Asheville, NC Vacation - Part 2 - Biltmore Estate and Monet

Welcome to my second post about our recent trip to Asheville, NC.  I'm going to begin today by showing two pictures of the area around our hotel, The Inn at Biltmore Estate.  There were some walking trails that wound around the hotel and I think I mentioned that it was green and lush there.  As you can see in the first picture, a shower had just occurred.  Beautiful vistas.

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In the next pictures, we'll resume our tour of the actual Biltmore Estate.  I mentioned that I'll be showing the activity/exercise section of the house and also the staff rooms.  Those exercise rooms were below ground, down, down, down the stairs.  

This is the bowling alley that was created for the Vanderbilts and their guests.  I guess bowling was popular way back and it looks pretty 'normal', right?  Ha!

Here is the underground swimming pool - no water included.  Apparently, it has a crack or leak somewhere and so has not been filled with water for many, many years.  We also saw the dressing rooms for the family and guests to don their swimsuits.  The men had the ones that look like shorts and t-shirts.  The women - those dresses and long sleeves and leggings and even foot coverings.  It was considered improper for women to even show their bare feet.  Amazing that more of them didn't drown with all those clothes on.  

A picture of the 'workout' room.  It was funny that many workout tools and gadgets are much the same today.  The rowing machine to the left isn't much different.  The two shower looking things in the background were apparently 'needle' showers that were supposed to stimulate the skin as a person was pummeled with water.  Health was a big concern and people came to the mountains to get fresh air and breathe well and recover from illness.

This is the kitchen where all the food was prepared.  It wasn't actually all that large and looked sort of normal.  

An electric 'dumbwaiter' to carry the food to the upstairs dining rooms.  There was another 'hand cranked' one on the other side of the room.  Guess the electric didn't always work.

The staff dining room.  Looks very 'Downton Abbey' doesn't it?  Obviously not all the staff could eat at the same time.  I imagine there were more than 10 of them (the number of chairs).

This is part of the laundry area.  Washing, drying, ironing, etc.  Lots of work done here.

And that's all the Biltmore Estate tour.  There were gardens, of course, but I didn't take all that many pictures.  We had reservations for lunch at the Stable Cafe and one didn't want to be late.  You had to have reservations for everything - lots of people.  The Stable Cafe was created out the former stables.  Instead of horse stalls - there were booths.  It was kind of fun. 

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The last thing I'm going to share here is a bit of the 'Monet' exhibit that was part of our package  It was called 'Monet & Friends -- Life, Light & Color'.  and was located at another part of the estate.  They have art and music exhibitions at this center often.  There weren't actual Monet paintings, but there was a sort of 'show' that you attended with visual, audio, and even smells.  You can click through and read about it if you like.  I didn't take a lot of pictures (don't think you were really supposed to).  You went in, sat, and listened.  So beautiful!

 

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I'll be back next week with three more posts about Asheville.  The first two will show the second place we stayed, the Omni Grove Park Inn.  I'll show some of the crafts we saw at a shopping/craft section of that area and I'll have a post telling more about the history of the Grove Park Inn.  Lastly, I'll have a post about two bookstores that I visited.  Thanks for coming by and taking a look here!