The Biltmore Estate - Asheville North Carolina

I went on a trip with my husband to Asheville North Carolina.  In planning the trip the one place that kept on popping up on things to do in the area was the Biltmore Estate built by George W. Vanderbilt.   http://www.biltmore.com/        (wiki/Biltmore_Estate ) Its on the national registry of historical places.  It seemed like the place to go and I was so appreciative that the group that my husband was with was able to get a tour of the place.  We couldn't take pictures inside but boy did I take lots of pictures of the outside.

When you first come in this is what you see from the main parking area:

The Biltmore Estate, Asheville North Carolina

You find out during the tour that George Vanderbilt built this home when he was single.  The other thing you find out that this is considered the largest private home built in the United States.  It was built in 1895 and has 250 rooms and has four acres of space.  The estate itself covered 125,000 acres when he acquired the land. The family still owns it and has tours of the house and winery as a way of being able to maintain it.

     When up first pull up to it this is what you see:

Then you have to go down this long windy road to get to this parking lot. You only really get to see the house once you are in the lot.

Even just waiting in the gated area was impressive.

And the view were incredible.

The parking lot had this retaining wall

I really liked these turtles.

We had to walk to it.

 This was the view we were getting along the pathway to the main building

 This is what you see when you walk up to the house.  It's so massive your camera can't take it all in and all you get it parts of it in each shot. 

 The front entrance.

 The front doors. 

 I fell in love with the two lions that were at the entrance.  I expected them to look the same but they were different.  This was the one to the right

 Another view of the right one

 The left lion.

The left side of the building

The left patio

The right side of the building

We did the tour of the inside of the house and then came out and was able to take more pictures of the outside of the area.

I had taken a couple of pictures of the Italian garden and the playing field. But then we got called for the tour and I had to leave and come back after the tour.  These images are a combination of the two times I took them.  When we came back the sun started to set and we did take time to watch that too.

The Italian Garden at the Biltmore Estate.

I was curious as to what that man was reading and here is the plaque he was looking at.

I thought this was so pretty to see the trees covering this patio.  The plaque under the tree said that they were Chinese Wisteria.

Here's what the house looked like from the left side.

Here's the back side of the house.

This is a better shot of what I call the playing field because it looked like it was a court of some sort.
What I really liked about this was the statues that were there.  Plus you couldn't beat the view.  Especially watching the sun set.  It was absolutely gorgeous.

The view along the path

 One of the many statues near the gazebo

 This was looking back at the house from the gazebo.

      Some of the statues that were there.

 This one I liked because it was taken as the sun was going down and the colors were so pretty.  This image does not do it justice.

It was so different from the angle you would look at it too.

 

 The view during the day.

 The view as the sun goes down. In both of them you can understand why the mountains are called the Blue Ridge Mountains since they look so blue in the distance. 

  I couldn't get over how quickly the colors had changed in the sky and thus affecting the way the mountains would look. 

And this was the parting shot of it with the lights on.

The Biltmore estate, Asheville North Carolina

 Going took longer than coming and to get to the estate it is 3 miles.  It was designed to take awhile to get there from the train station.  The drive was so you could decompress.  As we left we did get to see some of the gardens that they are so famous for.

Some of the gardens at the Biltmore Estate

 I really enjoyed seeing the place.  While we were there there is a great picture books called "Biltmore- An American Masterpiece" by Biltmore Company (2012) that we got.  It has 134 pages of all sorts of information about the house and George Vanderbilt the man who built it. If you want to see what's inside I recommend you looking at that book.