The adventure, day three: San Simeon to San Luis Obispo

So last you heard, we were reverse-commuting with grey whales and watching paragliders as we wound through state parks and national forests to the Morgan Hotel with its big poofy bed and slightly swank/slightly funky vibe. Much rest was taken. And in the morning we bought tickets for touring one of the most ostentatious pieces of architecture I’ve visited since seeing La Sagrada Familia. Hearst Castle.

Wiliam Randolph Hearst’s ranch, which is how he thought of it and how much of it actually worked, is an estate so massive that there are six separate tours of the buildings and grounds, and we never bumped into another tour group. We took the recommended tour for first-time visitors, which seemed kinda blah in its description: wander through a guest house and part of the main house, as well as some of the gardens. But it was brilliant. The tour mimicked the experience of being Hearst’s guest, and brought us through beautiful gardens and past the outdoor pool, through one of the guests houses and more gardens leading up to the main house. Once inside, we were guided through as if it were a typical evening with Hearst and his mistress. It was fantastic, because they took what could have been a very dull tour and gave us all this intimate context (guest), but also because we were learning the intimate details as we went, it was also edged with the greedy curiousity I get when I travel abroad, and sometimes get from watching reality television, though that’s a cheap, crappy buzz. Like M&Ms compared with Joseph Schmidt (gone, alas, and missed).

The houses and grounds were completely jammed with art. Furniture, statues, tapestries, silver plate like he was Mr. Darcy at Pemberley, architectural details. Julia Morgan had the task of incorporating this century-spanning heap of mostly Mediterranean ephemera into a cohesive estate, and I do think she pulled it off. Even if the sculpture garden did scream “Drug Lord” a little bit. Fun fact: Hearst was a catalog shopper for approximately 90% of the pieces he acquired, so the provenance of his collection is pretty clean. Basically, he bought all of this stuff so it wouldn’t get the shit bombed out of it in World War II. He just didn’t know it.

The only disappointment? We never saw a zebra.

After the tour we at lunch in the massive visitor center, then plopped back into the car and made our way to San Luis Obispo. Seamus fought his nap, finally passing out as we got into town. We found our hotel and drove around for a bit. Patrick found a parking spot next to the Mission, so Patty, John, and I got out to walk around. Mission San Luis Obispo is still an active parish, and a Palm Sunday mass was being held as we walked around the buildings to the chapel and listened to part of the service before walking through the gardens. Lovely, and a nice oasis just off of the main drag, but the poor roses were eaten alive by aphids. Someone send ladybugs to the rectory, please. Seamus woke up five minutes before we returned to the car, so it was on foot exploring and dinner before heading back up to the hotel. Seamus was hell bent on getting into the unheated pool, but we persuaded him to hang out in the hot tub instead and cook off some energy.