PCH, Cambria, and Hearst Castle

For labor day weekend, Greg and I made a trip down the coast to check out Hearst Castle. I've heard a lot about it, and became more intrigued after watching Citizen Kane. We figured now would be a good time to see it with the 3 day weekend and the good weather. We drove down to Cambria on Saturday, stayed overnight, did the tour on Monday morning, and spent some time exploring Cambria before driving back. Hearst Castle was quite a place, and a 1 hour tour certainly didn't do it justice. I took tons of pictures for you guys. Our drive down along with the town itself were equally as fun.

We took the Pacific Coast Highway down, which has some incredible views. Google Maps told us the drive would be under 5 hours but it didn't take into account how curvy and narrow the roads were and thus how slow people go on them - it took us almost 8 hours to get there.  We took some episodes of This American Life for entertainment. It was daylight for all of the trip, so we got to enjoy to enjoy some nice views of the coast. Here's a picture Greg snapped of me standing in front of Big Sur. Mom, I think this is the location Grandma painted in her California coast painting hanging downstairs.

One great thing about the PCH is that there are so many farm stands along the side of the road, and the produce they sell is fresh and picked on the farm the stand is in front of. We stopped in a little store on the side of the road that advertised fresh-picked strawberries.

It was a very fun store - the had jam sampling, board games, unbelievable homemade deserts, and they didn't have a cash register. They had the money drawer of a cash register right on the counter where you insert your cash and collect the change yourself. There was a guy standing behind the counter, but the place had the laid back feeling typical of the PCH.

Greg indulged in some of the deserts and I had a delicious basket of strawberries.

There was an adorable little shop next to this place that was inside of a trailer. We bought a jar of lavender infused honey from them.

We stayed in Cambria, which is a few miles outside of Hearst Castle. I fell in love with the town. We didn't have too much time to explore that night since we got in so late, but we did have an amazing meal at a local restaurant. Since the town is surrounded by so much farmland, all of their produce is local, in season, and fresh. There are also a few cattle ranches nearby, and I mean vast California hills with tons of grass where the cattle can roam and eat and be happy all day. We passed a few on the way down, one of which was on the Hearst estate. Most of the beef in that town comes from these ranches, and since the cattle are so healthy the beef is too (and thus tastes better). 

The stores in that town were all gems. This is a town that treasures art. There were art galleries, glass shops, quilting shops, sewing shops, and, the tour de force, a knitting shop. Greg and I got out early, so we scoped out the town before any of the shops were open to see what it had. I was acting like a complete tourist, shamelessly taking pictures of everything.

You can't even imagine how excited I got when I saw the knitting shop.

After the Hearst tour we checked out some of the stores. They all had very unique and beautiful pieces.

Greg bought us some wooden watches at one store. We've never seen watches like these and they felt too California to not buy.

We went to the knitting shop last and every minute we were in there, I was in heaven. They had beautiful hand-dyed, high quality yarns, a whole wall dedicated to knitting patterns, and a very helpful staff who loved knitting and crocheting. Needless to say I spent a lot of money on yarn there, and it was worth every penny. I wish we could have spent more time in the town, but we had a long drive ahead of us. We'll just have to stay longer next time.

In contrast to the quaint hometown feeling Cambria had, Hearst Castle had a very powerful and intimidating presence. We did a 1-hour tour at Hearst castle that morning, and like I said, 1 hour is not enough. I've never seen anything that big, with that much personality, that belonged to one person. It was a 28 year project to build the entire estate, and W. R. Hearst paid attention to every last detail of it. In a time where minimal, modern houses were going up, Hearst wanted his estate to have a very classical and busy feel. There is a very strong European influence in it, but he didn't stick with one country - he wanted them all.

This was at the entrance. The gate was made out of gold.

The ceilings in every room had art on them, this was the ceiling in their cocktail room. They didn't allow flash photography inside the castle so the pictures are a bit blurry.

The fireplace, along with some paintings. There were more paintings like that all around the room.

These were from the dining room. Notice the giant tapestries he had hanging on the walls.

Surprisingly, when he entertained guests, he set the table with paper napkins instead of cloth, glass instead of crystal, and flatwear instead of silver.

This ceiling came from Spain and was created in the 15th century.

Here's another view of the castle from the outside. Since it (and its many guest houses) were on the top of a giant hill, it had some incredible views all the way down to the ocean.

There were statues all around the property

He had 2 pools, one indoor and one outdoor. This was the outdoor one, the Neptune Pool. It had a strong Greek/mediterranean influence. Notice the Greek symbols on the bottom of the pool.

This stood at the head of the pool, and must have been inspired by the Acropolis.

I dug through my old photos from when Greg and I went to Greece and found this photo from the Acropolis in Athens, so you can see the similarities.

Charlie Chaplin played tennis on this tennis court.

The last thing we saw on the tour before departing back to the visitor center (at the bottom on the hill) was the indoor pool, the Roman Pool.

That was gold on the ground we were walking on.

I find it quite amazing that one person created such an estate. W. R. Hearst was an avid collector, and his statues, or pieces of art that he fancied, were found all throughout it. For such a large residence, there was not one part of it that went undecorated. He built the castle at the end of his life, and it's as though he wasn't building it for himself, but for everyone else, so that his power and influence (keep in mind, he was the definition of media mogul) would be remembered.

Pictures of the Kitties

Mom, you'll like this post. I was taking a trip down memory lane looking at old pictures of the kitties and thought I should share. We got them when they were 10 weeks old, they were so small! I took plenty of pictures of them, this is a collection of some of my favorites.

These must have been taken within the first week of us getting them, judging by their size.

I snapped this picture of Cleo looking adorable when she was a little bit bigger, but still a kitten.

This was when we moved into our old apartment, when we first arrived in San Francisco from LA. It didn't have any furniture yet, and the kitties were bored without anything to climb on.

This was still in the old apartment. Here you can see how much bigger they got, they don't curl up anymore when they lie down.

And these next ones were taken this past year in our current apartment.

I was taking some pictures of my sketches this morning when Cleo sat right down on them as if to say "take pictures of me instead"

She's so happy here, basking in the sun.

And one last one of Alex.

Skyline Bike Ride

Greg and I did another long and beautiful bike ride last weekend, we went from our apartment to LinkedIn in Mountain View. The weather has been so nice lately, we've been trying to take advantage of it. The route was called Skyline because that is the name of a major road it uses. This ride was about 55 miles from our apartment to the destination with a good amount of hills. Some people bike this path to work in the mornings as their commute! It wasn't as intense as Mount Tam, but after that bike ride anything seemed easy. Part of this route was along the west coast instead of the east coast, so we had some nice views of the Pacific Ocean as opposed to the bay. Here's a map of the route we took along with its elevation profile.

We stopped when we got to the ocean to take some pictures. This was right near the fault that caused the huge earthquake in San Francisco in 1906.

Here you can see the land slowly falling into itself, forming a cliff.

We stopped again to take pictures by the San Andreas Lake, which is north of Foster City on the map.

This road was entirely closed off from cars for bikers on Sundays, so we had both lanes to ourselves. There are a few streets around San Francisco that do that, it was a good day to plan the trip.

And sometime around 80% of the way through, Greg's phone died, and took our map along with it. This wasn't a simple route, so we had to go the rest of the way by a combination of memory and asking fellow bikers for directions. But we made it to LinkedIn alright and got to see yet another pretty face of California.

Mount Tamalpais

For the July 4th holiday, Greg and I decided to bike up Mount Tam. Mount Tam is a mountain peak not too far from the city, and it's a popular biking destination for Bay area bikers. We heard good things about it, so we decided to try it on our day off. Little did we know what we were in for. It was roughly 34 miles from our apartment to get to the top, and the peak was at en elevation of 2571 feet with a gain of 6186 feet. It took us over 4 hours to get to the top (including breaks), and about 3 of those hours were spent just biking up hill. Can you imagine biking up hill for 3 hours? On top of that the road was narrow with a small shoulder, and on some parts there was a cliff on one side. It was quite the bike trip. It wasn't the distance so much as the climbing that got to me. We've done longer bike trips than this, but never to that elevation. I almost didn't make it (a Clif bar saved me), but Greg had no complaints, and he was carrying a backpack with 2 heavy Kryptonite U-locks in it. At the top the views were spectacular. We could see a good part of the city and California mountains.

I found this picture online of the mountain to give you an idea of the scale. We went to the very top.

These are some pictures I took along the way.

Here's Greg standing with the bikes. This was about 75% of the way up to the top.

This was about 80% of the way up, we stopped here to have a snack. We were above the fog of the city.

Like sitting on top of the world.

And this was the view at the very top. The fog covered most of the city, but you can see a bit of it through the trees.

Greg had me point at the small portion of city.

And then we stopped at a few places to take pictures on the way down.

There's a bit more city in this picture, and you can see the bay in the distance.

Some mountains and fog.

It was a very exhausting trip for me, but that's part of what made it feel so rewarding to complete. I got to really know my limits. We drove through this road once before and it's an entirely different experience biking it. We really felt like we were a part of it.

I hope you guys had a great holiday as well!

Galapagos Underwater

Here are some of the underwater pictures we took. We went snorkeling twice a day almost every day so we saw a lot of things in the water, but we only brought 2 underwater cameras so we don't have too many pictures from it. There was as much to see below water as there was above. We saw plenty of small fish, starfish, a few sharks, sea lions, penguins, and turtles. The penguins were the most skittish so I didn't get any good pictures of them, but the sea lions and sea turtles weren't phased by us at all. The visibility wasn't too good underwater, so I apologize about the graininess in the photos.

Here are some of the sea lions that swam alongside us. They are pretty big as you can see, and very fast.

Here are some of the sea turtles.

At one point Greg was attacked by a Flightless Cormorant bird. It thought Greg's camera was food (every photographer's dream) so it kept trying to peck at his camera.

He tried to splash it to keep it away, but it was very persistent.

This is a picture he snapped of the bird underwater.

Eventually the bird gave up and left, but it was a funny sight.