Tag Archives: North Carolina

Biltmore Day 2 – Better than Day 1 – how cool is that?


Today is Saturday – Father’s Day – and we’ve been warned. The one lane road that goes from the ticket booth to the Biltmore (about 5 miles long) – can take up to 45 minutes – it gets that crowded. So show up early – or else.

So early it will be. We manage to get up, get breakfast, take 2 mile ‘fast walk’, shower, do laundry, and still leave the condo by 9:05. Not bad – our target had been 9:00. So congrats sister team!

Naturally – we are there so early – it’s no problem to do the drive (lovely – a different vista with every snake-like turn of the road – a stream here, a pond there, a bamboo forest here, a hardwood forest there. Ormsted (landscaper of Biltmore, Central Park – and Mount Royal in Montreal) was no fool. This is awesome landscaping. We hazard a guess as to the number of gardeners – naturally – we’re off – it’s actually 55. Which honestly – feels low given the size of the gardens and the year-round nature of their care. Guess they have a tight scheduled. Today the Rose Garden, tomorrow the Azalea, then we mow some lawn.

Our specialized tour today is the Architecture tour – but first we check out the indoor pool, the pictures of the construction (George V knew this was going to be amazing – so he has before and after pictures – hard to believe it was that barren before. Such vision), the kitchen (again), and the laundry rooms. So cool.

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For the architecture tour – our lovely hostess starts with a down and dirty history – this is where we learn that Cornelia actually deserted her family when times got tough, leaving her husband and kids (and grand kids) to maintain the house. Then we walk up 250 stairs to the roof – and visit the attic, pat some of the gargoyles, and take pictures of what our hostess refers to as fantasies (and Wikipedia calls ‘grotesques’). The difference? Gargoyles – gargle. When the water goes thru them, they make a noise – hence the name. Fantasies don’t allow the water thru – they are just for fun. Check out the pictures (bit X rated – sorry)

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On this tour – it’s not so much what we see as what we hear that is cool. Our hostess shares tons of tidbits – and that makes it really fun.

Lunch today is shared sandwiches from the bakery. I have to say that the food options are outstanding – they really do a good job. Later I learn from my daughter – a graduate of Culinary Institute of America – that lots of the interns come here – and the ability shines thru. They have their ‘food’ act together!

Finally – we are hitting the gardens. And they are spectacular. It’s hard to explain why acres and acres of grounds should be so special – but it’s the variety and the twists and turns that makes this place so cool. You literally never know what will be around the next corner. Could be a stone wall, a fountain, the Italian gardens with their highly structured layout, the huge glassed in Conservatories, the Bass Pond for boating, or the Spring Garden – a riotously joyful explosion of flower and plant. We spend way too long, and way too much money in the garden shop. In my defense – it was probably the best garden shop I’ve ever been in, and finally drag ourselves back to the car. We still plan to visit Ashville!

But before Ashville – we must stop at Antler Hill Village and Winery. This is the home of the Inn at Biltmore – a monster of a ‘Hotel’ that towers above the ‘village’ with it’s collection of shops, an exhibit on the Vanderbilt’s, a maze, a kid’s Land Rover Course (you know you want to drive a midget Land Rover over rock bridges and obstacles don’t you), the farm, the barn, the kitchen garden, and the miniature winery. We’re not impressed with the winery – they don’t even grow their own grapes – but the rest is cute if way over priced. Maybe we’d feel differently if we’d had kids – but the off-key singing of the musician on stage was extremely off-putting.

So now it’s on to Ashville. Cute town, cute shops, great little ‘art’ market, and my favorite – the Mast General Store. Dinner, drive home (avoiding all deer), and bed time. Tomorrow is check out and leave. So much fun, so quickly done.

Biltmore Estate in Ashville, N.C. – A house definitely worth a 2 day visit!


Some houses are big, some houses are insanely big – and then there’s the Biltmore. It defies description today – probably the most common reaction when George Vanderbilt – grandson of Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt – decided he needed a pied-a-tere in a remote corner of Ashville, NC.

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Talking about a good idea that got carried away. The Biltmore has 240 rooms (including closets and toilets according to our guide), an indoor pool, an indoor garden, servant quarters by the dozens – and no residents. The Vanderbilt’s only really lived there for 35 years – 2 years longer than I’ve owned my home. It took 5 years to build, many more years to furnish – and was opened to the public by Cornelia Vanderbilt (age 30) in 1930, mostly I’m guessing because the family had simply run out of money to maintain it. In any case, shortly afterwards she divorced her husband, left him to raise their 2 kids and tend to the monster of a house – and went to England. There she changed her name and lived quietly for a long time before she died. Today the home is still owned by her kids and grandkids.

All of which reminds me that money just doesn’t make you happy. Even lots and lots of money.

In the Wikipedia write-up – the authors speculate that George probably spent his entire inheritance on this house – an idea that while appealing, just doesn’t seem right. The family owned at least 4 other homes – so while this one might have been horribly expensive – in those days – it was probably considered just extravagant – but not ruinous. Nope – I think their lack of business smarts did them in, not just the house.

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Anyway – our tour. We opted to not only pay for admittance ($49 each) – and get an audio head-set (another $10) – but to take not one but two of the topic specific tours ($17 each). I’d say we’d Vanderbilt out! The Butler’s tour was up first – and our cheerful and extremely knowledgeable guide lead us upstairs and down – showing us the room where the housekeeper lived, explaining the intercom system, letting us admire the freight elevator that even the staff couldn’t use, and letting us peek into Edith Vanderbilt’s toilet, bath and shower. One oddity – there was no sink. In those days – servants brought you water in a pitcher and you washed in a bowl. Kept people employed I’d imagine.

After the tour – we ate lunch in the Stable Cafe – in a horse stall of course. I shared a huge bowl of Mac n’Cheese with my sister. It was totally yummy. Then it was on to the audio tour of the house itself.

While the butler’s tour was interesting and informative – the house tour left you stunned. How could people imagine such a place – then execute it. Four floors plus a basement, glorious art, stunningly beautiful views (it was a great day – I’m sure that helped), huge pieces of furniture. The main dining room – used for family meals as well as banquets was huge – 3 stories high, hung with tapestries bought from Europe, and for musical entertainment – a huge organ.

We toured the bedrooms, admired the wall coverings, gasped in delight at the books in the library, admired the magnificent tile work in the indoor pool, and wondered at the distance between the master bedroom, the wife’s bedroom, and the childbirth room. I suppose if you have to change clothes 4 and 5 times a day – you need a lot of private space. (Oh I can’t wear that – it’s for eating lunch – and I’m going to stroll in the gardens – how silly of you!)

Our tour us through the kitchen, the pastry kitchen, and most interesting – the laundry room. I particularly loved the drying racks for sheets. Ever wonder how often they changed the sheets in those days? We did – and we asked. Daily was the answer! Imagine a team of laundry people whose only job was to keep the bed linen cleaned. Can you imagine – and no electric washers and dryers either. All done by hand.

We took so long – they closed the house around us – and we got to watch the highly trained and extremely informative staff get searched before heading home.

As the security guard explained – it’s for their benefit. If something goes missing – I can say – I searched them – they are clean.

We finally got up sufficient umpf to leave – but realizing that we hadn’t seen the gardens, or even finished up touring the house – we decided to take the $10 next day option. We shall clearly be Vanderbilting again tomorrow.

Larkin’s on the Lake – Lake Lure, N.C. – completely perfect in every way


Larkins on the Lake is so perfect – it’s scary!

Ok – I hate to say this – but I liked Larkins on the Lake so much – I ate there 2 times in a row. I mean – how embarrassing is that for a high-end foodie? I’m completely guilty of what I complain about other people doing – staying with the safe and certain.

Reviewing note – I officially might have been at the Bayfront (what they call the part of Larkin’s that closer to the dock) – because we sat outside to enjoy the breezes – but I was assured that the menu was the same. But you might ask when you go.

In my defense – Larkin’s on the Lake is awesome. First off – the location. It hangs over Lake Lure – facing almost due West to catch the last rays of sunshine, a glorious sunset – and then you can admire the mountains in the distance. I mean – what’s wrong with that? And it was close (under 10 minutes) from our home base – so getting home after dinner – in the dark – was slow, but at least short. Given the number of deer we spotted either bounding up the sides of the road way – or standing still giving us the beady eye – going fast was not an option!

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And the food – what’s a restaurant with out good food? At Larkins, it was a mixture of traditional popular dishes (great prime rib, a Spinach Artichoke Dip, or Baby Back Ribs) with more modern classics like Sesame crusted Tuna Tataki. And best of all – they had my favorite dessert – in their case it was called Hubba Bubba Brownie – but basically it’s a brownie, vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Oh man – I could diet forever to have one of those!

I had the prime rib one night – rare, perfectly cooked, super tender – and the 2nd night I opted for just an appetizer of the Tuna Tataki – nice size portion, Tuna was perfectly rare on the inside and nicely seaseme’d on the outside. Yummy.

And the service was warm, friendly, and personable. The second night, our waitress from the first night totally remembered us – and told our wait person exactly how to get us what we wanted. I haven’t had that kind of service in – well – ever!

And prices were quite reasonable for a tourist locale – from just $17 to $30 dollars per person – in a setting you will never forget.

My kind of perfect place.

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Ashville, N.C. – Cute as the proverbial Button


What makes travel fun for me is the element of surprise – will this hotel/guesthouse/resort live up to expectations, will I find a yummy restaurant (or two), will the museum be worth visiting, will there be fun stores to shop at, is the location going to be beautiful, will it rain?

So many variables – so many chances for things to wrong – or to go right.

Good news – Lake Lure and Ashville, N.C. exceeded even my high expectations. After a rough start – check out my ‘why, oh why’ blog on travel – I finally arrived in the rolling hills and startlingly jagged stone cliffs of Western North Carolina. And how about this for a ‘I didn’t know that’ – The Last of the Mohicans and The Hunger Games were filmed right here!

But I wasn’t here to see movie sets – I was here for a ‘sister’s’ retreat. Our idea – spend time getting to know each other – without the distractions of husbands, kids, jobs. My middle sister picked me up at the Ashville Airport (tiny – truly tiny. You know it’s small when it cost $5 to park for over 2 hours), and headed out to our home for the weekend, and RCI resort called Wyndham Resort at Fairfield Mountains.

On the map – the resort is just 30 miles from Ashville – but the GPS said our ETA was an hour and a half. We soon found out why as we wound our way passed glorious scenery on a 2 lane winding road that changed elevation often enough to have us clearing our ears and allowed for a max speed of 20 mph. We drove past Chimney Rock State Park – with its gloriously huge waterfall cascading down from a rock face hundreds of feet above us. This Park is the setting for the movie – “Last of the Mohicans” – and to honor that – they were showing the film on Saturday night. For free. Got to love the price point.

Eventually we arrived at our destination – good job iphone and Telenav to discover that you needed a code for the lock box. Yikes. Good thing the guest arriving right behind us had that code – or we would have definitely been stranded. RCI – you have to give resorts the email of incoming guests. And resorts – if you don’t have the email for a guest – make an effort to get it! The good news – when we reported the ‘almost’ problem the next morning, the extremely pleasant receptionist apologized profusely – and reported the problem to her team. Nice handling of that – Wyndham people.

But all turned out OK (It wouldn’t be an adventure if nothing went wrong). We got our key, found a map explaining where our unit could be found in this huge resort, and made our way to our palace for the weekend. It was a palace at the mid-of-the road level – but the king sized bed was super comfy, and the view of the mountains from our window was awe-inspiring. My sister who loves to walk found lots of places to get exercise, and for me – hey, the coffee was great.

Dinner that night was at Larkins on the Lake – We loved it – but if you want to know why – you’ll have to check out my detailed review.

We’d decided that despite all the really neat stuff to do around Lake Lure and the Resort – including kayaking, a beach, a swimming pool, bike paths, hiking paths, etc, what we really wanted to do was to check out the Biltmore Estate – the home of George, Edith, and Cornelia Vanderbilt. (Again – want more details – that’s in another blog!)

GPS to the rescue again as we navigate our way back to Ashville by a different, and much less windy route past Bat Cave (didn’t spot Batman though).

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On Saturday – we opt to return to the Biltmore – that place is huge, and we felt we needed to see more stuff! But that afternoon – we finally manage to make it into Ashville. What a completely cute town. The shops were adorable, they had a wonderful arts and crafts market with lots of beautiful things to touch (I love the feel of wood), and my favorite – the Mast General Store.

If you are in Western North Carolina – and I’m not exactly sure why you would go there unless you were visiting the Biltmore Estate – you must go to this store. I loved it! They had everything. It was hard to decide what I just had to buy – and thus I wound up with a cast iron Bacon press in the form of a pig.

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Trust me – going thru security leaving Ashville was a hoot with that in my luggage. After they looked at it – everyone wanted to know if I even knew what to do with it. Hey – it’s my husband’s Father’s Day Present – he loves to press the Bacon!

Bottom line – Ashville has tons of stuff to do and see – lots of neat restaurants, including the Posana, the general store, cute art shops, and a young vibe that totally took us by surprise.

Go and have fun. But don’t forget the reason for your visit – in our case – the Biltmore and getting some much-needed Sister time.

Missions accomplished I’d say

Signing off – The soup lady.