Biltmore weekend

I enjoyed touring the Biltmore with my mom SO MUCH! It was an AMAZING place, the house and the grounds. Here is a summary of my trip:

We left home at about 10:30 Saturday morning (after my tri training and shower). We got there at about 1pm, checked in to our hotel, then went on to the Biltmore grounds. We had read that the house is CRAZY busy on Saturdays, so we skipped it and headed to the winery. There was a restaurant next to the winery called the Bistro that serves local foods straight from the Biltmore farms. So we waited for a table there while shopping in the winery gift shop. I ate sage-infused chicken, goat cheese, and bacon pizza and a butternut squash soup. They were both delicious! Then we toured the winery and had our wine tasting. The tour wasn't as fun or informative as the tour we went on in Michigan. You got to look into rooms that weren't in use, while a video played about how things were done. Kinda dull. The coolest part was seeing the cellar where they store one bottle of each of their vintages from each year.


Then we walked over to Riverbend farm. There they have a kitchen garden, and the old barn with a bunch of old farm machinery. We took some cute pics there.


At dinner time, we decided to head over to downtown Asheville to see what it was like. It was so much more eclectic than I thought! Within a 3 block radius, there was every kind of food you can imagine. My mom said it reminded her of a tiny NYC. We ate dinner at a place called The Noodle Shop. Before heading home, we stopped at French Broad Chocolate Lounge. We got a box of 15 assorted truffles to bring back to the hotel for dessert. We were able to sample ones like pomegranate (yum), lemon pepper (double yum), and strawberry balsamic (yuck, too spicy, had curry in it). It was fun to sample so many.

The next day we got to the house at 10ish. It look us 2 1/2 hours to complete the tour! The house is ridiculous. If you are ever up here, I totally recommend seeing this place. It was amazing.


You aren't allowed to take pics inside so we don't have any. We got the audio guides which were cool because you could listen to a few facts about each room. Afterward, we headed outside to the gardens. Here we are being clowns.



The rose garden was on its way out, but there were still a few pretty blooms.


We got some lunch at Deerpark restaurant on campus that had a delicious Sunday brunch. We were home with sushi by 5pm.