The Biltmore Estate- Asheville NC

Today, in honor of Mother’s Day, I wanted to talk about one of my most recent trips with one of my favorite travel buddies- my mother of course!  I’ve been lucky enough to have traveled several times with my mom.  We’ve done trips to NYC to have a weekend full of musicals and the year I lived in France my mom and my auntie spent a week in Italy together.  My mom also came to France to visit me while I was doing a semester abroad.

 One of my favorite trips of all time is when my mom and I took a three-week trip to Iceland, England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland.

 

So while it wasn’t as far away or as long a trip as some of our others, I loved our day-trip that we recently took to Asheville, NC to visit the Biltmore Estate.

The Biltmore was built between 1889 and 1895 by George Washington Vanderbilt, great-great-grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt who started the family fortune through railroads.  The Biltmore estate is the largest privately-owned house in the United States, having 250 bedrooms, and is still owned by descendants of the family.

This was my first visit to the estate, and when I learned the price ($59) I was very hesitant to go, but I have to tell you- it was worth it.  Helpful side note- if you plan your trip more in advance than we did you can save $12 from your ticket by buying at least a week in advance online (http://www.biltmore.com/) .  The ticket price includes a self-guided tour through the house, the grounds and also the near-by Antler Hill Village & Winery, where you can visit a farm, shops, restaurants and a winery. 

We arrived at 9:30 and immediately went into the house.  It was packed and I felt nervous that it would take us forever to get through the rooms, but as the tour continued the crowds dissipated a bit.  There are no pictures allowed inside the house, but I did buy postcards afterwards which included pics of some of the rooms we saw.  You can purchase an audio-guide, but we were given a booklet that gave pretty good descriptions of all the rooms.

  

 

 And there was a photographer inside taking pictures of the guests and mom and I snagged this cute pic.  You had to pay for the picture, but how could we resist?

Throughout my tours of Europe and even in the States, I’ve taken tours of many châteaux and estates, but the Biltmore really did impress me because of the amount of rooms that we were able to tour.  From the banquet hall to the library with it’s massive amounts of books that George collected, both located on the ground floor.  On the upper floors you could visit some of the bedrooms used by the family and also the guest rooms.  On the lower floors were the servant quarters, kitchen even a pool and bowling alley.  The servant’s rooms were pretty great compared to other estates, each worker getting a private room with a window!  One of the things that mom and I especially loved during this trip was that there was a special Downton Abbey exhibit, where you could see some of the outfits worn on the shown, and they were displayed in the rooms where they would typically have been worn.

After touring the interior of the home for about 1.5 hours it was time to explore the grounds. As you could see from the map above, the grounds are massive, just coming in to park you had to drive about 3 miles just from the entrance to the parking lot.  Even just walking around the exterior of the house was breathe-taking, check out the gargoyles and the staircase.

Here are the Italian garden:

The land surrounding the Biltmore estate

 

 

The gardens of the Biltmore estate were so beautiful. My mom is a gardening enthusiast (I’m trying to learn everything I can from her) and she especially loved the gardens.  Check out all these pictures of the gardens and the beautiful flowers.

 

 

Mom taking a sit in the conservatory

Past the flower gardens there are rose gardens (not in season while we were there) and then there are spring gardens and azalea gardens.

 

Further away there is a bass pond and boat house.

 

 

 

 

We spent several hours walking through the gardens and there was still more to see, but our stomachs were rumbling so we left the house and the gardens to drive to the Antler Hill Village.

 

At Antler Hill there are two restaurants, The Bistro and Cedric’s Tavern.  The tavern is named after the family pet, and though we had to wait about a hour to be seated and get our food it did not disappoint.  Mom had the fish and chips and I got the vegetable and whole grain farro risotto- fava beans, cauliflower, tomatoes…it was delicious!

 

After our “lunner” we walked to the farm and the barn.  At the barn you can visit a smith and there are also a lot of antique farm equipment; and, there are animals that you can pet and feed at the farm

We finished off our visit by touring the winery.  You can choose not to do the tour and go straight for the tasting, but I can never resist a tour so we did the whole shebang.  The winery is located in the orignal dairy that was on the grounds, so we were guided around the dairy/ winery.

 

During this tour we also saw the 1913 Stevens-Duryea Model “C-Six” seven-passenger car that was driven by Edith Stuyvesant Dresser Vanderbilt, the wife of George Vanderbilt.  It is believed to be one of only ten such cars in existense today. 

After the tour was over we were given a tasting of one of the reserve selections of wine, and then we were able to go to the tasting room and have more tastings of Biltmore wines.  There were over 20 selections, and we were told we could taste one- or taste them all (for free)!  The tasting room is quite large, with several bars, so dozens of people can taste at once, though there are no chairs so you can’t get too comfortable.  My non-drinking mom was given grape juice, and I didn’t want to be a  greedy wine-pig so I didn’t taste them all, I stuck to just the reds.

And that completed our day at the Biltmore estate.  So while not a cheap day, I found that it was very worth it.  There is an inn to stay overnight, and they’re building another lodge.  You can go horseback riding, kayaking, rent bicycles or bring your dog to walk around the grounds so there were lots of options for visitors It was so beautiful and very worth a visit- and Catching Katie approved!