I had always wanted to see the Biltmore Estate and it did not disappoint.
Besides it being superrrr hot (theme of the trip) we enjoyed this stop.
Tickets
If you buy tickets 8 days in advance you get a discount and because they are so expensive, I would suggest doing that. The one hard thing is you have to chose a house tour time and with our trip being a road trip, it was hard to know exactly when we’d get there. If I had to do it again, I would have chosen a later time to tour the house.
I had heard that whatever your time is, allow 45 extra minutes for parking, tickets and everything because they start house tours right on time. We were going to be so late so I called to see if we could change times and they allowed us! We ended up going at 1:45pm BUT we had to stop at Will Call to pick up the tickets whereas if you just order them right the first time you can print them out at home and not have to stop.
allow 45 extra minutes for parking…
The line in will call was LONG but we had our confirmation number and there was a gentleman standing there who went and printed them off for us while we stood in line – so make sure you have that number handy especially if you change times!
Also remember you could always schedule a later time for the house and do the Gardens and other areas first to make sure you get to the house tour on time. Just a thought!
Parking
The House
When you get in they have the option to buy the audio tour because I didn’t online – We thought the audio tour was so invaluable at Alcatraz that I bought one here – but I do think it was a waste of money.
Almost everything I was listening too was in the book if you read it room by room, but it took me way longer to listen than for Ricky to read and move on to the next room.
But the house over all was amazing. To read the history of the family and see this house is just crazy. We read online a little about the family before we got there so that helped but to think about how this family was the second riches even with adjusted wealth of all time in America is insane.
We had gone to some plantation homes in Charleston after this one and I feel like our expectations were so high having come from here! HAHAHA! Why would we ever think that!
Also if you film everything like me NO video inside (whoops) but you can take pictures!
The Gardens
We walked around the gardens and in the green house they had an exhibit of a train that was going around the whole green house which was really cool – I guess they have different exhibits each year.
It was definitely worth going to the edge so you can see the whole house and front yard but I think this trip may have been better in the fall when it wasn’t so hot. We stayed maybe 3 hours but we were so done after walking around the gardens a bit.
Antler Hill Village
After the house and Gardens we went to Antler Hill Village – it was really cute and there was space to park. So we got out, walked around and went to the Biltmore Legacy room – it had even more info on the family and the owners of the house so that was neat. We didn’t eat here because everything was expensive so we left to go to Ashville
Ashville
Oh my gosh we loved downtown Ashville area. Biltmore Ave area had a ton of places to eat, cute shops and was just so pretty.
I don’t know what the deal was but our phone did not work over here though so that was super frustrating (we have AT&T so just be aware if you do too!)
We are obsessed with Ice Cream so we went to Marble Slab Creamery – it like a cold stone where you pick the flavor of ice cream and then they put all the toppings you want and mix it in the ice cream.
We walked around and they were having a yoga conference or something because there was reggae music and people doing inversions everywhere – maybe not our speed but I could see why people would come here
My friend Jen also said there was great hiking in the area so maybe we would do Ashville again and hike around here one time!
