Continued from DC Day 1 Part 1.

What’s up with all these fancy giant houses having organs. Is that just the flex of the era? Having a `175,000 sqft house isn’t enough of a flex?

That’s quite the fireplace though. I guess every bit of this house is a flex.

Monets.

Quite the view.

Hard to tell from the pictures, but the entire interior was on very dim lighting to protect all the tapestries and whatnot from sun damage.

This is the master bedroom where George Washington Vanderbilt, the owner of the house, sleeps. If you ask me…a little underwhelming considering the rest of the house.

This is where George’s wife sleeps, in a separate room. I guess that was the thing back then.

George loved books apparently. I think he had something like 20,000 books.

For all of this luxury, they didn’t have AC back then. Must have been miserable in the summer time. Maybe it was more of a winter house?

Guest quarters. These were reserved for single ladies. I’m guessing George got around before he was married?

More rooms for the single ladies.

Walking around outside for an hour in the garden in the heat took it out of us.

The stone foundation of the house.

The foundation area had these murals, I found them odd.

I didn’t read this, but I’m sure there were tons of conflicts and disputes. Blacks vs. whites, rich vs. poor.

Where the guests got changed for their multiple outfits each day. Helped by servants, of course.

This was pretty cool. They didn’t have chlorine back then, so it would be filled by the giant faucet at the bottom of the photo, and drained and scrubbed when the water needed to be changed.

Servants’ quarters.

The servants rooms were actually nicer than I expected. About as nice as my own room right now.

For such a giant house, I thought the kitchen would have been a little bigger.

I really like the drying area next to the sink.

Dumbwaiter.

Not too shabby of a dining area for the servants.

Dryer?

You are welcome.

That was fun, we all enjoyed that. Now toilets and I can stress out about the long drive to DC.

These urinals were more like toilet bowls. I wonder how often people shit in them?

Gift shop, cafe and whatnot. Too bad we need to get on the road quickly and be on our way.

Bye Biltmore.

We liked the painted Biltmore silhouette

I guess that wasn’t final goodbye yet. To leave the estate, you need to drive through the front of the house.

And then through the gardens.

And then drive for like 10 minutes through winding roads.

To finally get back to the streets of Asheville.

While I dropped RL to McDonald’s for some food, I filled up with gas. This gave me a mini heart attack when I thought that I had put in diesel instead of gasoline. Why would they make the diesel handle green and gas black when it’s usually the other way around?

Alright, time to take that long drive from Asheville to DC. It’s a little bit past noon. I think it’s almost an 8 hour drive if we make zero stops.

Listening to NC musicians.

Eating my burger while driving like a boss.

We may be on the road trip, but the whole time we’ve been checking on our phone constantly for news reports and photos on the damages from Hurricane Beryl. Finally, our next door neighbor sent us these photos of our beach house and our badly damaged porch. Sign. I guess it could have been a lot worse, like losing our whole roof.

Little KL was on his ipad when out of the blue he started saying out loud, “8 wheels better than 4.” Oh, ok, sure yeah.

Even hearses need to be washed.

That’s one giant jacked up truck.

And then, 23k miles on the car, I finally get a rock flung up at the windshield to cause to giant crack. Fuck. It made a really loud banging cracking noise and startled us. This one will not be able to be glued and I’m guessing it’ll keep on growing in size over the next few days. Will ruin all the photos taken from the passenger side of the car for the rest of the trip.

Another view of the crack. The rock just managed to hit the very corner of the windshield and caused the crack. Sad.

Some toys at the gas station for the kids. I guess part of the joys of being on a road trip.

We do not pack light.

It was a father and who, I assumed, to be his teenaged son in the car. I wonder if the teenager is really embarrassed to be seen in that car?

Another wreck causing a slow down.

Taco Bell for food on the go. Must try to not get into DC too late tonight.

This is where it gets interesting. RL’s Google Maps said to go one way, my Google Maps said to go another way, and the Defender’s Sat Nav say to go a different way from both of those. When I actually forced Google Maps to go the same way as the Defender, it actually made the route faster even by Google’s calculation. What! Why would Google make me go a way that’s slower and why was my route different from RL’s on the same app? WTF Google.

RL said these were addictive and very dangerous.

This wasn’t actually the way we took because another route was faster. At the end, the Sat Nav for the Defender gave us the fastest route.

I did not enjoy driving close to those toll gates. I keep feeling like the next one will jut out too far into my lane.

The kids were on their ipad for a long time today. We tried to do one or two hours on and one hour off. It started out like that, but then ended with much more on than off.

The Pentagon.

We are finally here.

Lincoln Memorial. It’s a little bit after 8pm right now. 8 hours on the road in one day, that’s a long haul for us and the kids. Exhausted.

And now, the very convoluted streets of DC. It would be so hard to drive around here without Sat Nav.

Air and Space Museum.

Finally arrived. We are renting a fully furnished apartment here. Finally, a little bit more room to move around and we’ll be here for 3 nights. Would be very, very nice to not having to pack and unpack for a few more days.

The super low ceiling parking garage under the building. I had to lower the air suspension to lowest setting and lock it down in the low position. Still scraped a couple of low hanging signs with the shark fin antenna up top though.

To make matters worse, they are doing construction down here. There’s not much room for error, especially in a giant car like the Defender. Stressful.

Sweet, found a large easy parking spot.

Now…how do I get out of this garage. I found an exit, but then it led me to the back corridor for the businesses in the building? I’m lost….finally, I just found a door to go to the street side and walked around the block.

Finally checked in. That was an ordeal. The check in guy told me to go to second floor, walk through courtyard and then go to another set of elevators. It turns out…I could have just taken the first set of elevators to the 10th floor and walked the interior hallways to the unit anyway.

Nice view here. Reminds me of my old condo in downtown Austin.

Cute. Long tiring day. Let’s go to bed.

To be continued at DC Day 2 Part 1.