Day 3 San Simeon to Oakland

This was another action packed day! We got a late start and were lucky they held our tour bus for us to get up to Hearst castle this morning. I had gotten our tickets online so that saved us. We had a tour scheduled for the Upstairs Bedroom Suites and the Grand rooms tour. Kind of frustrating that you have to take multiple tours to see everything. At $25pp we picked the two that would get us the most inside the castle saving us a little something to see if we get back! We were so excited because we love touring cool houses. 

Iconic view of Hurst Castle-looks like a catholic church

The shuttle had a couple of miles to get us to the top of the mountain. This is from half way maybe.

The Bedroom suites tour

ALL the ceilings were amazing

You couldn't use flash inside so the pictures are grainy at best! This is the Library.

Highlight of the Downstairs - the Dining Room.

The front room or reception room was huge. This shows about 1/3 of it.

 The grounds were amazing and we spent lots of time just wandering around taking pictures. It took alot of time because we were all focused on getting a picture without a million people in it. No easy feat.

You can see the ocean from here clear out there. It doesn't show up well but the views are amazing.

 

The swimming pools were amazing and they say the Hurst family still comes up from time to time to swim there. It was hard not to jump in because it looked so refreshing and cool.

We had the most crowds down here with all of us dreaming about taking a dip in this cement pond!

The indoor pool was amazing as well. HUGE.

The whole pool was ten feet deep and yup that's 24 kt gold glass tiles lining the bottom.

So we drug ourselves away from this place after a fabulous time. San Simeon is out in the middle of no where on the CA coast we grabbed lunch from the food cart at the visitor center and hit the road. We drove up the coast on Highway 1 for about 4 hours toward San Francisco. It was just beautiful. The only thing I would suggest is going south would have been better because there aren't as many paces to pull off going north and you have to turn around to get to most of them on the other side and that's a huge pain. Lots of traffic so we just took alot of pictures from the car.

We just loved the drive but got a little sleepy as we went so like any great road trippers we pulled over and had a nap!

We drove through Big Sur which was beautiful and forested. There were a few fun little restaurants to eat at but parking looked like a nightmare. We expected a town but it wasn't really. We drove through Carmel By The Sea but by then the fog was really rolling in. Cute town though.

We kept on going through Monterrey but then the fog was so think we couldn't see any of it so we kept on going. It was really cold and windy there too. By the time we hit San Jose it was time for dinner but we couldn't find anything but industrial looking areas. We finally found a mall (about the 100th we passed in CA) and had dinner there at Red Robin. So when we pulled into Oakland we were ready to stop for the night. I had reservations at the Courtyard downtown Oakland which cost a fortune and when we pulled up we were really alarmed. It was a scary neighborhood. China town was right there but it was just scary. We expected gunshots and chalk outlines on the sidewalks kind of scary. Neon on the hotel and everything. Inside was good though but we were still a little concerned.. Come to find out that was nothing compared to the next night's adventure!!

Day 2 Santa Barbara, Solvang ...

This was an action packed day. I can't believe how much we saw and did. We actually hit the road at a reasonable hour for the first and last time of the trip haha.

 We drove all through Santa Barbara. I was excited to see it. It was quite beautiful and crowded in of course. Then after a couple of hours we hit the highlight of our day...Solvang!

 This place was incredible. Yes it was very touristy but we didn't care since we were tourists. It was the cutest little town settled by Danish people complete with windmills and bakeries. Ah yes the bakeries.

 The marzipan was to die for there!

Enough to make me swoon. They were everywhere. We breezed in and out of them trying to decide which one to hit.

 It was so fun to shop and shop for nothing in particular all up and down the streets.

Loved this faux thatch

This looked like fun

 The shopping was a blast with lots of kitchy stuff everywhere. I was surprised they only had three windmills.

 

We found all three of them of course and checked them out. Here are a couple of them.

Christmas stores are always one of my favorites. I picked up a few things there and was proud of myself it was only a few.

We carefully picked out our spot for lunch and had their buffet here. I have to say I think my favorite thing was the Swedish meatballs with the pickled red cabbage coming in as a close second. Not a fan of the pickled herring though.

We tried out the Able skivers! While they were good they couldn't really compete with the bakery goods and fudge though.

 So after a few of hours we hit the road...101 and 1 to be exact and headed back up the coast. When we saw the signs for Pizmo beach we had to check it out. It always reminds me of bugs bunny since he was always trying to get there. It was a beautiful day and a pretty beach with a great fishing pier.

 We walked up the beach to the pier and watched the fishing and surfers for awhile.

I had about 5 pound of sand to get out of my shoes after that. I don't think I am exaggerating either.Well okay but at least a pound of sand. See that's alot of sand to be walking around with!

Then we went through San Luis Opispo on the way to San Simeon for the night. There really wasn't much to see there which surprised us but that's okay since we were burning daylight and had a ways to go yet. It was a beautiful drive.

 

Elephant seals

LOVED the fog!

It started to get really foggy and cold so we called it a night. So fun. We fell asleep to the sound of the surf that night. I love that.

Our Trip to CAliForNiA 2013

This year we had another great family vacation. We took Christina since she is the remaining single survivor left in the family and had a fabulous road trip. Chris and I had never been to San Francisco so we were looking forward to a new adventure. She had a class for two weeks and left Utah just in time to throw her stuff in our car and head out the next day. SO Saturday July 20th we hit the road to southern California to get started on our adventure just the three of us. For the first time ever we took highway 210 to the 405 and I have to say it was pretty darn pretty. The drive wasn't too bad with lots of new stuff to look at. We got to Thousand Oaks that night with a little time to spare even. We had our first adventure that night at dinner. We decided to be adventurous and try a Greek Cafe for dinner and are we ever glad we did. It was fabulous. I highly recommend Daphne's Greek Cafe!

Starting with hummus...can't get enough of this!

My dinner was awesome.

Christina's was amazing.

Loved Mendis' dinner too.

We had a blast trying eat other's food and swooning over the yummy tasting treats. 

Dessert!!

After dinner we headed over to The Oaks (Mall) to spend more time and money! It was a super nice mall and made our malls in Vegas look kinda shabby. Luckily we only had a short amount of time before it closed or we would have drug Mendis around there for hours! 

As we were driving through Thousand Oaks earlier Christina mentioned that she had a friend that lived there so she called him up. They met after dinner at the mall and took off for an action packed evening. They drove by the LA Temple, Santa Monica pier, Hollywood I think, Malibu etc. Mendis and I had a great evening too just watching tv and unwinding haha. We are getting old.