The Biltmore

First stop in Asheville was at the Biltmore - George Vanderbilt's summer home and the largest private residence in the United States. Normally, visiting old houses is not our cup of tea but we talked to a lot of people who had been to the Biltmore and were universally told that it was well worth the time and money to visit the Biltmore. So we did.

Our first stop was the house. It's an impressive structure. You can't take pictures inside the residence so we don't have any of the interior. I can tell you that it's nice but not my cup of tea. First, it was way too crowded. Second, we didn't pay the extra $10 each to get the headphones for the audio tour but the vast majority of people around us did. So we were trying to just see everything while 80% of the other people were walking around like zombies staring at all kinds of random things around us. When people have headphones on, they are disconnected from anything around them so we got run into a lot and had people just stop right in front of us time and time again. Needless to say, we were glad to get out of there and out in the open.

The view from the house, however, was incredible.

After we finished our tour of the house, we walked around the gardens. They were amazing! While we didn't really appreciate the inside of the house, the gardens and the grounds more than made up for everything.

Kirk discovered a new favorite flower. If anyone can identify it for us, I'll come up with some good prize for you (you'll have to take my word for it).

This was the Conservatory (a big greenhouse). Inside, there was a hothouse, a cool house, and an orchid room. Behind here, there was a little stand serving up fruity frozen drinks. We had two pina colada's and they were awesome.

Sam got to play on the nice green grass. She loved crawling around in it!

We told Sam that it was time to go and we got this reaction. What? What's up with that?

Seriously though, this is Sam's new favorite gesture. We're not sure what (if anything) it means but it's awfully cute.

We walked down to Bass Lake - about 1/2 mile from the house. Man you should have heard most of the tourists complaining about that walk. You can tell that most of them don't get up off of the couch that often :) Here's the Lake. There were some huge freakin fish and turtles in here. Don't you know people would have loved to fish there!

On the way back up to the house (and our car), we took a hiking path that was a little longer and out of the way. The benefit of it was that we didn't see anyone on the trail. And there were a few incredible bamboo patches. Sam climbed on it and wouldn't let go!

Also on the grounds of the Biltmore are a winery and a working farm. We took Sam down to the farm and went to the petting zoo. She's a little young to really interact much with most of the animals but she was mixed between interested and terrified.

Our final stop of the day was at the Vineyard. They offer tours and free tastings but by that time we had been at the Biltmore for nearly six hours and the last thing we wanted to do was stand in another line and be surrounded by a lot of people. So we went straight into the gift shop and just bought a bunch of wine rather than wait in line and taste them. We are now the proud owners of four bottles of Biltmore wine. It was a good visit.