Asheville, NC- Biltmore Estate and Grove Park Inn

Today we headed to Asheville, NC, to hang around downtown Asheville and then go to the Biltmore Estate Candlelight event. On our way to Asheville at about Waynesville and all the way up to Asheville there appeared to have been a considerable amount of snowfall. The mountain tops and sides not facing the sun were still covered with snow. Just seeing the snow gets you in the holiday spirit. Arriving in Asheville we decided to walk down Biltmore St. to Broadway St. and look at various shops. This street along with others in the vicinity, have a number of small independent shops to peruse. We also went into the Grove Arcade shopping pavilion (www.grovearcade.com), located at 1 Page Avenue, where there are a number of independent shops. Grove Arcade was a nice place to visit due to the inclement weather, since all of the shops can be entered from inside the arcade building and you don’t have to go in and out of the weather to visit each shop. It’s more like a shopping mall concept. After looking around a good bit we decided to hit a local place for lunch. We chose the Early Girl Eatery (www.earlygirleatery.com) on Wall St. The food was very good and consisted of vegetarian fare, as well as standard offerings of hamburgers. I had a pan fried trout, which was very good.

We left the downtown area and checked into our overnight accommodations at the Grove Park Inn (www.groveparkinn.com) located on Macon Ave. This inn is on the National Historic Hotels registry and was built in 1912 as a resort and spa. There have been numerous well known historical figures that have stayed in the Inn, including eight U.S. Presidents, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Gershwin and Harry Houdini, to name a few. Fitzgerald spent two summers at the inn, 1935 and 1936. The lobby contains two fireplaces large enough for a person to almost stand up in. The vista from the outside deck is of the Blue Ridge Mountain range in the distance and at this time there was snow on the sides and tops of the mountains. The inn has amenities too numerous to detail in this blog. During the Christmas Holidays, they also have on display the National Gingerbread House competition entries. These are not your regular looking gingerbread houses, they are works of art. Making them more unbelievable is the fact that all of the display must be edible. The Grand Prize Winner was the bird cage looking one.

In the evening we headed to our 7:30 pm visit to the Biltmore Estate

candlelight viewing (www.biltmore.com) . I’ve been to the Biltmore Estate a number of times from the 1970’s to present, but this was the first time I’ve seen it by candlelight and with the Christmas decorations.

The main banquet hall had a “real” frazier fir tree that was about 25 to 30 feet tall and elaborately decorated. Unfortunately they do not allow any photos to be taken of the interior. Something new since the last time I was there was a display showing how they had restored the Louis XVI room. The wall covering they had reproduced in Lyon, France, was incredible. There were Christmas trees in most rooms, as well as decorations and either candles or battery operated tea lights. A most amazing place, whether you visit it during the Christmas season or other times of the year.

We returned to the Grove Park Inn after viewing the Biltmore. Our room was a very cozy room with built-in dresser drawers, robes in the closet and mission style furniture in the room.

Located on the inn property was an automobile museum and a very

impressive art gallery called Grovewood Galleries (www.grovewood.com) . The gallery has all types of handmade goods from jewelry to furniture. The most impressive woodworking I've seen combined in one place. Most of the furniture was of the Mission Style vintage.

We had a very pleasant stay. We left Asheville and headed to our remote cabin location.