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Education 2023: Asheville Rooftop Bar Tours Combine City History with Views and Drinks

Kaye Bentley. Photo courtesy of Asheville Rooftop Bar Tours

Asheville Rooftop Bar Tours are more than just drinking tours with panoramic rooftop views. Owner Kaye Bentley has a background in education, which has shaped the tours to focus on Asheville’s history. One of Bentley’s main goals with her business is for guests to come away with a better understanding of the city of Asheville and feeling more connected to it.

In researching the tours, Bentley discovered that two hotels used to stand in the current location of the AC Hotel downtown: The Buck Hotel, dating back to 1825, and The Langren Hotel, built in 1912. Coincidentally, The Langren boasted a roof garden where guests would drink and dance, not unlike the AC Hotel’s rooftop space. “On the tour, we share photos of each hotel including vintage postcards of The Langren, and the rooftop view their hotel guests enjoyed,” says Bentley. “The Langren Hotel’s roof garden menu from 1917 that we share on the tour is always a favorite of our guests.”

Sonya Laws, a history teacher, is a tour guide with Asheville Rooftop Bar Tours. “I love that I get to work on a tour that is so pretty and scenic, and I love having an outlet with which to share local history, which I can be kind of obsessive about,” she says. “The cocktails are excellent, but the real treat of the tour is the beauty of the mountains and the eclectic nature of the region’s history.”

For information, visit AshevilleRooftopBarTours.com.

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