Thursday, July 17, 2008

Hearst Castle!

Last week while my cousins were here my sister Callie, my cousin Christina and I planned to go to Hearst Castle (an amazing mansion located build by William Randoph Hurst, who was a big newspaper man in the late 1800's, on a hill top along highway 1 close to San Simeon about an hour north of San Luis Obispo) anyway the Hearst family donated the "castle to the state of California and they give tours of it. It is popular tourist destination in our area and since I haven't been in about 10 years I decided it was the perfect opportunity to go. Turns out Thursday morning on the way to meet Callie and Christina at the castle I, my body decided it was time for a change of plans...and I had to pull over and be sick on the side of the road....so I called Callie who was already there and asked her to have the ticket agent exchange my pre-paid ticket for one for Tuesday of the next week instead. So Tuesday I headed out for my solo visit to Hearst castle (since it was a last minute change of plans everyone I invited couldn't go) which I was ok with. I decided when I order they tickets to try tour number 2 which I had never been on before. It was an adventure. Here 5 highlights from my journey:
1. I was the only person waiting in line to board the bus when I first arrived but fortunately a couple who were on their honeymoon joined me shortly. We got to linger and ask questions alot more since there were only 3 of us.
2. On the bus ride up to the castle they play this happy music that reminded me of Disney land that really put me in the mood for a good time.
3. When we arrived at the castle and began our tour we started with the outdoor pool but on the other side from where tour 1 starts. There were 3 deck chairs arranged by the pool that we got to SIT ON...I could almost imagine I was lounging by my gigantic, amazingly cool pool.
4. Our tour guide kept sharing with the young man in our group (the one who just got married and who is from Quebec and speaks french) the Spanish words for things...and the poor french guy kept being like "cool" and looking slighly confused as to why he was doing that. Our tour guide didn't quite get it, I mean come on the guy is French not Spanish and it seemed he was having a hard enough time following everything in english.
5. Our tour guide thought I was hilarious, smart and very witty. When he pointed out that Hearst was building this castle during the depression, and I said that it must have been nice for the local economy to have so much work...he just about died, how could I be so clever...wow...what kind of people are normally going on these tours?
So if anyone ever is visiting the central coast, give me a call and we'll visit the castle together it's a great time!

2 comments:

Myriah Cohen said...

I don't get it. The economy isn't funny. That last comment you made didn't seem funny to me. Maybe it was the way you said it.

I think you are a very funny person, but I think this tour guide was a little too easy to please.

Anyway, THREE PEOPLE?! That sounds AMAZING! Lucky you, man, three people is great. It was like your very own tour. That's like my dream.

Also, how lucky that you got a crazy tour guide! They always make the visit a lot more fun. You never know what they are going to say. I went once, and my tour guide kept saying, "terr" instead of "tour" and it was hilarious.

Anyway, I'm pretty jealous right now. I hope you took lots of pictures.

Tara said...

Yeah it really wasn't a funny comment but I don't think really any of the other comments I made were that funny...I just used this example to illustrate how easy to please this guy was. As far as pictures go unfortunately my camera was almost full...from family reunion but I did take about 20 excellent photos so I made the best of it. I'm not sure if our almost private tour was luck of the draw but you might try going one of the upper tours (not #1 since it is always full) at 9:20am on a week day.