Deep South Tour - Fall 2011 - Day 3

We had breakfast at the hotel and bought tickets for the Biltmore Estate at reception. The ticket would allow us to come and go as we pleased so we were hoping to meet up with Joe for lunch having reluctantly decided not to travel to his basketball game in the evening as it was two hours away. Unfortunately work swallowed him up and we were unable to catch up.
We found our way easily to the Biltmore Estate and having a ticket already allowed us to overtake those who still had to buy them, incidentally we found the $60 each excessive but hoped it might repay Joe’s opinion.
To quote Wikipedia:
Biltmore House is a Châteauesque-styled mansion near Asheville, North Carolina, built by George Washington Vanderbilt II between 1889 and 1895. It is the largest privately-owned home in the United States, at 135,000 square feet (12,500 m2) and featuring 250 rooms. Still owned by one of Vanderbilt's descendants, it stands today as one of the most prominent remaining examples of the Gilded Age, and of significant gardens in the Garden à la française and English Landscape garden styles in the United States. In 2007, it was ranked eighth on the List of America's Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects.
Perhaps we English are spoilt in terms of history and the historic but it was hard to marvel at a house new enough to have been built with electricity. The basic self-guided tour was enough to get the feel of the house and family. We struggled to take seriously a very modern oil painting of the family which managed to make them look like the cast of Dallas. We were disappointed to have completed the tour and emerged again in front of the house without having appeared on the balcony above us which would have given amazing views. Hoping that we had missed a sign, unlikely as Julia reads everything on such a tour, we went back in and asked. The people on the balcony had invested in the Architects Tour a mere $30 extra! I was also unimpressed by the no photography in the house rule. I can not be surprised that the Vanderbilts remain wealthy.
The gardens and grounds are indeed impressive but we did find it strange that everywhere we walked to there were cars passing close by or even driving through. I thought this was merely a reflection of the American aversion to walking but it became clear when we returned to our car to leave the estate via the winery and village. We found ourselves following a route that took us through the centre of the gardens.
We took a break in the Biltmore village and Julia indulged in the wine-tasting, she seemed to score some points with the sommelier by preferring something which was not white and as sweet as syrup. She enjoyed the Red Zinfandel from their own vineyard and I thought it would be nice to have a bottle but not being as rich as the Vanderbilts the pricing put us off.
From Biltmore we headed into downtown Asheville, by now it was about 3.30, it was an enjoyable stroll through very varied buildings. Not for the last time on our trip we observed that some of the most historic buildings had been saved by economic depression, nobody being able to afford their replacement until people decided they were worth saving in their own right.
It amused me that although the Civil War pretty much bypassed Asheville it had its share of monuments but all I saw were dedicated to Confederate heroes who were of course on the losing side, I noted that some of these had been erected as late as 1938. I recall one monument was dedicated to a Confederate Soldier named Zebulon Baird Vance quite a name to inspire greatness. Amongst such monuments there are much newer artworks and it made for an interesting tour. When we had covered most of the town on foot we saw an open tram which was doing a tour - better research might have seen us riding that tram.
Even though it was mid-afternoon there were several buskers playing and a few human statues but our personal favourite was a guy who busked on his guitar while painted totally white, a strange combination of the two techniques.
We couldn’t risk another set of clothes so we back-tracked to the hotel and later ate out at the Chilis that we had spotted earlier. A shared starter and two mains for $20 cannot be complained about, we returned to the hotel content, full and dry. A much better day.