Sunday 30 September - day 40 - to Asheville

We've left Tennessee now - back into North Carolina.
Today's first stop was a visit to the Biltmore Estate.  It's an outrageously huge building and estate in North Carolina.  It's the most visited private building in the USA - to give you an idea, number 2 is Graceland.
Publicly, I did the expected 'yes it was lovely' thing afterwards.
Privately I thought it was a beautiful fake.  If I want to see a 16th century French chateau, I'll go to France.  If you want to see pictures, follow the link above - I'm not wasting bandwidth on them.

Next stop was Chimney Rock.  You can drive to an area at the bottom of the rock, and then there are two ways up.  One way is to walk up 400-odd steps.  The other is to walk through a tunnel and then catch a lift - both cut through the rock.
We stupidly walked - it was good exercise but my ankle still doesn't want me to do stuff like that - it doesn't hurt at the time but instead swells up badly afterwards.  Anyway, it was well worth the walk.

First though - this is part of a mural in the ladies toilet - this is in one of the cubicles but the whole place is painted up in this style - it's just lovely:

We walked up lots of steps.....

 Lots and lots of steps!

 It was a bit of a struggle.....

 But we made it to the top!

 We walked up from this car park!

 And it was completely worth it - this is just an example of the view!