Affordable Travel

If you are traveling across the old and elegant state of Virginia, where the first president of the United States lived with his wife Martha, and where now tourists flock to the state that came up with the sexiest tourist slogan in America, you can kick back with class. The Martha Washington Inn in Abingdon, Virginia - a gorgeous town in the state known by the motto “Virginia is for Lovers” - is a fitting place for lovers, honeymooners, or anyone who appreciates the finer things in life and wants to enjoy them in a four star hotel. The Inn is on Main Street, and is a stately and treasured Virginia historical landmark, within the historic district of Abingdon, directly across from the Barter Theatre. With attention to detail and amenities galore, combined with highly professional personal service, the Inn offers old world charm in a 21st century setting - with great infrastructure to handle large corporate conventions, and small and intimate settings to allow you to get away from it all. The 6,000 square foot mansion has nearly 100 suites and rooms, two fabulous restaurants, and is a great place to book a large formal wedding or a small and casual party before or after taking in the show across the street at the old Barter. Enjoy the spiraling and winding wide staircase, the vaulted ceilings dripping with chandeliers, and the wide, Southern style colonial porches, where you can count fireflies in the springtime or snowflakes in the winter. Valet parking service is available, and members of travel awards programs and clubs like the AAA club are welcome and are entitled to special discounts when available.

Not only is the Chelsea a hotel, but it is and has been in the past a full time residence for artists, musicians, and writers in the Chelsea neighborhood NYC. In fact, although it operates as a hotel and you can stay there, it mostly caters to people who live there all the time. There is a whole community going on within the walls of this old hotel, and if you stay there for a few days you will begin to observe the quirky rhythms of this funky dwelling. It was here that Canadian poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen wrote about his affair with Janis Joplin. Here is the hotel, opened in the late 1800s, where rock and roll rumors have it that Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols punk band stabbed to death his girlfriend. Here Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and countless other musicians stayed. Patti Smith and Allen Ginsberg, and probably fellow poet Jack Kerouac, as well as writer Charles Bukowski, all spent hours drinking and philosophizing within the famed hotel. When the Blue Rags band signed to the nearly defunct Sub Pop Label, which was best known for signing Nirvana, they visited the Chelsea while recording their record in NYC. “Oh yeah, that place was a trip” commented the drummer, with a grin. “You could spend a night there and wind up living there for the rest of your life.” Whether you plan to stay a day or a lifetime, visit the Chelsea and enjoy adding your own name to the long list of Bohemians, artists, writers, and rockers who have slept there before you.

If you go south from western NC into SC, en route to Greenville, SC, you might encounter a crossroads town with a very interesting name. Traveler’s Rest, South Carolina was established in the late 1800s as a place for people going back and forth across the mountains to stop and spend the night. The first businesses there to cater to travelers were inns that served meals and drinks. Soon the place became a popular stopping spot for the drovers who herded livestock through the area, as they tried to get chickens, pigs, cattle, horses, sheep, and other commodities to markets in other towns.

Eventually the little settlement grew into a full-fledged town, and the name Traveler’s Rest endured. Nowadays you can still travel through and get some rest at one of the local motels, most of which are rather simple and border on being somewhat seedy. There are a few eating places there, most notably the little roadside diners that specialize in barbecue, and the rest of the town is pretty much dedicated to a hodge podge of farming, light industry, and Mom and Pop businesses to serve the little community of Traveler’s Rest.

One thing that’s fun to do if you find yourself on the road near there is to stop for a meal or for the night in Traveler’s Rest and buy postcards to send to your friends. Tourists enjoy sending picture postcards, and everyone appreciates a message written from a place named Traveler’s Rest, from a loved one who is away from home.

In Asheville, NC, the historic Grove Park Inn & Spa is one of the premier places to stay. The enterprise began as an inn, some 100 or more years ago, and celebrities, heads of state, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary people have stayed there over the years, including many movie stars and members of royal families. The inn became well known for its lobby or great room, because it has a fireplace so big that a man can stand up and walk around inside it. The inn recently added a world class health spa, complete with waterfalls and whirlpool bathing facilities, so you can relax in the underground spa and be pampered to your heart’s content. The Spa includes services like massage, facials, hair cuts, and also has a swimming pool where you can sit in the open air looking out over distant mountain ranges, and enjoy a bottle of champagne.

The inn is a full resort, with golf, tennis, hiking, and other recreational activities available. There is a ballroom for dancing, a terrace bar for watching the sunset while sipping a mint julep drink, and there are many conference rooms for holding corporate meetings, wedding receptions, art exhibits, and the like. You can book rooms or suites, and although the prices are steep, the amenities are numerous. If you stay in the inn, you can also take advantage of discounted rates at the health spa. Or if you are staying elsewhere, you can book a day for yourself at the spa, as an outside guest, for about $150.