Road Trip/Hearst Castle

We just got back from a fun road trip. Friday morning we left and drove to Morro Bay. We stopped in Solvang for lunch and abelskivers. I didn't know what an abelskiver was, and it turns out they are delicious! They're kind of like a doughnut with raspberry sauce on top. Solvang is a cute town. There are storks on rooftops, windmills everywhere and flower boxes. The whole town has a European flavor to it. On our way to Solvang we drove by six old fashioned cars.



After lunch we were back on the road again. We headed up to Morro Bay. We checked in to our Inn. Peter had the choice of picking this super cute bed and breakfast, or an Inn that was right along the bay. He chose the Inn as it was a lot cheaper and had good reviews. It was alright. It definitely was right along the bay which was cool. This is Morro Rock. It was right across from our Inn. We drove over to the rock and then walked along a trail and watched people feed the squirrels.
Then we drove to Montana De Oro State Park to see if we could find some tide pools. Unfortunately it was not low tide so we didn't find much in the tide pools.

The funny thing about this beach is it was mostly rocks. Medium small flat rocks. Peter tried to build a rock castle. What do you think?

At night we walked along the embarcadero and had dinner at a seafood place. Peter had swordfish and I had beef tacos(I don't do fish). We also ordered Olallieberry cobbler and took it back with us. It was great! We ate so much we hobbled back to our Inn and relaxed.

Saturday morning we headed to Hearst Castle. We arrived way too early for our first tour, so we drove up the road a bit and went to see Elephant Seals.
Most of the elephant seals were asleep, though we did watch some come out of the water and some go into the water. The two in the above picture are fighting. We also watched two smaller ones play around for awhile. They were cute. The sleeping ones snored- it was pretty funny.
We stayed for about an hour and then headed back to the castle.
We had signed up for two tours, but after completing the two tours we decided to do one more. We went on tour number 1 which includes the ground floor of Casa Grande-Casa del Sol, Esplanade and Gardens, Neptune pool, Assembly room, Refectory(dining room), Morning room, Billiard room, and theater. Tour number 2 included Casa Grande Upper floors(a lot of stairs to climb), Doge's suite, the cloisters, the library, Gothic Suite, Gothic Study, Kitchen and pantry. Tour number 3 we skipped, and Tour number 4 was Gardens and Grounds and Casa del Mar-Hidden terrace, Neptune Pool dressing rooms, North Esplanade, Tennis Courts, wine cellar and all of the tours ended at the Roman Pool (indoor pool). Our pictures didn't come out very well. We had to turn the flash off and many of the rooms were very dark, so here's some of the pictures that actually turned out.
Do you recognize this picture? Perhaps if you're a Harry Potter fan it might look familiar. The dining hall in the Harry Potter movies is based off of this dining hall. Pretty cool huh?

The Three Graces-Famous statue

One of the guest houses with a fountain outside. There were fountains everywhere!

All of the ceilings in the rooms were very original and unique. This is the only one that came out good in the photo.

Another view of the garden

Neptune Pool

We bought a couple of books from the gift shop. The pictures are much better than anything we took.

While we were at Hearst Castle we had a break between our first and second tours, so we went to our car for sandwiches. When we got there we noticed these:
Corvettes everywhere! There must've been a corvette convention because they were all lined up. There were about 50-60 of them. Peter took a bunch of pictures along with other people :)
After our third tour we were a bit tired. It wouldn't have been too bad if they didn't bus us down after each tour. We spent in total 1 1/2 hours on the buses. So we left Hearst Castle and headed north to Julia Pfieffer Burns State Park in the Big Sur area. From here we parked along the street and followed a path down to McWay Falls. This is the only waterfall in the US (that we know of) that drops into the Pacific Ocean. Totally worth visiting!
Then we headed back down to San Luis Obispo and stopped for dinner at the Apple Farm. We were so stuffed we had to have our apple dumpling to go. We ate it back at our room.

Then this morning we got up, said goodbye to the seals in the harbor and headed back home.