Mountains, Flowers and a Huge House

Saturday, April 24

The view over the southern Blue Ridge from our suite window is magnificent. We were upgraded, provided with chocolates and champagne, and then dined on local rabbit and lobster for the mains, preceded by soft shell crabs, local chevre, and risotto. Washed down with a very good Biltmore estate pinot noir made with Russian River grapes. We also tasted their Biltmore Chardonnay, from North Carolina grapes, and a reserve sauvignon blanc.

It was a fitting dinner to a day full of activity. We left Charlotte about 10:30 with goodbyes to our friend, then on to Asheville. We stopped along the way at the Lake James Cellars Winery and tasted some North Carolina wines. We bought a shiraz, though most of the wines were ordinary. We did not like their chambourcin, nor their pinot.

We lunched at a mediocre noodle house on Pack Square in downtown Asheville, which is a pretty enough city of hills, but more a university town than a bit emporium. Then to the Biltmore.

This place is special. Not only is it the home of a branch of the robber baron Vanderbilts, but it surrounded by gardens designed for Olmstead and ablaze with tulips and azaleas at the moment. No wonder the place is famous for its gardens. We visit the house today.
Very strangely we were walking along one of the walks taking pictures when a guy in an HRC hat sid he'd take our picture. Turns out he is an Episcopal priest and a good friend of our friend at Virginia Theological Seminary! Small world.

On Saturday, after a huge breakfast, we headed off to the biggest house in the entire country, opened by George Vanderbilt, younger brother to Cornelius and William Vanderbilt, of Breakers and Marble House fame in Newport, respectively. His house beat his brothers. It's far bigger and at one time he owned land in these here hills that was larger than Rhode Island, or Luxembourg!

We took the behind the scenes tour first which showed us how the house was electrified in 1895 when it was built with DC generators, huge steam boilers for heat, and telephones for the staff but not for the guests or owners! Great fun moseying around the coal stokers' work rooms. Then we took the self-guided audio tour of the whole house, over two hours but worth every minute. A superb audio program describing every major room and what life was like in it. The views from the bedrooms are wonderful though the poor bachelor men got stuck in cramped quarters away from the more elegant rooms for the married guests. We had a good long look at the servants quarters and the kitchens including refrigerators from the 1890s. No air conditioning, though and the house was said to be both too warm in the summer and too cold in the winter! But with over 200 rooms,many of them palatial, it would be hard to heat anyway.

We lunched on the estate grounds, lamb and zucchini pizza and a brown ale. I am sleepy!

A fine dinner expected tonight then off to the Great Smokes, in the pouring rain tomorrow.