Biltmore House Christmas

 From San Antonio we drove to LaGrange, Georgia, where each year I tell Christmas stories in an event called Deck The Halls.  We then went to Dublin, Georgia, where I tell Christmas stories each year at the historic Carnegie Library building. 

We are now in Asheville where we usually stop in the Christmas season to visit the Biltmore Estate. Last evening we visited the upper floors of the Biltmore House. 

We usually take an audio tour, but, after doing that several times, Trish and I decided to wander in our own so we could soak as long as we liked in each room rather than being pushed along by the recorded guide.

We learned that there are thirty-one trees in the house itself and more than seventy on the entire property.  Beyond the trees the whole house seems to be one huge Christmas decoration.

It was a very nice thing to move slowly.  We say little details never noticed before realizing that even the tiniest stone or hinge was crafted with care as the thousand workers put this place together in the 1890’s.

One of our favorite rooms is the library where each of us wanted to curl up with a book and stay for a while.  There are 22,000 books here as George Vanderbilt was, from childhood, a voracious reader.

From upstairs we could look out the windows and see the vast spreading front lawn and its single tree.  Today we will return to the house and go deeply downstairs.