Hearst Castle

California : San Simeon : Hearst Castle

It's been a while since I've posted any photos from our vacation in California.
I've done a few posts, but haven't quite finished; I took a TON of photos.
Maybe it's the fabulous weather we are experiencing that's
making me reminiscent of our nine days back in April.
Either way, I would like to share the tour of Hearst Castle we took while in California.

View from the Esplanade

"La Cuesta Encantada" or "The Enchanted Hill",
is perched atop the hills of San Simeon overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
The palatial mansion was built by William Randolph Hearst,
and was designed by architect Julia Morgan.

The estate has 56 bedrooms, 61 bathrooms, 41 fireplaces,
19 sitting rooms, and 127 acres of gardens.....



It's a lot bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside......
just kidding......this is the old school house, you can see the castle in the background.

There are several different tours to choose from while visiting,
although Cody and I only took one. The first one actually.
The Experience tour is one recommended to first-time visitors.
It lasted approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes.




The beginning of the Hearst Castle Tour took us to
the promenade in front of Casa Del Sol.
It's an eighteen room guest house that faces the Pacific coastline.
Tour one allowed us to view 4 of the bedrooms, and 4 of the bathrooms.
But that came after this.......

The Neptune Pool.

The Greco-Roman style Temple front was bought in Europe and transported to the grounds.
I've read that, the Neptune pool was rebuilt 3 times before Mr. Hearst was satisfied.



Afterwards, we headed up to the Esplanade,
one of the most beautiful sections of the grounds.
It featured many marble sculptures, and flowers.




Continuing on the tour, we were lead through a few rooms within Casa Del Sol.



From the outside in, everything was lavishly decorated......
I am sure that I missed some details along the way.



From the ceiling to the floor, pure extravagance.



I stayed in the back for most of the tour,
since I was more interested in taking photos.
It was hard to do so surrounded by a group of people, but I managed.



Casa Grande (the main house) and the three guest houses were
done in a Mediterranean Revival style.



The towers of the main house are modeled after a 16th Century Spanish Cathedral.
This was the main stop of the tour taking us through five rooms of Casa Grande's ground floor.

The Assembly Room which is the largest of the four sitting rooms and once a gathering place for Hearst's guests, the Refectory which is the single dining room at Hearst Castle, the Morning Room which is a magnificent sitting room filled with Spanish antiques and Flemish tapestries, the Billiard Room which is a game room featuring two 1920's billiard tables and a Gothic "millle fleurs" tapestry, and the Theater which is the largest room in Casa Grande.



The end of the tour brought us to Casa Grande's indoor Roman Pool.
For me, this was definitely the highlight.



The Roman Pool is decorated from ceiling to floor with 1″ square mosaic tiles. These glass tiles, called smalti, are either colored (mainly blue or orange) or are clear with fused 24 karat gold inside. The intense colors and shimmering gold of the tiles combine to create a breathtaking effect. The designs created by the tiles were developed by muralist Camille Solon.



Still curious to see more, we loaded the bus to go back down to the the visitor center.
We could have paid another $24 to go on another tour, but decided not to.
Instead, we took advantage of the free ticket to see the movie
"Hearst Castle Building the Dream".

All in all, I'm really glad that we added the castle tour to our itinerary.
I would have been kicking myself later had we missed it.
To see more photos that I haven't shown here, check out this link.
Flickr Set

Sorry I wasn't more in depth, but it was enough work getting this together!
For more information about the history, check out this link.
Hearst Castle History

Hope you have all had an enchanting weekend!