Debbie & Clay's Road Trips with Bob: Chihuly at Night at Biltmore

1. Sole d'Oro 2017 in front of Biltmore House

1. Sole d'Oro 2017

We attended Chihuly at Night at Biltmore in Asheville, NC on the final night of the show. So, anything I have to report here now is of little use to anyone reading! I'll still go ahead and urge a visit to Biltmore or Asheville if convenient as they're amazing and beautiful. I'd suggest seeing Chihuly glass works anywhere you have the chance as it is stunning. We almost didn't go because one it ran all summer and it is too hot! It was still summer heat on October 7! The other reason was it was summer and the sun set so late. We were able to get a 7:45pm entry for the final week or so of the show. It was worth it even though our tickets were just over $80pp. That did include daytime entry to Biltmore Estate as well. If we had planned better for example, we could have returned on October 8 and done something else like the segway tours of the park. So not getting full value from our tickets was on us.

2. Sky Blue and Cobalt Fiori 2017

So it is about a 4 hour drive each way between here and there. We drove for about an hour in Asheville. That was 9 hours of driving on a single tank of gas! Clay continues to love the Kia Niro PHEV. We recently had a level 2 charger installed and that has made charging much more convenient. Other than the 4 gallons of gas Clay replaced from the trip down to Grifton this was the first tank of gas he'd burned since purchasing the car in May.

3. Laguna Torcello II 2018

There was a surprising amount of traffic everywhere we were the entire time. We had forgotten about Columbus Day on the 8th and wonder if that was a factor. Clay believes it is just that NC has become too populous! Biltmore on our arrival on the 7th after 4:30pm was like the State Fair or something. It was crazy crowded.

We stayed at Comfort Inn Biltmore West for the reason only that we redeemed a free night there with half our available loyalty points. It was a bit out of the way but free and a clean, quiet, large room off the freeway with a complimentary breakfast buffet. It was a great value.

4. Float Boat 2017

We had an early dinner/late brunch at White Labs. We didn't love it. We shared a pizza and a dessert. Clay had a beer. We probably could have just eaten at the Stables area of Biltmore instead.

It took us less time than forecast to drive there and park and walk to the house and exchange our tickets for wristbands. It was so hot we minimized activity and sat in the Stables area and had a root beer, a big bottle of water and a brownie hot fudge sundae! Then we moved to the terrace side of the house for sunset. It wasn't a great sunset.

5. Niijima Floats 2018

After sunset we started the Chihuly garden portion touring, at 7:45pm we did the first floor of the house portion of the tour for 2 Chihuly installations before returning to finish with the walled garden portion. After that we returned to the car and drove to Antler Hill Village in the park to see the last 2 Chihuly pieces installed there. There were 16 separate installions to visit and the oldest was from 1996, 2 from 2014 and 1 from 2015 and the rest were 2017-2018.

6. Palazzo Ducale Tower 1996

We enjoyed it! We almost didn't go because the TV ads looked too much to me like Chihuly Garden and Glass which we had visited in Seattle. But these were mostly new works made for this temporary installation. I would highly recommend Chihuly Garden and Glass if you're ever in Seattle.