Biltmore Castle: What a place to see!

Sunday, May 4, 2008:

Our adventure today was traveling to Biltmore Castle & Estate which is near Asheville, North Carolina...only about 1 1/2 hours from Greenville. Krissa had heard it's really worth seeing and she is so right; it is!

It is a huge estate that was built in 1889, taking 6 years to build the whole castle. And once you are inside, you can understand why it took so long! It is absolutely huge with four floors plus a basement.

We were able to tour the house, going from floor to floor, through the banquet hall, winter gardens, library with 23,000 books and huge circular winding staircase from floor to floor.

Elegantly decorated bedrooms with old fashioned bathrooms with wide hallways were upstairs. This castle had 43 bathrooms! Can you believe that huge of a house having 43 bathrooms?!?!

On the fourth floor was the servants quarters where the 40-80 servants who worked in the house/gardens lived. Then the basement had it's own recreation area with one of the oldest bowling alleys in the US and even it's own swimming pool. How cool is that?

There were three kitchens with pantry after pantry also in the basement. Everything in that castle was just huge and so elegantly decorated and furnished. I can't even imagine living there. You would get lost just being on one floor with so many doors taking you from one room to the next.

We ate lunch in what used to be the stable area and shopped around in the gift shop area and then started touring the cast and beautiful gardens.

There must be hundreds of workers who tend to the perfect garden areas. They were beautiful and everywhere. Every trail we walked there were trees, plants and flowering bushes. You could walk around for hours and hours and never see the same thing. There was even a pond area with a waterfall and much more!

The walking around was exhausting, but so beautiful to see God's creation and so many colors of it. And the weather was perfect for walking around. Mom would have absolutely loved, yes just loved walking through the gardens. She loved to walk and hike and then to have all the beautifully arranged flowers along the trail would have been perfect for her.

It was also a perfect place for taking pictures as you can see when you scroll down!! :)

We headed back to Greenville and ended the evening by eating ice cream at TCBY. We just love TCBY yogurt and our one store we used to have in Dodge is no longer there. So it was a real treat to eat some of that yummy, cold, melt-in-your-mouth stuff!

Krissa and Jena met up with one of Krissa's friends living in Greenville this evening and spent some time together. Dad and I stayed at the hotel, packing up stuff and getting ready to leave in the morning. A wonderful end to a wonderful weekend!

You can see more photos from our trip here....

Our first peek at Biltmore Castle - and castle...yes it is!

Krissa was having fun with the camera!

Right inside the front doors of the castle

There were beautiful bushes, trees and gardens surrounding the castle!

I love this pic of Kris!!

my two wonderful sisters!

tall trees!!

Jena looking at the China Fur...yep, that's what it's called!