48stateroadtrip.com

Ten Things About My Day at Hearst Castle:

• Definitely worth going to once — a great monument to wealth and questionable taste.
• $24 seems steep for a 75-minute tour (not including the 15-minutes-each-way bus ride from the visitors center).
• Especially given that, if you touch a tree, the assistant tour guide yells at you.
• The main house is actually a cathedral. If you ask the guide why William Randolph Hearst would want to live in a cathedral, she’ll tell you it’s because he had traveled Europe extensively and wanted “the ranch” to seem like a Mediterranean village. Yeah, but living in a cathedral?! Seems either misguided or sacrilegious. I mean, I’ve traveled a bit in Europe myself, but I don’t want to live in a cathedral. Maybe that’s why I’m not rich.
• And aside from the cathedral in the middle, I’m not sure how this is in any way similar to a Mediterranean village.
• Feels like the “Golden Age of Hollywood” in real-life form. Sunset Boulevard seems like it took some hints from here.
• I don’t actually know anything about architecture, just that it seems odd to have old choir seats that had been ripped out of a Gothic cathedral lining the walls of your dining room. Doesn’t the Gothic cathedral still need those?
• If I ever have a pool at my house, it should be like one of these (neither of which belonged in a Mediterranean village).
• The ceilings were all very, very fancy.
• And the tri-tip sandwich was pretty good.

Some photos:

Ah, cathedral-sweet-home. Nice flowers, though.

Plus, if you can get bored, you can play hitch-hiker’s chess on the bottom of it.

The view.

End of post.