{"id":1942,"date":"2011-12-03T23:14:24","date_gmt":"2011-12-04T04:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.handsful.com\/?p=1942"},"modified":"2011-12-03T23:19:03","modified_gmt":"2011-12-04T04:19:03","slug":"biltmore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/archives\/1942","title":{"rendered":"Biltmore"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve lived in NC (with the exception of years 2004-2010) since I was a year old, but I’d never been to Asheville to visit the Biltmore Mansion. Randy had gone as a child, but didn’t remember much. <\/p>\n

This past Thursday, we made the 2 hour trip. <\/p>\n

We started with a yummy dinner at Vinnie’s, and then relaxed at the hotel till bedtime. The next morning, the kids had to take a quick jump into the hot tub…I grumbled about being “late” to the mansion, but I got over it. <\/p>\n

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Kids showered and changed, we made it to Biltmore around 11:30. After going over what the day-admission fee would be vs. the cost of a year’s membership, we went with the latter. We actually spent less money on the membership than we would have a day ticket, since members 16 and under are admitted free. I guess we’ll be doing Biltmore a lot in 2012! <\/p>\n

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Outside pictures. Did you know, you can’t take ANY photos inside?!? I was miffed, but then realized that I would have spent so much time taking pictures that I would have missed the details of the tour. <\/p>\n

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We decided to take a self-guided tour, using the headsets with recorded messages for each room…so much better than listening to a tour guide. <\/p>\n

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The tour took about 2 hours and we were starved afterwards! We walked straight to the Stable Cafe next door…<\/p>\n

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This restaurant used to be…you guessed it…the stables back in the day. It was just gorgeous and I loved thinking about the people (and animals!) that lived and worked where I was currently eating lunch. <\/p>\n

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Yes, that’s my lemon-overloaded tea in the foreground. <\/p>\n

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After we were pleasantly full, we headed to the shops nearby. Christmas decorations, books, toys, etc. The Confectionery was a favorite stop, and helped top off our lunch with a little something sweet. Payton had his eyes on something a bit bigger…<\/p>\n

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Before we knew it, night had fallen and the place started to really light up. We walked down to Antler Hill Village, where there is a farm (we missed it…it was already closed…we’ll visit that FIRST next time) and the kids goofed around a little. <\/p>\n

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A statue of George Washington Vanderbilt’s daughter, Cornelia, and her dog Cedric. <\/p>\n

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How you doin’? <\/p>\n

We rode back up to the house, had some pastries and hot chocolate, and then headed home. <\/p>\n

Can’t wait to go back…we’re told January is their least busiest month (with December being the most), so I’m hoping we can make another quick trip to Asheville soon! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve lived in NC (with the exception of years 2004-2010) since I was a year old, but I’d never been to Asheville to visit the Biltmore Mansion. Randy had gone as a child, but didn’t remember much. This past Thursday, we made the 2 hour trip. We started with a yummy dinner at Vinnie’s, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trips-vacations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.handsful.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}