My wife insists this was my fourth visit to this wonder of the the North American world, and if she says it is so it must be. I can only remember coming once before, but what do I know? That's
why I started keeping a web log.
why I started keeping a web log.
I love the Biltmore House outside Asheville. It is conspicuous and the epitome of the wealth amassed by robber barons of eras past, and of all things socially frowned upon in an egalitarian world; but is beautiful and is become a wondrous place to visit:
Except perhaps not so much around Christmas time as the crowds are monstrous, and we got a taste of the crowding on the long drive in, past the carriage house photographed above:
Inside the massive mansion we got lost and separated all eight of us (including two infants) so we paused to regroup, and as we paused we realised the house was packed, people were streaming through in an endless crocodile of gawping visitors, bundled up against the frigid air outside:
And barely warmer inside the cool, somewhat heated interior of the Vanderbilt mansion. Which as they were celebrating Christmas like everybody else in Asheville, was decorated for the season:
And in the sun room just inside the entrance three hardy women sat at the piano and tinkled bravely away at Tchaikovsky as the Arctic blasts blew through the entranceway crowded with visitors filing slowly inside. I tell you, Charles Dickens wasn't in it, it was all pure nostalgia and quite wonderful :
The Vanderbilt mansion outside Asheville is a national landmark, like the Vizcaya Mansion I wrote up earlier on a visit to Miami. It has all the miles of corridors and rooms and crazy luxuries of the golden ages of decades past. It also has a website of it's own for those interested in hunting down facts and figures; goggle it and rejoice in what you find. Ours was a family visit, and pretty soon we found we had come at the wrong time of year, it was just too crowded:
The Biltmore House was supposed to exist as a working farm and it is still surrounded by acres of land. It is a major employer in Asheville, and it produces all manner of food products, not least wine:
The Mansion is the centerpiece of course with its heavy dark furniture, it's medieval tapestries, paintings and carvings.It brings a piece of Old Europe, to the wild rugged mountains of western North Carolina. Call it a civilizing influence, which wouldn't be exactly true, but the wealthy of years past wanted to take the fresh mountain air in the summer as much as the masses did. It is our good fortune the spires and towers are now open to all:
This immense block of granite is plunked down in the middle of the mountains with incredible views in all directions:
Inside, where photography is forbidden apparently there are miles of rooms worth viewing. We, the experienced visitors, decided to skip the formal tour and made a beeline for the basement where we figured only the hardiest visitors would penetrate after circling the drawing rooms and bedrooms in the floors above.
The basement is a world apart, long corridors lined with laundry rooms and sewing rooms, a bakery, a machine room with an electrical generator and a steam room with a heating plant. there's a two lane bowling alley and a magnificent tile lined swimming pool (empty) complete with diving platforms and submerged lights. And there are larders with meat, vegetables and fruit and cheese, bottling rooms and you name it, the farm provided it. And then there is my favorite room, the kitchen, a vast spacious room with a separate grill room and magnificent views out across the valley:
And there are the grounds which don't look at their best in my opinion on a twelve degree winter day be it ever so sunny:
What the flock of geese did on these wild cold nights I can't imagine. What we did was to leave the cafe area after a quick wine and chocolate tasting and a couple of purchases in the huge gift shop area (two bottles of Biltmore red actually). The crowds made it impossible to enjoy the Bistro which I had been looking forward to, farm produce in the Biltmore restaurant, but there we were. We went into Asheville instead to get cold and see the city, another essay entirely of course.
If you are in Asheville or riding this section of the Blue Ridge Parkway don't miss the Biltmore Mansion. I was frozen but still glad I went:
My joy is hard to discern I know. To those lighting candles, like my in-laws, Shalom...
...Happy Christmas to the rest. And may you be warmer than I am right now. Next year in the Keys, I say.
Unusually High Level Of STDs the banner headline of the local newspaper was screaming last night as we strolled into the grocery store. New Reports of Syphilis Oddly High continued the paper speaking of Buncombe county, of which Asheville is the seat. "Higher proportion of gays," my sister-in-law said laconically, as only a physician can when speaking of something as bizarre as syphilis. I guess that sums up Asheville's place in rural western North Carolina, oddly syphilictic. It is, though a divine city, one of those places whose fame precedes it and is becoming annoyingly popular, much to the chagrin of local residents:
My sister-in-law (the physician) hankers after a low income apartment in the middle of the city though with some chagrin my brother-in-law (a retired University professor) is forced to confess his income is low enough but he has too many assets. Perhaps the melt down will take care of that. These units are centered where people can walk to almost anything they need downtown:
"Good idea coming here," my wife said to me after we completed our first brief visit to the pile shown above. It's a house dating back to the First World War that was built for the pleasure of a man who,as far as I can tell was a confirmed bachelor. There is no mention in the literature of a Mrs James Dearing, so what we have here is the product of the fevered imaginations of four men.
Apparently the three designers, Messers Hoffman Suarez and Chalfin were charged by the Vice President of International Harvester with creating a villa that was to have appeared to have been lived in for 400 years but was actually constructed from scratch in two...The whole thing covered almost 200 acres on the shores of Biscayne Bay and included a farm modeled on an Italian village. All this extravagance lasted less than ten years for James Dearing who went to a better place (where, one wonders? He had Earthly homes in Chicago, New York Paris and here in pioneering Miami) in 1925.
Nowadays $10 gets a Dade county residence inside the grounds, and it costs other plebs from elsewhere fully fifteen dollars. However one might consider it well worthwhile if rococo limestone is to your taste:
Josh and Lisa appeared to find this place as fascinating as my wife and I did:
For some people the Viscaya mansion, named for a Spanish province, is just another day at the office:
In the literature this building is compared favorably to Hearst castle in California, which is not unreasonable given the emphasis on artistry and overly elaborate decorations. Personally I thought Viscaya looked quite a bit like the Biltmore estate in Asheville, North Carolina. However neither of the other famous mansions faces onto Biscayne Bay:
And it just so happens that James Dearing's private suite of rooms, upstairs inside the mansion happened to overlook this "venetian yacht harbor" a location that Josh thought might be quite the spot to lounge on the balcony and smoke a large cigar, his recurring fantasy:
The house apparently fell into some disrepair after the owner's death before it was opened to the public in 1953. Nowadays the place is quite magnificent and my pictures really don't do it justice. The place has to be seen, a magnificent courtyard in the center surrounded by a magnificent series of rooms decorated, over decorated perhaps for my taste with tapestries, paintings statuary and elaborate candelabras and chandeliers framed in gilt.
Lisa told me that National Geographic rated the gardens as the best formal gardens in North America, which is high accolades indeed,though I have no clue how one rates such things. There's no doubt the gardens that remain (the vegetable farm has long since disappeared) are outstanding and beautifully maintained. Apparently they represent classical European gardens adapted to the sub tropics which seems reasonable enough to me. Villa D'Este outside Rome should feel the competition, I think:
In the midst of this beauty we came across a wedding photographer doing his thing. We were quite surprised when the "groom" dashed past us, a child in an ill fitting man's suit. It seemed beyond his ability to have got the bride in the family way to have forced the issue of marriage on one so young...
Until we figured this was a Latin quinceanera, the celebration of a girl's fifteenth birthday to mark her accession to womanhood and all the responsibility that entails. Marriage would come later. Lisa started pondering what a young girl might do to top this event in this spectacular location when marriage in fact rears its head for her. "Can't do better than Viscaya," was the general sentiment. At which point the Latin inscription on the sundial comes into play:
Accept the gifts of the hour joyfully and relinquish them stoically, which it should be noted is easier said than done in real life. In our world jet aircraft speed us on our way at six hundred miles per hour, a speed that makes it easy for us not to notice the jewels in our midst.
I've known about this place for the better part of twenty years yet this was my first visit, thanks in part to too much jetting around. I hope it won't be my last.