their house breakfast sausage and pimento cheese on a buttermilk biscuit. Thank goodness they only gave us half each as these bad boys were thick. All three components were so tasty, with the pimento cheese winning for me. It came with some iced tea, which was definitely southern and sweet. I knew we had one more food stop left before dessert. Imagine my surprise when it was an Indiana buffet at Mehfil. On the fifth stop? Lord, a bad day to wear jeans! They place was so generous giving us a like private mini buffet of items like tandoori chicken, saag paneer, naan, butter chicken, rice and more. I truly wish I had room to eat more as everything was so tasty, especially their tandoori chicken. Also they had the best beverage pairing with a pear mule cocktail - perfectly light and smooth for a warm day. Our tour guide joked that we would need to cancel our dinner reservations, turns out they weren't kidding. The last stop was Asheville Chocolate. So many amazing sweet treats you could enjoy at this place. We wrapped up our tour with a chocolate truffle and cookies and cream gelato. I had to ask my husband to help finish these as I was stuffed. Before departing, we tipped our guide. This is not required, but we were happy to do so as she worked hard and took great care of us. After the tour, not gonna lie went back to our hotel and had an amazing nap! Sign of a good food tour! I thought this food tour was a great deal for the $90 per person price. I know at first it sounds like a lot. But we more than got $15 worth at each place from the food and drink itself, plus to convenience of being able to just walk in to a reserved table at a popular restaurant with a planned bite ready in a few minutes. Not to mention, having a personal tour guide to take you around and teach you about where you are, what you are eating , and Asheville in general. If you like to eat, and can eat a lot (you will be very full but it's worth it), take this tour. It was a great way to get a taste of places you've never been and decide where you wanna go back to and try a full meal next time!

Did we have a good time overall? Yes. However, do I think…read moreit's worth the $92/person price tag all in with taxes and fees... to sample 5 places with varying portions of food and drink? Not quite. The classic before fees is $79/person. It offers "minimum of 5 stops and at least 2 drink pairings" from their website. Don't get me started on the 15.5% extra they tack on for "taxes and fees". If the unavoidable city tax for Asheville is 7%, the remainder is 8.5% for what? Their website/payment services? To be fair, the pricing is similar to one we took part in NOLA $78/person with Destination Kitchen but the food and portions were more balanced (albeit without drink pairings). For $10 more base price, you can book the high roller tour $89/person. After all is said and done I'm wondering if we should have spent the extra amount and upgraded to the high roller since the descriptor highlights "most elegant, trendy, and acclaimed" options. I understand the business also needs to make a profit along with giving a cut to the tour guides. At the beginning and throughout the tour, the guide continued to emphasize that if we were still hungry by the end that they have not done their jobs. However, there's more to consider. I'll go through the 5 places we tried and how one of the newest additions isn't even listed still on their website so if you were to look ahead of time for the offerings you would not expect it! We met our group inside the Grove Street Arcade on a Monday in September which is a great spot with some shops and public restrooms before we started. STOP 1 - The Rhu https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-rhu-asheville This is the cafe/breakfast bakery sister to Rhubarb, which is more upscale. They prepared a small cup of iced sweet tea with half of their breakfast sandwich. The refreshing tea with sugar cubes paired nicely with the buttery biscuit sandwich. Value: $8.50 for full sandwich and drink was not listed so going to estimate total is worth one sandwich. STOP 3 - Bold Rock https://www.yelp.com/biz/bold-rock-asheville-asheville The Cidery story actually started in VA but I'm glad they expanded to NC. We sampled a 6~7 oz cider paired with a Bruschetta and Bacon Apple Grilled Cheese. (American, cheddar, goat cheese, local apples, bacon, Dijon aioli, sourdough) It was super tasty and really enjoyed everything!! Value: ~$5 half pour, ~$10 for the food so one of the better values STOP 3 - Mëhfil https://www.yelp.com/biz/mehfil-asheville-2 Full buffet spread of ~6 Indian dishes with Mango Lassi and a tasty alcoholic beverage too! Now this place is the spot I mentioned isn't even listed with their logo on the restaurant page... I checked their Instagram which isn't updated frequently either and they announced just the day before our tour so this is brand NEW. Unfortunately this is one of the cuisines my SO does not eat. We would not have known that reserving in advance... which is a shame. Value: ~$25-30 honestly since they were offering generous full size portions of their dishes that you could serve yourself, this was hands down the best cost wise. If you were to fill up it would be at this stop. The staff were also super nice and hospitable! STOP 4 - Manicomio Pizza https://www.yelp.com/biz/manicomio-pizza-asheville Plain and simple pizzeria with some funky designs. We sampled a single slice which may have been their special of the day with cherry tomato and artichoke and a lemon wedge to spritz. It tasted good, but forgettable. They just gave us water. Value: $5.50 by the slice for daily special STOP 5 FINAL - Sunshine Sammies https://www.yelp.com/biz/sunshine-sammies-asheville Makes sense we'd end on dessert and we sampled 1/2 a sandwich of I believe their seasonal pumpkin! It was a sweet way to conclude the tour. Value: $4, a full size seasonal flavor is $8 I was full from the generous spread offered at Mëhfil which carried the food and drink side of the tour. Unfortunately my SO didn't get to fully enjoy the experience, and there was no way we could have expected they'd take us to the new restaurant that was just announced. Even being generous with some of my estimates, I landed at value of ~$60, which is still short of the cost you're paying especially when more than half of these locations are more fast casual spots. The most disappointing was the pizzeria, since aside from the artwork I didn't feel anything unique about the taste and seems like a wasted opportunity given the list of other more interesting restaurants. I enjoyed the historical information the guide sprinkled throughout along with background about each of the locations. Next time I'll keep in mind for Mondays where many restaurants aren't open.

Our tour guide was awesome. He explained the brewing process and had a ton of knowledge. The tour…read moremade four stops and since it was raining our driver offered to drop us off at a different brewery rather than our original starting point which saved us a walk. Looking for a laid back way to enjoy some beer use this group.

This was a great brewery tour for the price, just shy of 50 bucks. We went to three breweries and…read moreloved every single one of them. We were a group of 5 and it was just us. I can't remember the name of our tour guide but he was super knowledgeable about beer and the area. He has lived in Asheville for 30 years and gave us tons of info about the area and things to do. Also very knowledgeable about the business. We really enjoyed it. The bus we rode on was comfortable and the tour guide had waters for us to drink. It was just over 3 hours. We never felt rushed. It was on Sunday, Father's Day. Things were pretty empty which was s nice contrast to our usual Sunday's in Miami. Overall great time, great tours. Highly recommend If you are in Asheville for a couple days and want to visit a few breweries.

This review is long over due!!! I had the pleasure of meeting up with a couple of my girlfriends…read morewhom I hadn't seen since COVID... and really since I changed jobs since we used to work together. We booked the pub cycle tour last minute and we had a blast! We had a bachelorette party that was also part of our tour and all of us had a great old time. We made a few stops and had some drinks and commiserated about cycling while drinking was actually a lot harder than we expected. We certainly got our workout in! What was also great was we were able to BYOB so that was cool! Next time I'm back in town I would definitely try to book another ride!

My girls booked a Pubcycle tour for my bachelorette and it was such a fun experience!! Our Captain,…read more"Captain Kait," was hilarious, super knowledgeable, and a great captain. My only complaint is that these tours only stop at one spot for half an hour. I would've liked to get off and try 2 spots, but it is what it is. It was super fun and I would definitely do it again!