Somewhat laid back day yesterday - after sleeping in until about noon, Eric showed me around Abingdon and the surrounding area. We drove up to the top of the 2nd highest mountain in Virginia. It was a pretty view. We also drove through Emory & Henry.
I left Abingdon this morning and drove down to Asheville. Only thing on the schedule was to check out the Biltmore Estate. I stayed at the Inn on the Biltmore Estate about 12 years ago for the end-of-summer celebration of my internship program with PricewaterhouseCoopers. But, for some reason, I don't think we ever did a tour of the house. That seems odd to me. Anyway, the estate is still privately owned by the Vanderbilt family, but is open to the public in order to generate the revenue to maintain the house. It's a $59 entrance fee and then an additional $10 for the audio tour. I did do the audio tour and I'm glad I did. There was very little information about each room without it. Now, I had an option to do a Volksmarch around the grounds, but from my research, it seemed pretty strenuous and was all about the gardens and whatnot - not my thing. So I skipped the Volksmarch and just toured on my own.
The house is gorgeous - one of the largest I've visited. And since it's stayed in the family since it was built, all of the furniture is original. Some of the fabrics are reproductions since the originals deteriorated over time. Only a fraction of the rooms are open. Apparently there are about 250 rooms in the mansion, but the tour only takes you past or through about 50 of them. There are some additional guided tours that go to other areas of the house, like the behind-the-scenes-life-of-a-servant tour. But $70 was expensive enough for me.
After I finished my tour of the house, I drove over to the little village that they have created on the estate. Pretty sure that none of that was there 12 years ago. There's a little museum, the wine shop, a bistro, a pub, a creamery, and a little park, in addition to some stuff for kids. It's a cute little area, definitely revenue generating. The museum, wine tasting, and kids activities are included in the price of admission. If you so desire, you can taste up to about 20 wines with your admission. I tried 8. There are an additional 12 or so premium wines that you can taste for an additional fee. I tried 3 - one of them was a Russian River Valley Pinot Noir. I absolutely fell in love with Russian River Valley Pinot Noirs out in California.
I visited the museum, which was an interesting history of this branch of the Vanderbilts, and then went over to the pub for a local beer and some fried cheese curds. I hung out there for a while chatting with the bartender for a bit and then finally headed over to my airbnb reservation for the night.
I have this cute little cottage all to myself - 2 bedrooms, one bath, kitchen, laundry facilities, and living room with cable. It's super adorable. But it's cold here at night! It was actually pretty chilly here during the day too - I don't think it ever got above 70 degrees. But I'm looking forward to curling up and sleeping well tonight. Tomorrow I get to see one of my cruise friends!!
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