FROM THE RICH AND FAMOUS TO DOWN HOME

The major focus of our trip today is to go to the Biltmore mansion, built by George Vanderbilt, (son of robber baron Cornelius Vanderbilt.)

George came to Asheville in the late 1800s and spent five years building this "vacation cottage."  This is an absolutely fabulous house.  I forget how many bedrooms it has but I think it was 30.   It has 43 bathrooms, though.

There is a mile long winding road going up to this house and it was made that way particularly so that you didn't get a glimpse of the house until you were right here, and to build anticipation along the way.  It's quite stunning.

This is very definitely a Downton Abbey lifestyle place with reception rooms, formal dining room which can seat several dozen people, breakfast room, libraries, various man caves, and so on. It's 175,000 square feet.  

One of the things they have put in all the rooms are costumes that were either worn by the family, which are a few, or have been worn in movies of this period. 

The grounds were designed by the famous landscape architect Olmsted (he designed Central Park in nyc among many, many others) and the house was designed by an equally famous architect named Richard Morris Hunt. Both of these gentlemen have life-size portraits, painted by Whisler, hanging in the house,  which is really quite unusual -- to have portraits of the hired help.

After the house tour we went through the enormous gardens. The azaleas are the major thing blooming now, and the rhododendrons should be out in about a week. 

Our tour provider is Mars Hill University, so we had dinner and a concert there tonight.  

The place used to be called French Broad College but you can kind of imagine why they changed the name. (French Broad is the name of a local river. )Mars Hill is the location of the town where the now-university is and it's a Baptist school.  Physically, it's about the size of Sac City College.  

The concert was traditional music, so I was expecting a geezer-ish performer, so you can imagine my surprise when the guy who came out on stage looked like a teenager.  For what it's worth,he said he was 35, but still, not what I expected.  And he was both good and funny.  

Students here are very dedicated.