Today we woke up early in order to catch our tour just outside of San Simeon, at a place called "Hearst Castle". Melanie had been here before years ago, and had fond memories of it, so we decided to go back and she would gladly see it again.
For those of you who have no idea what this place is that I am speaking of, I'll give the quick run down. In 1919, media mogul William Randolf Hearst, decides to follow his dream and finally do something with the 250,000 acres of land, which included 14 miles of coastline. The plan included hiring architect Julia Morgan from San Francisco, leveling out a plot of select land and collecting a diverse selection of antiques, artifacts and animals. Five years of construction go by, and they have a couple guesthouses with 8 rooms each, a main Building "Casa Grande" pools, gardens and a zoo for exotic animals. Hearst apparently loved to entertain high profile guests, actors and actresses and politicians. Building continued as the years go by. Eventually Hearst fell ill and passed away in 1951. Six years later the Building and some of the property was donated to the State of California. It has since been turned into a State Park. The tour was great, lots of very old artifacts, some apparently dating over 3000 years old. The view from the 490m height was amazing, as was the rest of the grounds. There as something old and rich and amazing around every corner. And we weren't allowed to touch anything except the railings.
After leaving Hearst Castle and San Simeon, we continued on south to a place called Solvang. This is a neat little town about 15 miles off the Main Highway that was themed like a Danish town. It was actually quite neat. There was lots of different shops that gave the place a Scandinavian feel, and almost every one of them had "Denmark" or "Danish" in the name. Melanie bought some shoes at the "Solvang Shoe Store", which had a giant wooden Clogg shoe out front. We had a nice lunch and a Carlsberg at the "Viking Garden", then we hit the road again.
Our final stop for the day was Santa Barbara. We both immediately thought it was a really nice place. Our hotel is pretty trendy and modern looking, a nice contrast from the Queen Anne in San Fran. We took a nice walk down to the beach which was only about 3 blocks away. There was tall palm trees lining the road and a nice bike/rollerblade path beside the beach. We took a stroll out to the end of the pier and back, there were a few restaurants on there and small shops. We continued down the beach and stumbled upon an outdoor concert which looked like it was meant for kids, however we saw wayyy more adults dancing to the mexican sounding music.
We made our way back, but stopped for some margaritas and shared a quesadilla at a mexican restaurant. The drinks and the fresh salsa really brought me back to our Mexico trip last year and really got me excited about the wedding coming up. The sun had set and it was now dark, the temperature had dropped alot and we wished we had brought our sweaters out with us. So we hurried back to the hotel room, where we had left the air conditioning on! Woops.
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