A horse-drawn trailer carries a 34-foot live Fraser fir to the front doors of the Biltmore House in Asheville, N.C., Nov. 2, 2007. (Bill Sanders/The Asheville Citizen-Times)

Asheville’s Biltmore to reopen

North Carolina’s Biltmore Estate will soon reopen after being forced to close by Hurricane Helene. The popular tourist destination in Asheville plans to open and “celebrate the joy of the holiday season” on Nov. 2. North Carolina’s largest mountain city was left largely isolated by Helene, as many of the main routes into Asheville were washed away or blocked by mudslides. According to the Biltmore, the 8,000-acre property was impacted very little. The 1895 estate is anchored by a 250-room French chateau built at the direction of George Vanderbilt and is the largest privately owned home in the United States, drawing about 1.4 million visitors a year.

Associated Press

A woman enters the secret annex at the Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam. (Peter Dejong/The Associated Press)

Anne Frank in NYC

A full-scale replica of Anne Frank’s Secret Annex is opening in New York City, the Anne Frank House museum announced. For the first time in history, visitors outside the Netherlands will get a chance to walk through an exact re-creation of the cramped space where the wartime diarist and seven other people evading the persecution of Jews in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam lived. ”Anne Frank: The Exhibition,” is set to open on Jan. 27 — International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Visitors will learn more about the Jewish teenager who died in a concentration camp at age 15 and became known as a symbol of resilience and strength.

New York Daily News

Inaugural hotels sold out

Travelers are confidently betting that they’ll see their candidate’s hand on the Bible on Inauguration Day. They’re splurging on big-ticket travel to Washington, D.C., for the week leading up to Jan. 20, 2025, when either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will be sworn in. A majority of the city’s luxury hotels appear to be fully sold out from Jan. 14-21. Only a handful have remaining availability — at gangbuster prices. The Kimpton Hotel Monaco has rates from $2,800 a night, the nearby Sofitel is charging upward of $1,400 and the Ritz-Carlton Georgetown is going for around $1,700.

Bloomberg News

Gate lice picked off

Impatient passengers may be in for a rude awakening the next time they try to line up early. American Airlines is piloting a system to flag when people attempt to board before their group has been called — passengers often referred to as “gate lice.” American said that when someone tries to board with the wrong group, its software gives an “audible signal” and shows the gate agent a message with the correct group. The airline has tested the technology at the Albuquerque and Tucson airports and will expand soon to other locations. Delta Air Lines does not use any boarding enforcement technology, but said it switched its system this year to board by numbered zones “to bring more clarity” to the process. United Airlines said, “Our gate agents monitor the boarding process.”

Washington Post