Birthday Bash: The Biltmore (Plan B)

 

Last Thursday I started telling you about our birthday trip, and then I took a break for all the weekend posts. Kind of mean, wasn’t it? Start a trip and then immediately take a break? Well, I’m back today with the next bit of the story.

            As I mentioned on Thursday, the whole reason for this trip was to visit the Biltmore. We received gifted tickets, so we built this trip around that. I should tell you from the start that this day was when Plan B launched into full effect.

            When Lynnette and I went to the Biltmore 12 years ago (almost to the day) one thing I remembered was that the house is not air conditioned and that it started to get pretty toasty as the day heated up. Thankfully we had arrived when they first opened, and we were through the house by late morning – before the day heated up miserably. I told Ryan we needed to be sure to do the same.

            So we got up, had breakfast at the hotel, hopped in the car and drove to the Biltmore. 

The nice lady who scanned our gifted tickets at the entrance asked if we planned to leave the property and come back, and we told her no. She reminded us that our tickets would not permit us to enter once we left, and then she sent us on our merry way. We parked walked up to the photo opp area and were thrilled to find that there weren’t too many people there yet, so we could get some good pictures.

            (If you haven’t been to the Biltmore before, there is a whole viewing area at the opposite end of the lawn from the mansion, so you can get pictures of/with the building from a distance. Here are pictures from my visit with Lynnette and from the time Ryan and I visited at Christmas!)

            We did our pictures and skipped merrily toward the house for our tour. We went through security and made our way to the front door. The gentleman there asked about our timed entry.

            Say what?

            “When is your entry time? It’s on your ticket.”

            I told him we didn’t have a timed entry, and he asked to see our tickets to prove me wrong. I handed him the tickets and, in fact, he was wrong. There wasn’t a time on there. Unfortunately, we still needed one of those.

            You see the Plan B coming into effect, don’t you?

            I had read the website before we came, but apparently, I didn’t read far enough into the FAQs to know I needed a timed entry. And no one who had checked our tickets leading up to the front door had noticed or mentioned it. I knew we had needed one at Christmas for the candlelight tour. I did not remember needing one when Lynnette and I came 12 years ago. The front door gentleman sent us to Guest Services, where the very sweet and apologetic lady told us that the soonest we could get in that day was 2:30 p.m.

            It was 9 a.m.

            To my credit, I did not cry, but I was so sad in my heart. What in the world would we do on a blistering hot day, waiting around until mid-afternoon? We couldn’t leave and come back. We’d already been told that!

            We took a couple of minutes for me to regroup and decided to walk around the grounds. Ryan had never seen the beautiful gardens and trails, because we came in the winter last time! So we set out to see all the beauty, and it was indeed stunning. Here are just a few of our pictures!

            It took us a couple of hours to see all this, and then we made our way to the courtyard to get some coffee. (Hot for Ryan, iced for me.) We hid away in a very shaded corner and people-watched while we formulated a new plan.

            We decided not to stay until our tour time. I’ve seen the inside twice, and Ryan has seen it once, and we decided we would just call it a day with a tour of the grounds. We had made enough use of the tickets to feel good about it.

            While I shopped for our ornament souvenir, Ryan found a new lunch plan for us, and we made our way back to our car and off to lunch.

            We went to Juicy Lucy’s, which was something else he’d seen on TV. It’s known for its burgers and milkshakes, and we tried both!

            Ryan got the Juicy Lucy, and I got a salad – and both were delicious.

            When lunch was over, we split a Snickers milkshake, which was SO GOOD. (Milkshakes are my downfall. I could drink one every minute of every day.)

            Totally recommend if you’re in the area!

            And so began our plan B portion of the trip...which was basically the rest of the trip.