Anniversary Trip: A Day at Biltmore

Yesterday I began sharing about my husband’s and my 25th anniversary trip to the Biltmore Estate. Today I’m back to journal our first day at Biltmore. A lovely day!

Our vacation package with Biltmore Inn included breakfast in their dining room, an offer we were delighted to accept! Both days we were seated at a window table with views of the morning mountains. Such a soft opening to the day.

I allowed myself some food indulgences while on the trip but balanced those treats with plenty of salads along the way. Here’s food indulgence number one: for breakfast I ordered lemon poppy seed waffles with lemon curd, raspberry sauce, and maple syrup. Sigh.

Joel ordered smoked salmon eggs benedict and creamy cheese grits. Both of our dishes were those in which you just need a moment of silence after each bite. Know what I mean? I’d love to give more description of this scrumptious breakfast, but, first of all, there are few words to adequately describe its deliciousness, and secondly, I’ve been on a detox diet since returning and I just need to keep scrolling and not linger here, ha.

After breakfast, we headed over to the Biltmore house for our free specialty tour: Mornings at Biltmore. For years we’ve had a fun little tradition of taking our kids’ pictures in front of this same knobby tree in parking lot A-1. Our kids call it the angel tree. Since they were not with us on the trip, I sent them a photo of me standing in front of it.

I never takes a selfies, but I snapped this one before walking to the house.

We got there early for our tour which began before the house opened for the day. There were 5 in our group and we seemed to have the whole house to ourselves. Our tour began in the Winter Garden where morning guests were brought upon their arrival to rest and wait for their host and hostess to welcome them for a day of activities.

I have so many photos of the rooms from our past visits so I decided to not take too many this time unless there was something new to me. I learned a few new bits on the tour, such as what’s pictured below. As we walked into Mr. Vanderbilt’s room, there was an employee with a large notebook. The tour guide explained that every item in every room of the house, down to the smallest trinket, is counted before opening each morning and after closing each evening to assure that no items have been stolen. What a tedious task in a house with 250 rooms!

Our tour continued through many more rooms of several floors and ended with the dining room organ. We’ve always seen the organ as we’re looking up from the floor of the dining room, but this time we were able to see a behind-the-scenes organ room annnnnd….

…we got to go in the organ balcony!! It was unbelievable to not only see the organ up close, but also to look down into the dining room from the balcony, a perspective we’ve never had the privilege to see.

I snapped lots organ photos for my music major daughter.

The house was just opening it’s doors for the day at the end of our tour so guests were starting to trickle in as we looked over the dining hall.

The ceiling, windows, and chandeliers were even more interesting up close. I loved this part of the tour!

After our tour, we walked around outside a bit and then explored the shops before heading to our lunch at Stable Cafe. The atmosphere at this restaurant is always fun because it’s in what used to be the Vanderbilts’ horse stable. I had a shrimp salad with tossed greens and veggies and a cup of English pea soup. The shrimp salad was delicious and light, and the pea soup was very fresh and clean tasting and packed full of flavor! This is another recipe I’m going to try and recreate at home.

After lunch we walked back through the house for our own self-guided tour and then headed over to Antler Village for some window shopping and another of those food indulgences–ice cream! Biltmore has their own dairy and makes the BEST ice cream ever. I’m not kidding! Our family has voted this the best ice cream of all we’ve ever had and eating a bowl of this creamy goodness is a must on every trip. I got half vanilla cream and half cherry. Soooo good! (Keep scrolling, Alinda!)

We went back to our room late afternoon and took a little rest before grabbing some dinner in town and then back to the hotel to walk it off outside. The patio area was inviting with it’s fire pits and string lights–a relaxing ending to a pleasant day.

Tomorrow I’ll share about our last vacation day and the surprise our children had for us when we returned home!