Castles in the Sky: A Biltmore Love Story

For a boy from Boston, the Biltmore Hotel always felt like something out of a dream—a castle in the sky imagined long before it was ever seen. When I first arrived in Coral Gables, its tower called to distant places: Sevilla, La Giralda, the Spanish poetry I loved, and the romantic vision George Merrick once carried. Merrick came from nearby Duxbury, Massachusetts, not far from where I grew up.

Years earlier, I studied in Sevilla, near La Giralda, which inspired the Biltmore’s tower a century ago. I never imagined the hotel would become the backdrop of our lives.
I came once. Then again. And again—each visit revealing something new, something familiar, something that felt like home.
I proposed to Florencia at the Biltmore.
We were married there in 2007.
In a way, the Biltmore married itself to us.
We found a 1925 home nearby, and our children grew under its shadow—First Communion celebrations at Fontana, family pancake breakfasts at the 19th Hole, golf lessons, and countless moments woven into our family story.
In a hundred years, a building survives because of its architecture.
But its soul survives because of its stories.
Ours is just one.
But for us, the Biltmore isn’t a hotel.
It’s where our poetry lives.

Happy Centennial!