The Great American Road Trip: Day 120 - New Year's Eve (the day of way too much good food and drink)

It seems somehow fitting that a holiday like New Years Eve falls on an "important" day of the trip - day 120 vs. day 107 or 123 or something like that. I wish I could claim some kind of intentional timing, but I didn't think about it that way. Now I know that September 2nd is 120 days from the end of the year!

We were up and out the door at a fairly decent hour because we were going to met Alynn's friend Desiree for breakfast at the Over Easy Cafe. As we soon found out, it's one of many great little breakfast restaurants to sit and talk and laugh for an hour over coffee, lavender french toast, and pomegranate mimosas (it was new years eve, after all!). Alynn and Desiree met working for Habitat for Humanity in Georgia and have been close ever since. I heard a few stories about Desiree when Alynn and I were in Burkina, and now that I've met her I understand why they're such good friends! After we dropped Desiree off at her house, Alynn, Daisy, and I took a quick drive around North Asheville before going back downtown to wander and look around a bit. One thing I just love about Asheville is that there are so many murals! It makes walking around a lot of fun, like a treasure hunt.

We had 9pm dinner plans, and potential 4pm snack/meal planned with Desiree, but by about 1pm we were looking for a pick me up so we stopped at Dobra Tea. With a menu of nearly 100 pages (each tea practically had it's own page, plus the food menu), it was quite the process to just choose what to have! The menu/book did a great job of explaining all about how each tea was harvested and processed to produce that particular type of tea. Alynn had the Toureag mint tea, served in a traditional ornate silver pot with a glass instead of a mug. We were hopeful that it would be similar to the very strong, sweet mint tea we enjoyed in Burkina but it was decidedly more of a Moroccan mint - delicious but more delicate. I had a mandarin Pu-erh, which was served loose in a little cup with a lid that you used to trap the tea leaves as you poured the tea into a ceramic cup, along with a pot of water over a tea light because you can brew a Pu-erh multiple times. Daisy had a savory herbal tea that was served in a beautiful rectangular pot with a very tiny teacup, and we split a hummus platter and a daifuku. They had regular tables where you could sit and look out the front window, but also had an area of low tables in the back with carpets and floor cushions, which was where we chose to go because it's always nice to have a reason to take your shoes off. ;)

After our very leisurely tea break, we stopped in Downtown Books across the street. It was your typical locally owned bookstore except that it also had some unique quirks, like a large selection of unique postcards (I've seen a lot of postcards on this trip - it's exciting when I find something that I haven't seen before) and short rows of old movie theater seats that encouraged you to sit and stare at the bookshelves for a while, or maybe pick up a book and read a few pages before taking it home. I paid for my postcards and then we took a brisk walk across the downtown shopping district to Wicked Weed Brewing for a small meal with Desiree. I tried the "Milk and Cookies" stout that shockingly did have a nice hint of cinnamon oatmeal raisin cookie to it but wasn't over the top in the way that I had feared when reading the description. So many food adventures and it was only 4pm!

We walked back to the car, did some grocery shopping, and came home to nap and catch up on our various to-do tasks. We started getting ready to go out at about 8, and by 9:15 we met up with Desiree at the Avenue M Restaurant and Bar, conveniently located just two buildings down on the corner of the street. We rang in the New Year in style - with sparkly hats, noise makers, tasty food, colorful drinks, dancing, laughing conversations, and good company. Happy 2014!