What A Week

This past week my parents and younger brother and sister were in town visiting for 5 days. It was a lot of fun and due to too many pictures in a few jam packed days and lack of time, I will only include a few details. The first few days we spent in Charleston. We toured the city, the Aiken-Rhett house, Drayton Hall Plantation, Provost Dungeon and Old Exchange Building, Fort Sumter, Calhoun mansion, went on a walking ghost tour, shopped at the market and ate out a lot. WHEW!! It was definitely a busy week to say the least.

I wanted to post this story about the Hunley, a submarine that was commissioned in July 1863 and never found until 1995, only four miles off the coast of Sullivan's Island (next to Charleston)..........ok so I just summed it up for you but really, read the caption that's on display at Ft. Sumter seen below.

On the ghost tour we walked through parts of downtown as we listened to (mostly) true ghostly Charleston lore. I loved every bit of it and most tour guides will tell a tourist anything because lets face it, tourists are gullible and will believe anything. But after we got home, Lance and I looked up the stories and indeed they are true. This picture is in the Circular Congregational Church graveyard. This is the oldest grave in Charleston, buried in 1695 (the round brick tombstone). In the 17th century all of the building material was brick because stone had to be imported from Europe, therefore this unusual tombstone was made of brick. (Just FYI, most buildings downtown have stucco over the brick with lines scored in the stucco to give the appearance of stone). I thought this was so cool to see the oldest grave in the city, way awesome!
Do you see the sign with the arrow pointing to the brick wall? This is part of the original brick wall that surrounded the city in 1703 and is located underneath the Provost Dungeon. The city was eight square blocks, had a mote and a draw bridge and the wall was primarily for protection. I found it unbelievable that something so historic is still around over three centuries later.

Thursday we drove up to Asheville, NC to pick up my sister at the airport and toured the Biltmore Estate. Yes, ginormous doesn't even come close to describing this house and because its so large, I couldn't fit it all in one picture.

This is the largest privately owned home in America built by George Vanderbilt completed in 1895. He inherited all his money from his father and grandfather who made their money in the railroad industry. George's father was a brilliant businessman, doubling his fortune in only 8 years and in today's money that calculates to over 96 billion...............in 8 years.....................can you imagine? The house is 175,000 square feet or 4 acres, whichever way you want to look at it. His property sat on 125,000 acres and he planted over 3 million trees. The house was equipped with all the 19th-century novelties such as elevators, forced-air heating, centrally-controlled clocks, fire alarms and an intercom system. I must say it is expensive to visit, but this is our second time going and definitely well worth the trip. It's astonishing and completely mind boggling. It's definitely something you have to see in person because the grand size and detail of every nook and cranny has to be viewed in person, pictures don't do it justice. This is a sneak peak of a picture of the grand dining hall I found on the internet (pictures are not allowed in the house so it wasn't my camera).

The three amigos - me, Scott, and Christine - we had an awesome time together!

Waiting for Mom and Dad to get done shopping at the gift shop.

My mom and dad on the bus ride back to the parking lot from the Biltmore. I think Dad got a second wind of energy.