Les Jones

Fifth Wedding Anniversary Trip to Jonesborough, TN

Sunday, August 17th, 2008 | Best Of, East Tennessee |

Saturday was our fifth wedding anniversary. (Happy anniversary, babe.) It was Saturday five years before that we got married in Jonesborough, the oldest city in Tennessee. We got married at Mill Spring Park and had the reception across the street at The Wedding Loft, a gorgeous 19th century building where the staff took care of all of the wedding arrangements. Highly recommended.

We reserved all of the rooms the Eureka Inn for our friends and family. After the wedding and reception we had a party on the second story porch. The wedding was fun but stressful for Melissa and me - with that behind us the party on the porch with our friends was by far the best part of our wedding day.

We stayed next door at the Blair-Moore House, a bed and breakfast that dates to the early 1800s. Their Web page lists accolades for their breakfast from Southern Living and Inn Traveler and they’re well-deserved. Our breakfast this morning was a plate of fresh fruit (champagne grapes, strawberries, diced mango, and peach drizzled with French honey), smoked ham, egg frittata with homegrown Roma tomatoes and fresh basil, stuffed French toast with choice of maple syrup or cherry syrup, blueberry-coconut muffins, bacon, fresh mango-papaya-orange juice, and coffee. Absolutely delicious.

The upstairs Western-Native American Room where I stayed the night before the wedding has a second story balcony overlooking the street. The lower Victorian suite where Melissa and I stayed after our wedding and for our anniversary has a street level porch off of the parlor. The Victorian Room upstairs has a rear-facing porch overlooking the garden at the rear:

Cost for these rooms isn’t much more than you’d pay at a good chain hotel (between $125 and $160 per night) and includes that amazing breakfast, the host’s wonderful hospitality, and conversation with other guests over breakfast. At those prices why stay at a boring old hotel?

More pictures after the jump.

We got married at the gazebo in little park across the street from the church below. Its steeple is in the background of some of the wedding photos.

I’ve heard that the Pastor’s Table is a great restaurant, but it’s never been open when we were in town.

Jonesborough is in Washington County. I’m from Blount County, which is where we live, and that’s where we got our marriage license. In a curious case of synchronicity, both counties have courthouses built on the same plans.

We filled out our marriage license paperwork in Blount and wandered around the courthouse waiting for the confirmation to come back from Nashville. The wait was extended by the fact that the power had gone out. That was bad news as far as we were concerned. We were going to Manhattan for our honeymoon, and just a few days before our wedding New York City had suffered an enormous blackout. We were worried we’d have to have to cancel our honeymoon plans. (Luckily, power was restored by the time we got to New York, though some buildings, like the Empire State Building, were without power for several days after we arrived.)

Anyway, while we were wandering the Blount County courthouse we found a display about the building’s history. The current courthouse just off of downtown was built after the previous two downtown courthouses were destroyed by fire. The new design won a national award. Shortly after that the Washington County courthouse burned, and they asked Blount if they could re-use their design, which is why the two courthouses are so similar.

Jonesborough is best known for its storytelling festival the first weekend of October. Since our last visit the storytelling center has purchased the adjacent Hatcher Inn and begun restoration. It now has a new coat of paint and new landscaping, and part of it is being used for office space.

One hopes it will re-open one day as an inn. In its heyday the guests included all three of the Tennesseans who were also presidents - Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, and James Polk. Jackson once had a law office in Jonesborough and fought a duel on the outskirts of town. Johnson was from nearby Greeneville, where his homeplace is preserved and there is a statue in his honor.

Foodwise, we like the Main Street Cafe for lunch and the Bistro for dinner. Jonesborough is one of those old mountain towns (like Black Mountain, Hendersonville, Waynesville and Sylva in North Carolina) with fare far in excess of what you’d expect for such a remote location.

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