Holiday Travel: Asheville and Gingerbread Houses

Today we left Winston Salem and traveled to Asheville, NC. After falling in love with the majestic Grove Park Inn this summer, my husband and I thought it would be great to take our daughter there. The holiday season is the perfect time to bring children to the Grove Park Inn because it is beautifully decorated and there are an abundance of gingerbread creations on display.

The National Gingerbread House Competition is hosted annually by the Grove Park Inn and draws competitors from all over the country. The contest was held on November 17 and over 150 entries were judged on overall appearance, originality & creativity, difficulty, precision and consistency of theme. The grand prize winner this year was Anne B. Bailey from Cary, NC who created a chess board with very detailed playing pieces. Bailey went home with a prize package valued at over $7000. The winning entry along with the top entries in each category are on display until January 1st.

My family and I marveled at the impressive gingerbread creations that went far beyond simple houses. One of my favorites was a carousel while my daughter loved Santa at a dog pound. We learned that each creation should be at least 75% gingerbread and except for the base must be created from edible materials. We saw a variety of building materials such as candies, crackers, cookies and even cheese curls.

After taking in the gingerbread creations, we took a walk around the hotel to check out the other decorations such as Christmas trees and Santa's sleigh. There seem to be different varieties of Christmas trees in each area of the hotel ranging from giant trees in the lobby to small trees down several hallways. Santa's sleigh is on the back terrace and makes a great prop for photos.

For dinner we decided to grab a bite at one of the onsite restaurants called Edison. It was too crowded to get a table so we placed an order for take-out and ate in our room. The food was delicious but we did save room for dessert. After dinner, we visited The Pink Pig sweets shop and picked up some homemade cupcakes. It was a sweet ending to a lovely day.