My Dream Home

I promised a more detail account of the Hearst Castle. It was so amazing. Go look it all up, it's fascinating. I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff though. Really, England has been calling me my whole life. I eat up all the history and architectural stuff. It awes me. So here are some pictures. I cheated and stole some off the Internet. I have a very poor excuse for this. Half way through the tour, the battery died in my camera. Who doesn't charge their battery before going to a castle? I'm properly shamed now. I'll be more prepared when I go to Europe.

A marble carving in the equestrian entrance, there were marble statues EVERYWHERE. This other is the front of the guest house Casa Del Sol, or House of the Sun.

Neptune's pool is surrounded by those marble statues, it even has 3 IN the pool. Those 5 columns are hundreds and hundreds of years old, so is Neptune himself. I could tell you exactly how old they are, but I wasn't paying attention. Here's a picture of a guest bedroom fireplace and dresser. I apologize for not having comparable accommodations for my own guests.

Here's a ceiling in one of the guest houses, there are 3 guest houses. Casa Del Sol, Casa Del Mar, and Casa Del "whatever the name for mountain is". One of the main house bell towers. The main house is known as Casa Grande. It was Grande.

A marble statue of a mom and boy, I took it for sentimental reasons. Detailed pic over the front door of Casa Grande. Mary is in the place of honor.

Another view of the front door. This next one is the dining room. The dark paneling is from a Spanish cathedral. They are actually the choir pews. Most of the tapestries are from the 17th century. My tapestries are much more recent. Here is the last room we saw. It's the Indoor Roman Pool. It's all 1 inch tile mosaics with 24 carat gold leafing, just like we have back at home. The main pool is a flat bottom pool and is 10 feet deep. You can see in the middle of the picture a section of the pool that juts off toward the back of the room. It was a smaller pool that was only 3 1/2 feet deep. Mr. Hearst called it the sissy pool.

Mr. Hearst seemed like my kind of guy. He had a good sense of humor and was really down to earth. He wouldn't let his guests call his staff, servants. He also insisted that his staff join in the after parties once dinner was cleaned up. He had condiment jars on the dining room table, used paper napkins, and NEVER used fine china. This man was one step away from using Dixie plates. And he was a multi-multi-millionaire. Totally my kind of guy.