California Vacation, Day 5: Moonstone Beach and the Hearst Castle

We had made reservations in advance to see the Hearst Castle, which was located about 15 minutes north of Moonstone beach. The castle was originally built by William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper tycoon, as his summer residence. There are two guest houses that most people would consider to be mansions. The family donated the castle to the state of California and now the state operates it as a tourist attraction. It's pretty spectacular.


You cannot drive directly up to the castle. You park at the bottom of the property and take a bus up to the entrance. The drive up the road has some very nice views of the hills and the California coast line.
















The tour starts out at the swimming pool. Hearst was in the habit of constantly changing the house and the pool was no exception. It was rebuilt three times because he kept wanting it larger. This is the outdoor pool area.























































There are actually four different tours you can take, with each tour focusing on different areas. Each tour lasts about an hour and a half. We took the "Experience tour", which is billed as the best tour for the first time visitor. It highlighted the pool, one of the guest houses, the entrance way and the main floor of the mansion. Here are a few views of the grounds surrounding the pool area.




























Here is the fountain on the staircase leading up to the main entrance to the mansion.

















The main entrance to the mansion.

















The main sitting room when you first enter.














The fireplace in the main sitting room.















Hearst was a collector and one of the reasons he built the house was to have a place to store and display all of his collections. This statue was in one of the entryways.


















All of the rooms were fitted with ceilings and wall panels from ancient castles in Europe. Here are two of the wooded ceilings.























The dinning room and the dinning table.


















The tour ended with a look at the indoor pool which was built underneath the tennis courts. The floors were made of gold leaf and we were actually allowed to walk on them.

This ended the formal tour but there was also a very nice 45 minute movie on the making of the castle. On the ride down the mountain we saw the private zoo that Hearst maintained. The family still owns the surrounding land and maintains summer homes there. They also raise their own beef cattle and we did see them grazing on the way in to the castle. The herd is intermixed with a number zebra. We saw the zebra and Nancy wanted to get a picture before we left, but by then they were not to be found.

Tomorrow Day 6: The last of Moonstone and the highway ride to Napa.