Hearst Castle

Instead of an easy 2 hour drive down to Hearst Castle from Big Sur, the land-slip reported earlier forced us to take the long and 4 hour route via Highway 101, but we made it in time to take the rescheduled conducted tour of the state rooms at 2pm. The 'castle', which is now state managed, is the former home constructed by William Randolf Hearst in the late 19th and earl 20th centuries. He was a cattle baron and newspaper owner who controlled a lot of the politics of his day. He also loved to entertain Hollywood luminaries and overseas persona like Winston Churchill. Anyway, he had a dream and executed it to perfection to create something the British nobility would have loved to own in a spectacular mountainous location high above California's coastal plain. Have a look at these pictures and guess at the ego of someone who draped his walls with priceless European tapestries and 15th century pews taken from European churches; constructed wooden embossed ceilings and surrounded them with heraldic flags; built an indoor Roman baths complex, not to mention an outdoor Greek-style water feature; had a massive dining room like something out of Buckingham Palace; and a home theatre seating dozens of people. The outside looks a bit like a cathedral, and there cottages in the grounds for all his visitors - the cottages adopting a Mediterranean style and surrounded by Greek / Roman statues. The entire complex was supplied with meat and other produce grown in its gardens. The attached pictures give some impression of the place, which is a must-see for anyone on the US west coast. I regret it took me over 60 years to get there, but it was worth the wait.

AS