Continued from Asheville Part 2.

Woke up this morning in Asheville, and we made the short drive to Biltmore Estate. The reason why we are in Asheville is to visit the Biltmore Estate. As more and more tourists are traveling the world, more and more places are now having timed entry. Biltmore has timed entry and by the time I was able to book, many of the times were already booked out so the earliest entry that I could get was at 10:30am. It’s a little bit after 9am right now. This will give us some time to explore the grounds and the gardens before touring the house itself.

The gate to the estate.

The estate is so big, it took us maybe 15 minutes to drive from the gate to the house itself.

It’s very pretty out here, I can understand why a giant country home was built here.

The freeway cuts through the property, and they even tried to disguise it by putting stone veneer on it.

Parked, and now we follow the brick road to the house.

There it is. I’ve wanted to visit it ever since I learned decades ago that this was the largest home in America. In Europe, they’d just call it a castle.

Now to the gardens.

It’s already getting hot. It’s so hot traveling during the summer break.

Grapes

Grapes!

Nice greenhouse.

Little KL is already complaining about how hot it is.

Truth. It’s hot in Asheville.

Look! A pineapple!

Losing it because of the heat. He wants to go inside the Biltmore house where it’s cooler, but since we’ve got timed entry, we can’t. I tell him that, he doesn’t care though.

Back out in the sun. Saw this beetle flipped over. We flipped it back over and it just tried to crawl into a little crack under the stairs.

Still complaining nonstop about the heat.

It was at this point when CL asked to go to the restroom. Actually, she asked about going to the potty a while ago, but she really really needs to go now. So RL stayed with PL and little KL, I went with CL in search of a toilet.

The toilet was wayyyyy on the other side of the estate. But we found it and we made it in time.

Finally time for our entry. It’s really hot out here.

They have a Chihuly glass exhibit here on another part of the estate. We have tickets for it. In fact, I had to buy the combined tickets just to be able to get a timed entry into the house at a reasonable house. Unfortunately, separate timed entry time to see the Chihuly exhibit is at 2:30pm, which would put us wayyyy too late when we need to drive into DC later from here. I think the drive from here to DC is roughly 7 hours or so. We are hoping to leave at around noonish from Asheville and make it to DC before it gets too late.

Let’s go inside. It’s burning out here.

Door bell?

They’ve got fans and portable AC all inside here. Some relief from the sun outside.

Wow, that’s quite the indoor garden room. Jelly.

We all got audioguides. They’ve got kids version of the audioguide, which was a surprising hit.

Reminds me of Hearst castle, but even better and more cohesive.

To be continued at DC Day 1 Part 2.