We only saw half of the mansion and that was pretty impressive. There’s some living rooms, some dining rooms, some bedrooms, some servant rooms, some storage rooms, a fitness room, two bowling alleys, big ass garden, etc. The room I liked the most was the library. It made me think of Belle’s library. It was so big and cosy! It had 2 levels and a beautiful spiral staircase to climb up. In the picture it’s on the left of the Christmas tree. Too bad you can’t see it that well. The ceiling in this room was also amazing. One big painting, as big as the room! They made it on 13 canvases and then stuck it to the ceiling like a puzzle. I can’t imagine all the work!

Talking about Christmas trees, there were 52 trees inside the mansion, if I remember correctly. All decorated differently. Very nice to see. Our tour lasted for two hours. When we finished, we checked out the souvenir shops. At noon, we went to their restaurant to have lunch, it was delicious. An hour later, we were finished and ready to pay. Right when we got the check, the fire alarm went off. Although we didn’t see or smell any smoke or fire, we had to get out until the fire department had cleared the building. We were lucky, we had already finished eating, but other people had to leave in the middle of lunch. I felt very sorry for them! The ones who got a hamburger or fries in a basket, took it with them, it was a funny sight. Others stayed at their table as long as possible, the waiting line to get out took a long time so no point in just standing there, right? We were the last ones in line and before we even got out of the room, it was declared safe again. Honest as we are, we went back to our table to pay our bill. I wonder how many people had left without paying...

Apparently the Bilmore Estate has a beautiful garden. Unfortunately it was freezing outside, so we didn’t feel like exploring it. We went back to the car and drove through the rest of the garden/ park. Closeby, still on the estate area, was a small ‘wine village’ with some shops, restaurants and wineshops and -tastings. The waiting line for the tasting was too long so we only did some window shopping.

In the late afternoon, we drove to an outdoor shopping mall nearby. It’s Black Friday y’all! And I was freezing in my raincoat, so why not check it out?! I found walking boots and a wintercoat! [heart-eyes-emoji]  I didn’t bring my wintercoat from Belgium because my host dad had said it doesn’t get that cold in Dallas but there I was, freezing in North Carolina. And to be honest, Dallas has had some pretty cold days as well already! 

For dinner we stopped at Pizza Hut on our way back to the hotel. Happy kiddo!