Gargoyles drinking Wine

Posted by Linda J Bottjer Aug 22, 2007

If you have already read a recent article, then you will have learned the best way to take on the Estate (the largest private home in the USA) is by starting early and wearing comfortable shoes. I am not kidding – this place is HUGE!

Even at that – I have a suggestion for more radical approach. Not sure the Biltmore folks will go for it – but hey I am just making a well thought out observation here.

They need to rent out litters. Not of kittens or puppies. Oh please!

Litters are also known as sedan chairs, palkhi or gama, depending on where in the world you come from.

Wrinkling your brow trying to remember how they work? You sit in a snug little single compartment, and are carried around by two guys with long poles. It was used for centuries by royalty and rich folk to bypass the great, unwashed rabble (meaning most of our ancestors)

Not that Biltmore has a stinking tourist trade – but when you think of how much shoe leather is required to see it all – the sedan chair premise is sound.

Seriously, for your $40.00 entrance fee, inside the mansion, you currently get to climb stairs and more stairs and see much of the Upstairs/Downstairs life during the Gilded Age. From gargoyles to grand dames you ascend and descend. Not that most of us could not use more exercise in our lives – but after a certain age, the “snap, crackle and pop” of one’s knees, hips or other assorted joints makes one desire a young blood to whisk us around. And as we baby boomers, yes even those of us born at the tail end of the generation, add more and more Omega 3 in with our daily vitamin count – this idea gets better and better.

Come on –‘fess up now!

How many of you have not at the end of a long and tiring day, of dragging your body around an attraction, have not gazed enviously at some sleeping toddler comfortably sprawled out in a stroller?

See?

You are beginning to see the merit behind my idea.

Let me crank it another level. By suggesting the laying in of individual supplies.

All that sightseeing makes one thirsty and hungry.

Imagine surveying the massive Italian gardens with a nice chilled sparkling wine and a lovely goat cheese crudités? I think it sounds divine, and could be a big crowd pleaser.

Prior to your visit you could peruse the online menu and order anything from beer nuts and Cheetos with a cold draft to hot empanadas with a deeply rich red wine.

Now I realize there are plenty of dining options at the Biltmore. Yes, their winery is fabled, the products are award winning, and it is one of the country’s most visited. But once again – I am selling the package of the whole dream.

That each of us in some small way can - for once in their lifetimes - be the Grand Poobah!

Slap down your money and for a few hours be treated like a Queen or King. Cares will slip away, and you will return to your seemingly humdrum existence refreshed and ready to conquer anything.

Biltmore… are you listening?