Visiting Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina by Ruth Paget
The first time I visited Asheville, North Carolina was with my mom. She was driving me home from my childhood vacationland – Murrells Inlet, South Carolina (outside Myrtle Beach) – where I had stayed with my sister.
Mom drove her black Thunderbird, which I thought looked like a movie-star Mercedes, back to Detroit (Michigan) up and around the Appalachian Mountains. The ride is thrilling since a lot of the freeway sits on stilts around the mountains with treetops below.
We listened to country music on the radio. The only other choice at the time was gospel. We stopped to visit “an American castle” when Biltmore Estate surged into view.
Biltmore looks like a French Loire Valley château notably the fairy tale Ussé château but on a grander scale like Chambord château further down the Loire River. I was so happy they had room on the guided tour for us despite not reserving ahead of time.
I think I was in the fourth grade at the time and vaguely remember that the guide said the Vanderbilts made their fortune in transportation (railroads and shipping) in the 19th century. I was impressed that the Biltmore Estate had 100 bedrooms each with their own bathroom.
I asked if each room had a telephone when I saw what looked like a manual dial phone by the door of each room. “Some rooms have telephones, but that is an intercom. If a family member or guest needs something, they call the butler on that intercom. The butler decides if what someone requests is a job for him or the head of housekeeping,” the guide explained. Modern hotels still function like this when you make calls to guest services to request something.
My next question was, “Do you have a hotel here?”
My mother intervened at this point, “We have to go home, so I can work Monday.”
I was disappointed, but understood. The tour guide mentioned at the end of the tour that the Vanderbilts had a university nearby, if we wanted to visit that, too.
Back in the black Thuderbird on the way to Detroit, my mom drove around Vanderbilt University to check out the campus. I thought the campus was pretty, but even as a child I liked cities. (Detroit was fun.)
I thought about Biltmore a lot in high school. I had two pairs of favorite jeans by Gloria Vanderbilt with swans on the label next to her name that I wore to be cooler than the Calvin Klein wearers. We had anorexia wars to see who could be thinner in their straight leg jeans.
On some more recent visits to Asheville, my husband Laurent and I toured the University of North Carolina – Asheville campus and bought a 501 German Verbs book at the university bookstore to do some verb conjugating as a souvenir of living in Stuttgart, Germany.
The Biltmore Estate now has become a tourism magnet for Asheville, North Carolina offering an outdoor concert series, garden tours, exhibits for families like the current one on Tutankhamun, biking trails, wine tastings, and a hotel with a spa no doubt.
I like it that this American castle can be maintained by offering services to the public that allow everyone a chance to be a prince or princess for the day.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
