My Birthday Surprise [Location] DUW

[Jazz1]

Chris woke me up to taking me the Biltmore House! Here is a little background info on the place if you're interested,

he began buying land (totaling 130 000 acres) near Asheville, NC, and proceeded to study forestry, architecture, and landscape gardening. The architect of his $3 million estate, ‘Biltmore’, was Richard Morris Hunt. Frederick Law Olmsted was his landscape gardener, and Gifford Pinchot was placed in charge of the forest. Moving to ‘Biltmore’ in 1896, Vanderbilt became a pioneer in forestry science, and on his acreage he founded the Biltmore nursery, which specialized in trees and plants of the Appalachian region, and the Biltmore School of Forestry. He also bred hogs and cows and sold the meat and dairy products, and his advanced agriculture, forestry, and animal husbandry practices served to inspire similar reforms throughout the South. Among his benefactions was the Jackson Square branch of the New York Public Library, and the ground on which Columbia University's Teacher's College was built.

Now PICTURES!!!

Gargoyles

HUGE HUGE Green House

Orchids

The flower gardens leading to the the Green House

Wall decorations


The beautiful house






At night



sorry so many pics!

[froglegs]

What an amazing place to visit!! That house is enormous!! Those are some great pics Kristy! You two make a very cute couple too btw!! What a cool thing to do for your birthday!! How long did it take to go through the grounds and that house?

[Jazz1]

Well we purchased tickets [btw they were $60!!!!!!!....to tour a house....] at 3pm and they were so busy they had set times that you could go in the house, ours was 5pm. So we walked around outside for a couple hours then went inside, that took about 2-2 1/2 hours because it was SO crowed and then we went to the winery (most visited winery in the USA) and did wine tasting, bought a bottle, ate...walked some more. It was amazing!!! Worth every second of it!

Everyone always laughed at me because I've lived in Asheville for about 7 years and had not been yet....now I can say I've been!

[ssjsmits]

That house is awesome! Really neat color.

[brooksie2]

That is so cool! What a lucky girl you are to have a guy like that!