Our Arts & Crafts City Makes Fodor's Top 21 Worldwide

We have long considered it one of the Top Five Arts & Crafts destinations (you name the other four), but now Fodor’s has elevated Asheville to another honor: Top 21 Places In the World To Visit in 2011.

While they forgot to mention this month’s 24th annual Arts & Crafts Conference at the historic Grove Park Inn, the editors at Fodor’s did recommend that you “get a taste of Asheville while it still feels local and before it goes global. On the edge of the alluring Smoky Mountains, the food and drink scene of the recently dubbed "Beer City USA" is the perfect compliment to the scenery. You'll find over 30 galleries and 20 music venues devoted to everything from folk pieces to modern mash-ups.”

Who else made the list?

Only three places in the United States (Oregon’s Willamette Valley, Los Angeles and New York), plus Stratford-on-Avon, Stockholm, Naples, Tokyo, Toronto and a few others.

If Asheville is on your Top 21 list, at last report there were still a few rooms available at the Grove Park Inn, as well as rooms at our sister hotel, the Asheville Renaissance. It’s a few dollars less expensive and we run a free shuttle bus between it and the Grove Park Inn. In addition, the Grove Park Inn area is awash with delightful Bed & Breakfast inns in sprawling Arts & Crafts and late Victorian houses in historic neighborhoods. For a listing, plus websites, go to www.Arts-CraftsConference.com and check out the Lodging section.

If you have already registered for the conference, but have not received the 16-page Pre-Conference Packet of information, email us today. And if you have not returned your important Name Badge form, this is the time to do so.

With 130 of the country’s finest Arts & Crafts antiques dealers, artists, publishers, authors, editors and artisans preparing to greet you, this is the place to be the third weekend in February. (Besides, what else could you be doing in February?)

And for those of you now snow-weary, the last of our snow melted this past weekend, as our temperatures returned to our normal winter highs in the mid-fifties.

Come to Asheville, celebrate with your Arts & Crafts friends and enjoy a taste of early spring!

www.Arts-CraftsConference.com