September 4th, 2011
smart
Stave off the holiday shopping blues with an easy two-hour drive to Chattanooga, where you can check several names off your list with items from the city’s many attractions and maybe even visit a museum or two while you’re there. The Bluff View Art District, a charming area on limestone bluffs above the Tennessee River, is a must-stop for art lovers. Gift shops at the Hunter Museum of American Art and the Houston Decorative Arts Museum are stocked with small treasures and more precious things you’ll want for special friends and for yourself. The River Gallery, across from the museums, represents some of the Southeast’s finest artists, as well as crafters from other parts of the country. Read more…
Incoming search :
Cradled in the craggy ridges of Western North Carolina, this easygoing mountain town — whose apt symbol is a rocking chair — is like a lullaby. Make that lullabuy. Sooner or later, it seems, everybody who comes here goes shopping. On a recent sultry Friday afternoon, folks shuffled in and out of the blessed air-conditioned comfort of the 50-plus shops that line the compact downtown. Many were in this community they call “the front porch of North Carolina” to pick up kids from the dozens of summer camps in the area. Read more…
Incoming search :
This carefree attitude is the small town appeal, and success, of the village of Stone Mountain, which shares its name with that huge hunk of carved granite. People not only walk the brick sidewalks, they actually greet one another by name. And if you’re a tourist, you are immediately drawn into conversation with a friendly “where y’all from?” Read more…
Incoming search :
It’s hard to believe this upscale shop, filled with fringed lamps, beaded satchels and satin pillows, is only about 30 minutes from either Destin to the west or Panama City to the east. Like the other quaint boutiques and funky galleries that flank Scenic 30-A, a two- lane, 20-mile asphalt ribbon that runs beside a stretch of the sugary “Beaches of South Walton,” it seems thousands of miles removed from the tacky T-shirt shops that crowd more commercialized beach burgs. Read more…
Incoming search :
A warm, salty breeze is wafting over the ocean, and swimsuit-clad sun seekers have invaded Amelia Island’s 13 miles of beach, a six- hour drive south of Atlanta. But on the isle’s north end, where the town of Fernandina Beach overlooks the steel-blue waters of the Amelia River, Bobbi Barringer of Rochester, N.Y., is already thinking about Christmas. Read more…
Incoming search :