After our tour we left the grounds to go eat dinner in downtown Asheville which proved to be an adventure. We kept driving up and down the main street in search of two restaurants recommended to us, and after realizing that we could not find either one we decided to just park and walk around to see what we could find. What was directly in front of us as soon as we parked the car? The restaurant that we had been looking for - it was right in front of us the whole time! I should have known that would be a sign of things to come later in the evening....After dinner we headed back to the Biltmore grounds for our candlelight tour of the house. I love how every room is completely decorated for Christmas - it is beautiful! No pictures are allowed to be taken inside the house, so we got there early so we could take a bunch of pictures outside first. The front lawn had a huge Christmas tree with a circle of smaller Christmas trees around it with speakers and Christmas music playing only loud enough to hear once you made it over to that part of the lawn. Since I am completely unfamiliar with how to use my camera (I only recently entered the digital age!) Lindsay was showing me what all the different settings on my camera could do. I ended up with some really funny looking pictures but I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of when I need to use what setting to get a better looking picture. I definitely have a lot to learn!
After we were done taking pictures outside, it was time for us to enter the house for our tour. Pretty simple, right? So this is where I have my dumb moment for the day. (Yes, dumber than not seeing a restaurant right in front of my face!) I put our tickets in the inner pocket of my jacket (since I had gloves and a hat in my regular pockets) and made a big production about how our tickets would be safe there. When we were walking back up the drive towards the house, I noticed some folded paper on the ground (our tickets are printed out on an 8x10 piece of paper by the way, which I had folded to fit into my "secret" pocket) but didn't think much about it and kept on walking. While we were waiting by our Nutcracker friend to enter the house, I reached in my pocket for the tickets to find that it was empty. No tickets!
At this point we had covered a lot of ground taking lots of pictures and so it would seem hopeless. However, I remembered the folded paper that I had seen on the drive about 30 minutes prior - it had to be our tickets! Now why I didn't look at the paper the first time I saw it on the ground or why I remembered that I had glanced down and seen it at that moment is beyond me, but I took off in a sprint down the long drive to see if by some miracle the paper was still there. It was still there and it was our tickets. I don't know if Lindsay was more surprised that I managed to lose or tickets or subsequently find them, but since this story had a happy ending it was pretty funny! (We were also planning to come back to the estate on Sunday to tour the winery and farm, and had our tickets actually been lost, we would not have been able to re-enter the property so our Sunday plans would have been ruined as well.) We made it to the doors of the house right on time for our entry (there is timed entry during the peak season) and got to see the ballerinas perform in the winter garden before touring the rest of the house.The following morning we ate breakfast and then were off to the Biltmore grounds again. The whole weekend I kept misplacing things (my keys, my hat, my gloves, my sunglasses...pretty much everything which isn't really like me) so when the kid working the register gave me back my change and I knew it was wrong I doubted myself for awhile before politely asking if I could have my correct change. He kept telling me I was wrong and I was almost ready to break out a calculator for him until he finally realized that he was counting it wrong and corrected the problem. He almost had me convinced that I was wrong until logic kicked it and I realized that if my total ended in .19 and I gave him .25 there was no way I should end up with 90 cents in change in my pocket!
We started the day off with a tour of the River Bend Farm and then did a tour and wine tasting at the winery. I had never been down to the farm area of the estate and it was beautiful. We also got to see some baby animals (and a one month old cow which for some reason I thought was a goat - go figure!)
I'm so glad that Lindsay and I got to not only see this absolutely gorgeous place, but got to spend some time together as well. We're going through a very similar situation right now (very different causes, but both with the same outcome) so it was especially good timing to get to hang out in person. We only live 3 hours apart, but we definitely don't get to see each other as often as I would like so I'm really glad that we got to have such a fun weekend together!
No comments:
Post a Comment