The Biltmore

For years my sister has been telling me about the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.  A friend came to visit from California and since visiting the Biltmore was on her bucket list, we had to go.  My sister met us there since it's only a few hours from her house.

The Biltmore has 250 rooms - a mere 135,000 square feet or 4 acres!  It's the largest privately-owned home in the United States.  The Vanderbilt family has owned the home ever since George Washington Vanderbilt II built it between 1889-1895. 

The amazing thing about this house is that the rooms are fully furnished and decorated just as they were when the family lived there.  The family spares no cost when it comes to restoring fabrics and wallpapers.  A weaver in France still had the same cards (patterns) that had been used to weave custom fabrics decades earlier and they were able to reproduce some of the original fabrics with those cards.

My favorite room was the atrium.  In the first picture (above) you can see its conical glass roof to the right of the front door.  It's an amazing sight as you enter the house.  It's like a rainforest with a tiled floor and smattering of paired chairs for conversation.  Here's a list of some of the other features of the house:

• 43 bathrooms, in a time when indoor plumbing was almost non-existent
• 65 fireplaces
• 3 kitchens
• 34 bedrooms
• a grand banquet hall
• a huge two-story library with thousands of books
• a two-lane bowling alley, the pins had to be set manually
• an indoor swimming pool

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside so I guess you'll have to take a tour if you want to see the inside, or google it - there are lots of bootleg photos out there.  The grounds were immense and gorgeous.  This is a picture of the conservatory with its unique masonry.  I didn't take pictures inside but you can go here to take a peek.

Below you can see the remains of the wisteria in bloom.  If only we had been there a week earlier!

Here's a gnarly old wisteria trunk.  If only gnarly old wisteria trunks could talk.  It almost looks like it could!

Here's a wisteria imposter, equally as beautiful.  Anyone know what it is?

We thought this Weeping Blue Atlas Cedar would work well as inspiration for a Dr. Suess illustration.

This was a fun lattice tunnel with portholes.  The sun-seeking vines were just starting to weave their way up through the lattice maze.

Look what's blooming in the tunnel!