festival of flowers!

i hope you are ready for pictures! it is officially the festival of flowers at the biltmore. mom and dad made it down on friday and we spent the afternoon at the biltmore. we took a "behind the scenes" tour at the house and the winery and in between those tours we visited the gardens and the conservatory. the weather was beautiful and we were able to get some fantastic pictures. i took the new camera jay and i bought for christmas and played with a few different settings. we were very thankful the wind and rain held off.

my favorite flower is the tulip and there was definitely no shortage of them. i have always wanted to go see the tulip gardens and now it is much more convenient, since they are just down the road. there is so much to see at the biltmore, that it is impossible to see it all at once.

after we were done with our day, jay was finished with work so we met him and ate at one of our favorite little mexican restaurants, don papa's. then it was back to the apartment and we were all tired and ready for bed.

(remember if you click on a picture, it will open larger in a new window!)

i still cannot imagine living in a house like this now, much less at the turn of the 20th century.

the servants' entrance. in this courtyard, also, is the depositories for the coal for the furnaces.

the architecture is beautiful. george vanderbilt also had his copper flashing gold-plated, for a double color effect after it oxidized so you would still be able to read his initials and see the acorn trees in the larger pieces of flashing.

we were on a balcony for this picture. this is the top of the atrium/solarium in the house.

if you look above the window, you can see the G. and V. carved into the stone.

all of the stone was carved after it was on the house. the stone work took a total of 6 years to complete and was left up to the artists doing the carving.

this is my favorite picture from the entire day.

they have beautiful hydrangeas in the conservatory, along with many other flowers and trees.

beautiful orchids

the pineapple tree had two little pineapples growing!

the daffodils were blooming along with the tulips.

the conservatory is just as artistically made as the house.

this is only one side of the garden.

dad took this one of me on the other side.

i loved the "black" tulips growing tall in the back of all of these.