Sorry for the lack of a post yesterday, but, as hard as it is to believe, I stayed out until 12:30 am. Oddly, I didn’t feel like blogging when I got back to the hotel.

We left Charleston yesterday morning and had an uneventful four-hour drive back to Asheville. We had all wanted to see the Biltmore estate, which is the largest private home in the United States, built by the Vanderbilts back in 1890. Meredith and I had been in the summer several years ago, but a friend had told us the house was an amazing thing to see at Christmas. Plus, Dubbs had never seen it before, and we NEVER get to introduce the well-traveled Dubbs to anything new.

We hadn’t seen the Biltmore on the first leg of the vacation because while I was e-mailing back and forth with the guest services about what kind of ticket we needed, they sold out for our days. At that point, Dubbs leapt into action, finding there were a few tickets left for a 10:45 pm admission to the house, but only on Wednesday the 29th. So we extended the vacation by one day to fit the tour in, with the added bonus of turning a twelve-hour driving day (from Charleston) into a nine-and-a-half-hour day (from Asheville, which took us a little farther west than we needed to go).

We arrived to see the estate grounds during the day, getting to the house, after driving the two-and-a-half-mile driveway, around 1:00. The driveway was deliberately designed to be long and winding, in order to have guests to the house enjoy the surrounding nature. It used to take forty-five minutes to get to the house. Our hotel is a seven-minute drive from the entrance, but it took us twenty-five minutes to get home from the house. It’s a large estate.

In a fit of madness, Dubbs asked me what we should see, and I told her the pond was pretty. So we took off for the pond and boathouse, heading downhill for the water I had seen from the house. Although Mer and I had been here a few years back, the path did not look familiar to me, but I chalked that up to the assumption that we had taken a different way. Or not. When we got to the “pond,” it turned out to be the “lagoon.” And not so pretty as the pond. Ooops. So much for asking me what we should see. Still, it got me and Meredith to a place we hadn’t seen.

After hiking the long and uphill hike back to the house, we toured two of the gardens. They are a little underwhelming in late December, but a few things were still in bloom. We chatted with a gardener who said that the Biltmore could employ as many as forty-five gardeners, but they never had that many since the Asheville area cost of living was so high; people couldn’t afford to live locally and work as a gardener.

We did get to see a lot of blooming plants in the greenhouses, and some were very pretty. Meredith likes plants with leaves that have two or more colors, and there were several varieties of that, along with cacti, ferns, flowering trees, and more. The greenhouses are huge, and so we spent a fair amount of time there.

We took a quick detour to the gift shop; Dubbs had promised to pick something up for a mutual friend. By now, it was about 4:00, so we went to check into the hotel via the circuitous route of getting off the estate. Since we knew we had a late night coming up, Dubbs and I took naps while Meredith graded.

We got back to the house about 10:15, and got into the house right on time at 10:45. We grabbed an audio tour recording, and spent a happy touring time in the house, going through about thirty of the 260 rooms of the house. We got to see the main dining room, with the seven-story roof above, where multi-course meals were served to guests, with the entire dining experience lasting two hours, while the guests were dressed in evening attire (not sweats, as we might prefer by today’s standards!).

We saw the more intimate breakfast/lunch room, the main atrium, which houses an indoor garden, the grand staircase, Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt’s bedrooms, some of the thirty guest bedrooms, the billiard room, the smoking room, the guest lounge area, the bowling alley in the basement, the indoor swimming pool (now dry since it leaks), the kitchen areas, and some of the plain (but comfortable-looking) servants’ quarters. All of the main upstairs rooms were decorated with Christmas trees, including a huge one in the dining room. All the fireplaces had (gas) fires burning, and despite the expanse of the house, most of the rooms felt intimate. It is a grand place indeed.

That ended the official touring of the trip, and we walked back to the car in the first real rain we’ve had on the trip. That was an excellent way to be reminded of how blessed we were to have sunny days and, with the exception of the first day, warm temperatures. Both Asheville and Charleston acquitted themselves very well. But I am ready to get back to my own castle now, and see my kitties, friends, and relations.