Wonderful Weekend

One of Buddy’s many gifts to me is a year’s pass at the Biltmore House.  I haven’t been in about 15 years, so yesterday, Saturday, was the day we decided to get over there and see what changes have been made. Oh!My!  There have been a lot of changes.  The beauty of the house is still breath taking, however, we were very disappointed to see that the outside of the house needs a good cleaning.As you can see in the close up pictures, there is a lot of mold and dirt on the outside of the house. 

This is a picture of a dragon on the side of the house facing the stables.  They have turned the stables into a restaurant.  I remember when we would visit the house, the stables were stables, and not a place to eat.  It really is quite nice.  The hayloft is also part of the restaurant, and you can look down from the loft to see the restaurant below.  We had lunch in the Stable.  You can see part of the original stable in back of Buddy.  Yes, I know he has his eyes closed.  He tells me he can’t smile without closing his eyes.  Go figure.

After lunch we roamed around the outside and took plenty of pictures.

I’m sitting on the veranda pretending I’m having a glass of wine.  The view was spectacular!

 This little fellow was standing right nest to me while I was sipping my wine.

As we were leaving, I snapped this picture of one of the waterfalls on the property.  We toured only the first two floors of the house and said we would come back on Sunday to finish.   

We got a late start on Sunday, I like to sleep in and have a lazy morning, so we decided not to see the house, but to go to the Antler Village on the property and have lunch at the Bistro.  We both had the pork chop on the asparagus risotto.  Wow!  It was delicious!  I had sweet tea and Buddy stayed with water.  We were too full to even consider dessert.  After lunch we walked around the new (to us) Antler Village.  

Buddy standing next to the arbor leading into the Bistro.

Standing next to one of the many planters with loads of flowers.  Wish my flowers did as well as these looked.

Does anyone know what kind of flower this if?  The berries are shiny black before they turn red.  It looked so pretty mixed in with other plants.  How come I can never find this kind of unique flower when I am planting in the Spring?

These begonias were in hanging baskets and they were really beautiful..  They looked like tiny pink roses.

We went into one of the gift shops just to look around.  They had a wall of really cute clocks.  I would like the red heart on the left for my kitchen.

This sculpture was outside the store.  I had to take a close up of the girl’s face because she had such a sweet face.

I didn’t want the dog to feel slighted, so I took one of him also.

After all that walking around it was time for ice cream.  Biltmore has delicious coffee ice cream!

While we were eating our ice cream, there was live music being played in the center of the village.  They were singing folk songs.  Really nice.

On our way to the car, I snapped this picture of the fountain near the square.

It wasn’t until we reached our car that I realized that after two days on the estate, we didn’t have any pictures of us together.  Now Buddy gave me a new camera for my birthday and I really don’t know how to use it.  I’m learning, but I really need a book to find out how to do things.  I fiddled with the camera some and told Buddy not to move, and I ran next to him hoping a picture would be taken.  And it worked!  See below.We got home and I looked at my flowers and realized they weren’t that bad at all!  So, I took some pictures to remind me this winter what it was like.

Hopefully tomorrow I will have time to tell you about our trip to Stauton, VA last week.  Another wonderful adventure!

Blessings!