Day 187 Morro Bay
Trip Start
May 07, 2008
1
199
205
Trip End
Nov 22, 2008
Morro Bay,
California,
United States
Sunday, November 9, 2008
As indicated yesterday, we re-booked in for another night stay over here near the beach, although not warm enough for swimming, it is nice to have the ocean at our back door.
We set off to revisit Hearst Castle and take one of the other tours we had yet to enjoy.
Arriving at around 10:20am we chose tour 2, this takes in the upstairs bedrooms, including Hearst private rooms and bedroom.
We had an hour to wait until the tour left, so lucky for us there is a small coffee cart at the visitor centre.
A leisurely cuppa time, then line up for the tour.
The tour bus took us the 5 miles of road to the top of the hill describing the various views and what to look out for on the way. It stopped and a different let down point than tour one, we previously had done those 5 months ago.
W entered another access point, to have another view of the main outdoor pool and entered the building via a different doorway.
This took us up spiralling steps to the second floor; we viewed some wonderful rooms full of collections of antiques and furniture complete, with the ceilings from various buildings from Europe. The guide mentioned the furnishings at the time of building of this place, were reported to have cost $10 million, and she pointed out, in one of the rooms, the collection of Vases and bowls, some of these would start at auction prices now days at $10Million, to attempt to put a value on the fittings, furnishings, and collections of art and antiques, would be near to impossible. Most of the collection is irreplaceable.
The art work on the ceilings as well as the decor again astounds us as we wander through the building. Through further doors and up more Spiral stair wells to come out along the "bedroom clusters" These were the clusters of guest bedrooms, for those guests not housed in the Guest houses. Each guest room had two beds, and two bathrooms for each room. Again the opulence and furnishings are simply overwhelming. We visited Hearst private bedroom, done in a gothic style, this appeared to be a favourite style, and in this room a painting was done by an artist that had a smaller painting sold at auction a few years ago for $42 million. This drives home the actual value of some of the hundreds of paintings and collectables gathered in this place.
A question would have to be asked, as to why the Hearst family "gave" this to the State to be set up as a museum and allow it to become a National Monument.
We went from Hearst Bedroom to his "friend's room" his wife never slept upstairs in this private area, then through to his Study. This in itself was very large and again contains many wonderful pieces, as well as many books in his library, we visited two libraries on this tour, and they hold many books.
We also were able to trek up to the turret type bedroom section to view another guest's bedroom.
We had a visit to one of the four, what were called the duplexes; they were single bedrooms, with a split level, for the bed area and down some steps to a lounge area that also contained a bathroom; where guest such as Carol Lombard once stayed,
We proceeded back along the other "cluster bedrooms" and through one of these, to head back down another stairwell, (Certainly would be a wonderful house for kids to play hide and seek, with all the rooms and stairways.)
We dropped down into the kitchen, this being a huge commercial sized area, with as can be imagined, large prep areas and cooking facilities.
From this Kitchen and staff quarters area we stepped out into the back patio area, like a lot of the forty year project, was unfinished at the time of Hearst's death. This area looked out over the tennis courts and led us down into the indoor swimming pool.
We took another view of this massive indoor pool that was basically never used, then back on the bus to descend to the information centre again.
When this property was purchased by Hearst's parents, they purchased 250,000 acres and 50 miles of beachfront, it was developed by Hearst after he inherited the property at the age of 56.
We headed across the road to enjoy our lunch in a park with an ocean view, near the pier built by the original Hearst family, to allow ships to unload goods and guests.
We left and headed back to our home at Morro Bay, to have the pleasure of observing Zebra grazing alongside the highway, descendents of some of the grazing animals, from Hearst's collection of exotic animals in his large privately owned Zoo.
Reset at our spot and time for some washing and a relax.
Tomorrow head south to Los Angeles. Yes we have completed the circle of the country and closed some gaps in the map. The countdown is closing on us fairly quickly, we have to "sort out the Castle" and pack and ensure we have finished our shopping. We have 11 days left before we hop on board our Qantus flight home, at this stage we plan to find a handy RV park and hire a car to enable us to be mobile in LA, without having to negotiate in the 29' Castle around the fast moving traffic.
It most likely will include a trip back to Rodeo Drive, and some places we had a quick turnaround last time.
So the next few days will be attempting to pack bags and prepare to close off the holiday trip
