Hearst Castle

Thursday, July 10 - We arrived in San Simeon right on time for our 4pm tour at Hearst Castle. It took about 4 hours down the 101 freeway from San Francisco - such a great change of pace compared to the coastal switchback driving of the previous 2 days!

Sandy was all juiced up to see the home of William Randolph Hearst. One of his many vacation homes, actually. It was about a 5-mile drive by bus up the mountain from the Visitor Center to the Castle. We took Tour 1, which is essentially “Hearst Castle for Beginners.” Our tour guide Shawn was a nice guy, but liked to hear himself talk WAY too much. He definitely wanted to impress that he was THE authority on Mr. Hearst. Unfortunately, that was to the detriment of the tour, which lacked some of the detailed stats and information on the house, which we had hoped to hear.

Despite that, however, the Castle is amazing. You could definitely come back several times and take the different tours and see tons more. The scale of the place is amazing, and when you enter the main house - the “Casa Grande” - you really feel like you are in a European castle.
The crowd taking the tour with us was also an interesting - and diverse - crew. We had guys right of their Harleys, pierced and tattooed kids, and several international visitors. The guide (who had a security guard with him also), told us specifically not to touch anything and stay on the tour mats and not walk on the bare floors, but of course he had to ask one of the dudes to please not lean on the huge, priceless marble urn.

All in all, we loved seeing the place, and stayed to watch the 40-minute film afterwards called “Hearst Castle: Building the Dream.” Sandy suggested I take the photos from my apartment renovation last year and make it into a film called “Apt #12C: Building the Dream.”

The last thing we saw on the tour was his indoor pool, which was complete with byzentine design and tiles with gold leaf. The guide said that most of Hearst's guests couldn't swim, so this ended up being the employee's pool, or as one of his guests once said, "The nicest place to drown."

Almost forgot to mention: We saw that they were setting up for some big dinner event on one of the patios of the castle. The guide told us it was $1250/plate. When we turned on the TV back in our hotel room, they were covering the event on the 11pm news. It was the 24th Annual Central Coast Wine Classic. Maybe next year.