As some of you may know… Annette and I never actually got to go on a honeymoon when we got married. However one of our larger wedding presents was the promise of funding for such a venture should we ever find the time to do it. Well… okay maybe finding the time is the wrong way to put it. You see both Annette and I were “unemployed” when we got married and as such we didn’t want to take the chance that we might spend additional money that we didn’t have on something that seemed purely optional at the time.
After I found myself residing once again in the land of gainful employment… we couldn’t take one then either. As a contractor there were no paid days off for me and mandatory long weekends were far and few between. However around Thanksgiving the circumstances required for us to finally go on a honeymoon seemed to finally converge and we decided somewhere along the way to take a trip to Asheville, NC. For those of you who do not know, Asheville is quaint little town of historical located about 1.5 hours from Greenville. And like most historical towns things are old and for the most part overrated. My wife pushed hard for Asheville because she really wanted to visit the Biltmore Estate while we were there (as neither she nor I had seen it before). So we headed on up to Asheville on the weekend after Thanksgiving.
The first thing we did was book a room at a local Bed and Breakfast known as “The Lion and The Rose”. All in all this place was nothing short of absolutely spectacular. The room we stayed in (the most expensive one at the the top of the home on the 3rd floor) was absolutely exquisite and the gourmet breakfasts that were served were just wonderful. The proprietors were very nice people who had a real feel for the Asheville area. We also managed to meet some rather interesting people while we were there as well.
So what about the rest of Asheville you ask? Well there was a really nice Italian place called Vichenzos that we ate at on our first night there and it was just great. They had live music, a real hustling atmosphere, decent booze and some pretty good food to go along with it. The next morning we spent some time at a wonderful used bookstore on Montford that both the wife and I agreed was the best part of the trip….
WHOA! WAIT?!?!?! “The used bookstore was the best part of the trip”, I hear you ask. Yes. It was. Some of this has to do with the fact that the wife and I are both nerds who just love to read. Some more of it has to do with the fact that the rest of the trip started going downhill later in the day. After the bookstore we took the Asheville trolley tour which was pretty good. We stopped off at the Grove Park Inn restaurant “Chops” for lunch and while the view was stupendous… the food was merely okay (except the oyster soup which just rocked).
After the trolley ride, we cruised down to the Biltmore Estate. Yes ladies and gentlemen… this is where the trip went REALLY downhill. Apparently not only had we picked the busiest day of the year to visit the Biltmore, but we arrived at the Estate at 2:30pm on Saturday only to find that we weren’t going to be allowed into the house until 5:00pm. Okay so no big deal right? We’ll just wait…. in the freezing cold rain that was coming down as the rich pricks who own the place don’t provide any sort of enclosed waiting area (unless you count the gift shops, restaurant or restroom as an enclosed waiting area). So after getting cold and wet we decided to have a “bite to eat” at the restaurant (bite to eat == drink and soup while we played cards for an hour).
Finally at 5:00pm the long line into the house began to move. VINDICATION! However there was a number of slight problems that crept up at this point. 1) My stomach was not at all happy. It hadn’t been happy since the moment we set foot in Asheville. I truly honestly believe something in the water there didn’t like my bowels. Consequently I found myself taking a lot of bathroom breaks. 2) There were no public bathrooms in the stupid freaking Biltmore house. Yeah there are four floors (including the basement) and dozens upon dozens of rooms (including bathrooms) but the public was not good enough to use them apparently.
Oh and did I mention? A ticket to the stupid Biltmore house costs $40 a head! It cost us almost a hundred bucks just to step inside the front door and guess what else? They couldn’t be bothered to provide tour guides. Only about one out of three rooms actually had a member of the staff in there for the purpose of answering questions. Only one room in the whole house apparently had a staff member that didn’t appear to have a bad attitude and seemed happy to see people. What a great start eh? But it gets better…. every single room is supposed to be an authentic representation of how people lived in the late 19th century. The problem here is simple though: WHY DO ALL THE CHRISTMAS TREES AND GARLAND AND ROOMS HAVE ELECTRICAL LIGHTS? Didn’t people use candles for the most part back then? Authentic my ass.
But of course it gets even better…. You can’t take pictures while in the house because the flash might damage the stupid tapestries. Sigh…. (we left the camera at home though so this affect us personally). Oh and you are basically constrained to moving through the entire house in a single file line whose path is dictated by hundreds of stupid little red cordons. Yet apparently this line is really slow for reasons completely unknown to me even now. As people a) couldn’t take pictures and b) couldn’t ask people questions about a number of the rooms and c) didn’t have a tour guide to listen to - you’ve got to wonder what the freaking hold up was… and on top of all that every room pretty much starts looking the same after awhile. I mean it got really stupid as most rooms pretty much contained some decorations, tapestries, fake books (thats all I have to say about the so-called Library) and some fancy furniture that changes color from room to room. Needless to say we only completed about half of the tour before we decided to leave. It was raining when we left. The bus that took us back to different parking lots dropped us off at the wrong end of ours and we had to run in the cold rain back to the car. That sucked.
If you value your money, your sanity, your time, your health and your sense of pride - don’t waste your time with the Biltmore Estate. I can’t believe I haven’t heard anybody tell it like it is with this place before - but it is abysmally horrible. It doesn’t deserve a trip and even if it did it is certainly not worth the $40/head they have priced it out at. Keep in mind: this is only the tip of the iceberg. There is so many more things I could tell you… but can’t because I’m too lazy to type it all up right now.
After that we were so we went back to the bread and breakfast and ordered out for pizza. It was great. We fell asleep while watching TV soon.
All in all the honeymoon was great. It brought me and Annette closer together despite some of the hangups we experienced along the way. I definitely wish we had done this sooner though I’m not so sure that knowing what I know now that I would still make a trip to Asheville…. perhaps we could go somewhere that isn’t quite so overrated next time. :)