Downtown Asheville, NC’s Chic and Central European-style Windsor Boutique Hotel

By Cathy H. Burroughs, Adventure & Travel Blogger, journeyPod.com

Location, location, location! Asheville, North Carolina’s stunning downtown and completely remodeled 4-star Windsor Boutique Hotel has this in spades. Perfectly positioned in the bustling eye of this thriving, and festive mountain town, the turn-of-the-century Windsor Boutique’s shimmering elegance, and sophisticated all cottage castle suites shed its rays on surrounding Asheville. The hotel’s aura creates a kind of hub to the affordable conscious chic that characterizes this flourishing town, once aptly known as the “Paris of the South.”

Asheville is loaded with charming bed and breakfast’s in its panoply of architectural styles including Arts and Crafts, Neoclassical, Tudor, Art Deco and Victorian; But this uniquely styled boutique inn is a surprise package with its European flair, loft style multi-bedroom suites with full kitchens, custom designed with posh decor, exposed brick and practical top of the line attention to detail. With parking, charm and central locale the hotel is entirely walkable to all that Asheville has to offer: restaurant goodness, a healthful spa practically next door, breweries, organic beauty options and even a pinball museum, among others. The hotel’s eclectic, boho cool factor is indigenous to this fair mountainous enclave set in the bowl of the valley and surrounded by the truly blue Blue Ridge Mountains and Appalachian peaks.

We basked in our luxurious 3rd floor brown and cream suite with oversized custom tufted furnishings, covered with textiles suitable for the neighbors of the Vanderbilts and its nearby splendiferous Biltmore House. There’s lots to explore in this tiny town packed to the gills with Victorian b and b’s; with artists, and their respective studios and galleries; alternative healers and their original confabulations and potions and really creative and progressive restauranteurs, hoteliers, with cultural and outdoor attractions galore. For the outdoorsy type there are nearby wooded hiking trails, and even hot air balloon rides, to view its many summits against cobalt back drop, clearing up any confusion as to why this hamlet is and has also been monikered “The Land of the Sky.”

The king suite we stayed in on the third floor could easily accommodate a long term stay. A veritable designer showcase, with huge oversized bed, contemporary Edwardian chairs, couches, wooden tables, settees, sitting areas abound, a roomy bath, stacking washer and dryer, full blown top of the line ice-making and water spouting front, a full blown range, splendid rich textures and fabrics, rugs, throws, French terry cloth robes, plush hand wrapped slippers, cozy animal print throws together with two huge tvs with a gazillion movie possibilities.

The contemporary art, some museum quality, as well as classic and rustic pieces enough to fill a gallery, adorn the walls of our suite as well as the entire hotel, demonstrating the design genius that guided its decorator. Extra luxe amenities have been thought of like frosty beer goblets in the freezer, lots of drawers, individualized thermostats and water heater, original dark planked 100 year old flooring and plenty of complimentary snacks (pistachio nuts! Kind Bars!).

The lobby cooler offers beverages of all varieties including upscale spritzers and your oversized apartment has an array of complimentary gourmet Kruti, Nespresso, and thoughtful treats like a whole pound of the Dynamite Roasting Companies Daymaker Blend, such treats as chocolates and cookies are imaginatively reflected in the round and rectangular ornamented mirrors. There’s lots to behold throughout including a unexpected outdoor sculptural installation and an actual gallery, both tucked into private annexes.

The free parking that comes with your reservation is in itself worth its weight in gold and you can easily get by foot to most of the eye popping sartorial, remedial, bedazzled and culinary treasures that abound on Broadway, Charlotte, Streets and surrounding blocks …..Next door is its sister spa with hand crafted all natural beauty products C and Co, next door to that a buzzing of a new honey-based Bee Charmer and its delights founded by a couple escaping the metro-madness of Chitown, and right next door from there, we were told is “one of the best breakfasts in town” at Over Easy now sadly closed (which we later experienced for ourselves and can vouch enthusiastically for its constant and well deserved line.

In the other direction is pizza and salads at their most debauched at a really hip with epic Christmas tree and mid-century royal blue vinyl booths of Mellow Mushroom. Turn in another direction and down another block is the town’s now heroic native son noble-prizing-winning Tom Wolfe’s house museum. This author’s scandalous tomes Look Homeward Angel and You Can’t Go Home Again, put the once frontier town on the map in the 1930’s. Right across the street in the intimate New York La Strada Sunday’s and Mondays find hand made pastas, and during the rest of the week pastas including a scrumptious vegan option with peppers and “sausage.”

As soon as you enter the inn’s Broadway portal hovering below its oversized artfully done neon marquis, you enter a kind of storybook Easter egg alternate reality – a kind of hip and in- the-know metaphorical Bavarian box of chocolates. Its almost too good to be true petite circular lobby foyer in shades of browns, burnished golds and emanating faux art fireplaces makes you feel you’ve come to a sheltering sanctuary, created out of a perfect theatrical set for perhaps one of the most idyllic boutique hotels that could be conceived.

Fun and festive things to do:

The Arboretum Winter Festival of Lights, 10.4 miles from the hotel, is literally the best holiday deal in town! Bundle up to discover these miles of weaving paths of this wonderous lightscape wonderland. Crafts, hot chocolate, s’mores, virtual reality glasses, miniature model trains and hours of blustery bedazzlement for all ages. For tickets, call 828-665-2492.

The epic holiday Christmas Day, seafood and seasonal buffets will thrill your taste buds and its underground indoor/ outdoor dreamlike spa will transport you to a mermaid underwater escape at this historic masterpiece The Omni Grove Park Inn. Reservations required and sell out quickly for in-house guests only: 1-800-438-5800.

Gray Line Trolley Tours of Asheville are some of the best historic hop on/ hop off trolley tours we’ve had and include daytime history overviews and a holiday special holiday light and carolling moving Christmas Party trolley that sells out fast! Sign up for both. Celebrate the architectural showplace and fascinating literary history of this “New Age Mecca” by day and illuminated nighttime.1-828-251-8687.

Of course, the renowned and resplendent 250-room Biltmore House and it’s miraculous gardens, completed in 1895, just 2.4 miles from the hotel, attracts people to the region like moths to light. Its holiday daytime and night time candlelight and firelight tours and more can be reserved at 1-800-411-3812.

Take a 45-minute day trip to the shining award-winning Greenville, SC, with mini ice skating rink, museums, theater, Reedy River falls, dramatic Italian suspension bridge and its historic Westin Pointsett Hotel with Currier and Ives holiday decor and Christmas eve and day decadent 3-course southern feasts at remarkably reasonable rates. Limited seating: 1-864-421-9700.

Two night stays are recommended at the upscale Windsor Boutique Queen, King, Two Bed, or Executive Suites with separate kitchens, but call 1-844-494-6376 to see if they can accommodate a shorter stay.

The Windsor Boutique Hotel
36 Broadway Street
Asheville, NC 28801
1-844-494-6376

Travel writer/ blogger Cathy H. Burroughs loves to travel the world. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times international supplement and been commissioned by The Washington Post and People Magazine, appearing in The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Times, 17th South, Baltimore Magazine, Backstage Magazine, Points North, Atlanta Intown, Theater Week, Dance Magazine, High Performance, and many others.

She is a staff correspondent and travel/ adventure blogger for www.journeypod.com, one of the premier travel sites on-line, and previously covered arts, culture, travel and more as a staff member of BOLD Favor Magazine, Aquarius Magazine and others.