North Carolina, Ashville - Wednesday, July 17, 2013 - Biltmore House

We weren’t as sore as we thought we might be after all that square dancing last night.  Our destination today was Biltmore House and Gardens – someplace I’ve wanted to see since I was a little girl. 

The ride into the estate is impressive, I can’t imagine what it would have been like in a horse drawn carriage.

 

Taking pictures inside the house is prohibited and since it started raining (surprise!) I didn’t get very many taken outside.

 

I can’t even begin to describe the magnificence of the house.  The ingenuity of the architecture and inner workings of the building are astounding especially considering it was built in the 1890’s.  There are 43 bathrooms with running water, an indoor swimming pool with underwater lighting and call buttons in every room for the guests to use to summon whatever they want from the kitchen at any hour.  There is even an elevator, but the walk up the grand staircase is beautiful.   We bought a book – I know, tourist trap, but it is a very good book and it shows all of the rooms we visited today and the gardens we were unable to visit because of all the thunder and lightning going on when we got to that part of the tour.  We were able to drive through the gardens on the way out so even though I didn’t get to walk through them, I did see them.

We enjoyed lunch at the Stable Café, so named because it is in the former stables.  If you get the opportunity to eat there, definitely get the sweet corn and bacon fritters with green tomato jam.  Those things are heavenly!

After lunch we were waiting around for the storm to pass before heading back home so we decided to tour the house again.  You can get in as many times as you want on your day pass.  With the nasty weather most of the other tourists took off so we practically had the house to ourselves.  It was nice to roam without being packed in with a lot of other people.  My only disappointment was that we couldn’t get out on the immense porch and sit during the storm.

We did get lucky and caught the calm between two storms to get back home nice and dry.  Another helping of rhubarb crisp ought to finish off the day nicely.