#78 Biltmore Estate, Asheville, SC 4-9-09

If you look to the left side of the house you will see a full size bus. This will give you a sense of the enormity of the house. It has 250 rooms. (We were not allowed to take pictures of the inside of the home.) When the Vanderbilt's entertained, the guests would sometimes spend months. The home is quite a distance from any sizeable town.

Looking towards the home from the left side of the front entrance. The building jutting out on the right was the stables. Now it houses restaurants and gift shops and a very nice outdoor patio/eating area. The day we toured the home there must have been 10,000 people there. It is spring break for many schools and there were a number of guided group tours with just children. People are brought in by the bus load from the parking area, and also with tour groups. There are over 1,000,000 visitors a year through this home.

The pictures above and below are just a sample of some of the beautiful carved stonework all around the outside of the home.

Below is the outside patio area. The entire area is covered with Wisteria vines. In another couple of weeks they will be in full bloom. From this area you can see for miles.

Below is the view up the hill in front of the home. Anyone visiting the home would have to drive by this.

The retaining wall that is below the hill is part of the walkway to get up the hill in the above picture.

There are three of these giant carved turtles in the retaining wall. I couldn’t resist taking a picture of them. You can see above that they are on the lower level of the retaining wall. We were driving in front of the house and beneath the retaining wall. These turtles would greet you if you happened to be invited to be a guest!

Although we spent all of the morning and part of the afternoon touring the inside of the home you will see in the next post that “Dixie went ape in the Arboretum!”