After we were all tired of Solvang souvenir shops, we headed North for our hotel in San Simeon. When we got to the hotel, Kate suggested we go to the beach for sunset and just to get some walking in after a long driving day.
Glen and I forgot to bring any sort of warm clothes figuring it to be Summer. We brought swimsuits, not sweaters. I guess all of CA isn't so warm though because we definitely needed my security blanket out there. (Security blanket information: I don't sleep well sans Glen, so I needed to bring a blanket I'm accustomed to sleeping with to feel somewhat comfortable.) The mistake made for cute photos though ;) and they're again from Bryan Flores -- his photos for the trip and professionally speaking are linked at the beginning of my Solvang post here.
After we were done at the beach, we headed back to the hotel for some girl's night fun in one of our rooms. We had a devotional by Kate about letting our light shine for all to see with cute handouts and the Spirit. It was beautiful and quiet before the violent murders took place. From the game Murder. I had never played this game before -- Mafia, sure, but not murder. Whoever gets the ace of spades is murderer and has to wink secretively at everyone else (to kill them) without getting caught. To be nice to the murderer, the murdered has to wait a few seconds to keel over so it's less suspicious. We played until midnight when I rigged the game for the last of the girls to be deemed murderer and that was the end. Kate was beat from driving the whole way and we all had to get up early to grab breakfast, check out, and get to Hearst Castle for our tour!
Look up Hearst Castle if you don't know what it is; I had no idea what it was before this trip. And just a P.S., that bathtub in the picture on the right is one of my new ideas for a future Gray Estate.View and all.
This place took up the last 28 years of Hearst's life and it is an unfinished structure. He hired a female architect, which was crazy back then, and they worked on it together the whole way. He kept changing his mind about it and that's why it was never completed. I guess when you have that much money it doesn't really matter though. The construction stuff isn't from the unfinished nature of the project, they're in the process of re-roofing.
Here's my bathtub. Except it will be more comfortable and have less of a what-is-going-on-in-this-art feel.
This is a sarcophagus. He has nine. I'm pretty sure he had too much money... I admit I could be wrong though. It just seems like so much to be spending selfishly. Again, the possibility of my being wrong is present, but he did make this castle for his mistress (he had a wife and children). So, there's that.
The land was purchased over several years by his parents and he developed on this hill after it was vested to him in the early 1900's. The houses alone are more than 90,000 square feet altogether! How can you have clutter with so much space? The land though, guys! 250,000 acres including 14 miles of coastline! Just insane.
Oh yeah, and this is my new pool idea -- mostly for the raised diving platform. I'm thinking some sort of non-slip trampoline type thing. Probably something like the people who set up for American Ninja Warrior qualifiers use. I am overwhelmed with excitement.
The indoor pool (above) is where the bus picks you up when you're done exploring/touring. Oh yeah, did I mention he had a zoo? With polar bears and crap? His guests were allowed to do whatever they wanted during the day and required to congregate for drinking and dinner later in the evening and night.
Most of the tour, all I could think was how cluttered it felt. So much stuff just everywhere. I don't like that. He was really in need of a purge to get the non-necessities of life out. Especially since he experienced financial issues toward the end.
Part 2 of San Simeon is filled with weird things.
Aloha.
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