This has become somewhat of a tradition - we pick a place, mostly in warmer months - and try to fill 24 hours with something to do there. It’s usually close to home, somewhere where we could easily just go for the day, but we allow it more time, on purpose, so as not to be rushed and to give it some space. When you’re not rushed by a schedule you can take as little or as much time as you need to really savor a place, a food, an experience.
Great message for a 24-hour getaway motto
This weekend the destination was Winston Salem, one of the three cities that make up the Southern North Carolina metropolitan region known as The Triad. I lived in another major city of the same area called Greensboro for 12 years. Winston Salem was always “too far” to really go explore, although it was closer to Greensboro then than it is to my home now, that I moved 50 miles East (in the opposite direction) from Greensboro.
But browsing through a book a former coworker from The Greensboro News & Record wrote about Winston Salem (or “Winston” for short) documenting the 100 Things to Do in Winston Salem Before You Die, we found the inspiration to make this city the 24 hour adventure this year.
The city was clothed in fog and a dense and settled-in rain. It's the time of the year when streets are rich with blooms, from wild flowers and day lillies, to azaleas and every single magnolia tree are all in bloom.
We started at the historic Reynolda House, a renowned country estate that was founded by the tobacco tycoon R.J.Reynolds and his wife, Katherine, around 1926. The house is currently closed for renovations but the adjacent art museum is open. It was one of the most interesting museums I have ever visited, and a testament that you can find meaning and art and inspiration anywhere, not just in the most famous places. The interpretative and “layered looking” approach inspires as well as educates the visitor on how to look at art and how to find deeper meaning. Some pieces like Charles Burchfield’s The Woodpecker, Nam June Palk’s Leonardo Da Vinci or Louise Nevelson’s Full Moon will haunt me for a while. Long after I will have forgotten the artists’ names. The history of the Reynolda House is also incredibly well-put together, giving it an easy to understand but complete account of the Reynolds family, pioneers in an industry but also inspirations in how they treated their people.
The Reynolda House Museum and grounds
We drove around Reynolda Village, the former quarters of their staff and utility buildings, and now a lively shopping and restaurant district. The rain was thick when we left the museum so the streets were empty and the people from the few cars parked in the many parking lots around the property were indoors, sipping hot coffees and browsing books at The Bookstore. We also visited the Reynolda Conservatory which was a neatly put together greenhouse with exotic and native plants.
Inside the Reynolda Conservatory
To get a break from the total downpour outside, we made a lingering stop at the Reynolda Village Cafe & Crepe Shop. This was easily the highlight of the trip for me. They accommodated my vegan needs and everything we had, from the decaf latte to the vegan and berry or the nutella crepes was simply delicious. An army of what looked like college kids ran the place and I felt like we have not gotten service as good as that in a really long time.
The Reynolda Village Cafe & Crepe Shop
Sit at the bar for a full experience
We tried to visit their next-door neighbor, The Graylyn Estate next, but they seemed to be closed for a private wedding. The grounds were even more impressive than The Reynolda House, so we promised to be back.
The Graylyn Estate House and entrance
We then headed downtown, closer to our hotel. We stopped at the Milton Rhodes Center for Arts, a multi-purpose cultural campus for Winston Salem Arts. We only had 30 minutes before they closed, so we had to move fast, but it was enough time to love the originality and creativity of the arts made by the students of the Sawtooth School, an on-site art school. I was shocked at the versatility and imagination and creativity of these students who, allegedly, were just starting out on their art journeys. The building is an old former Hanes hosiery mill built in 1910 joined to an adjoining, vacated AC Delco auto-repair garage. I personally love when we humans learn to repurpose what is already here, rather than tear it down and build some other new thing which feels wasteful.
The lobby at Milton Rhodes Center for the Arts
We then checked into our hotel, The Cardinal, a Kimpton Hotel. Having stayed at Kimpton Hotels before, we love their preference to make historic buildings a showpiece in a cozy and welcoming atmosphere. Their welcome cocktails and good-bye coffee bars seem to be their signature and it adds a familiar, welcoming gesture to the whole experience.
The Cardinal Hotel in the former R.J. Reynolds office building
Elevators inside The Cardinal hotel
We had dinner a couple of blocks up the street at Jeffrey Adams On Fourth, a modern American restaurant that prides itself for bringing the local ingredients to an upscale plate. I wish I could say go and try their blackberry bbq salmon dish which was outstanding, but it was the special that night so that might not be available all the time.
The salmon special at Jeffrey Adams on Fourth: grilled salmon, blackberry bbq glaze, asparagus, mashed potatoes, scallops and pickled collards garnish
We had after-dinner cocktails at our own hotel bar which was hopping with guests and very lively for a Saturday night.
The next day, we started with breakfast at The Katherine, the French restaurant at our hotel. The Cardinal Continental breakfast of croissant, fresh fruit and apricot preserves was light and refreshing.
The Cardinal Continental at The Katherine
We noticed a break in the rainy weather which was originally forecasted throughout the weekend, so we made plans to venture out on more outdoorsy landmarks. We stopped briefly to take some shots at the Mickey Coffee Pot - a 7 ft, 11,840 gallon capacity tin coffee pot on Brookstown Avenue. It is said that the Mickey brothers, Julius and Samuel, built it in 1858 to promote their tin business at the time.
The Mickey Coffee Pot
Afterwards, we drove a ways to The Grant Park Quarry. Vulcan Materials Company mined rock out of the quarry for the first half of the 20th century and after the big hole filled up with ground water, they donated the area to the City of Winston Salem. The tall rocky walls around the almost perfectly round lake create a majestic and dramatic drop. It is now a peaceful retreat where you can take in the lake and its birds, while admiring, on clear days, the city skyline, far away in the horizon.
We made our way back to Downtown to stop for a short while at the Bookmarks bookstore - one of the more interesting indie, independent bookstores I have seen in a while. And after that, we stopped at Foothills Brewery next door for a small snack - some fried pickles (the garlic ranch dipping sauce is incredible!) and to taste a sampling flight of their beers. I have never absolutely loved all beers in a flight in any other brewery I have visited before. But I did at The Foothills! The pours were generous and I did not finish all of the samples, as otherwise, I would have needed a bed to sober up before heading back on the road and as great as they were, they did not provide accommodation.
The Bookmarks bookstore, off of a back alley - like a well-kept secret
The getaway was a nice stop in our otherwise hectic life of moving from one to-do item to the next. My favorite stop was the Crepe Shop in Reynolda Village, and my husband’s was the Reynolda art museum. But all the stops were unique highlights in a packed 24 hour visit.
The book that started it all...
We promised ourselves to be back. We want to dive more into the architecture of the city - from what we easily saw it was diverse and full of history, a nice display of various styles that reflect the rich past dating as far back as the birth of this nation, visit both Reynolda and Graylyn houses, and take in more of the cuisine of which we only sampled briefly this time around, but which did not disappoint.
I read about people dreaming of going some place and laying out by the pool, looking at the ocean while some tanned pool boy supplies the drinks to get away and relax, but I know I am not one of those people. I love to see, to learn, to experience and to find beauty, culture, or just another way of looking at the world on my trips. As long as health, time, and money will allow me, I will take to the road in search for the next lesson. Because that is all that these getaways are - lessons on life, people-ness, history, art, and everything that connects them.
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