Biltmore Estate: View of the gardens from the terrace
December 31, 2015
May 2, 2015
Biltmore Estate Gardens: September 8, 2013
January 20, 2015
Japanese anemones
The greenhouse
Dahlias
Pond
Sunflower
Mums in the Biltmore Gardens
November 20, 2014
October 18, 2014
"Tipping isn't just for cows" - Farm Burger in Asheville
April 12, 2014
This is the tip jar...
...at Farm Burger in Asheville, where we got our dinner last Saturday.
The burgers are wonderful, and the restaurant is nice...
...but the weather was beautiful so we got our hamburgers to go and sat in the sunshine in a park.
Biltmore Estate: Late fall
November 12, 2013
Last Friday, we drove up to Asheville to see daughter in the UNC-Asheville Dance Concert. Dear husband took the day off so we had the whole afternoon to wander around the Biltmore Estate. It was a beautiful afternoon!
I'm usually very much against public Christmas decorations* before Thanksgiving, but I know that the Biltmore house has a lot of Christmas tours to do so they start early (the tours get really crowded in December)(Hint we got from someone who works there - go at about 4 pm. The day tourists are mostly done, but the Candlelight tours haven't started yet). Here, they have the outside Christmas tree up.
The greenhouse was beautiful as usual:
Bird of paradise
Wreath made of...
...epiphytes and succulents
The greenhouse roof
The orchids were beautiful:
The paperwhites smelled wonderful!
Very large ferns
* I don't care if people decorate their own houses that early - I just don't care for it in stores.
Dough
November 11, 2013
Dough is my favorite bakery/cafe in Asheville, NC. This is what part of their bread display looked like last Saturday:
"Growth of the New Gods" - Mel Chin
September 22, 2013
The grapes are made out of basketballs, and the leaves are made from basketball nets. This sculpture by Mel Chin is at the Asheville Art Museum:
Hummus at the West End Bakery in Asheville
September 15, 2013
When we were in Asheville a few weeks ago, we had lunch at the West End Bakery. I tried hummus for the first time a few years ago there. It was wonderful, although, unfortunately, the hummus I've tried from other places, while good, is never as good as it is there. Here's the hummus we got three weeks ago:
Here's the inside of the bakery,...
...the stained glass window in front,..
...and the quilt on the wall.
Biltmore Garden Video
September 11, 2013
When we were in Asheville for our early anniversary trip last weekend, we spent Sunday at the Biltmore Estate. The gardens are beautiful right now - there's so much blooming and so much color that it was like walking through a box of crayons. Here's the video I took (I'm still getting used to the camera so it took a few seconds to stop recording at the end):
Wandering in Asheville last weekend - Downtown
September 09, 2013
Dear husband and I went for an early anniversary trip.* We had breakfast at the City Bakery early Saturday morning, and then we wandered around downtown Asheville before all the stores opened. I enjoyed doing this when I was visiting daughter back in June. It's calm and peaceful, you can really see the architecture because there are fewer people and cars, and the people downtown, in some ways, are more diverse than later in the day.
You can't take a photo down Lexington Ave. later in the day.
Dear husband took this photo of a sunflower on Wall St. (I'm too short to get this angle for the photo).
At Blue Goldsmiths in the Flatiron Building on Wall St.
In the window of La Magia on Battery Park Ave. If you click on the photo to get a larger version, you can see that the knights on the left side are llamas.
Pigeon time by the Basilica of St. Lawrence
The statues closer up
* Because it's warmer in September than in mid-February.