🚀 go-pugleaf

allan@southpark.engr.sgi.com (Allan Schaffer) wrote in message news:<bvs8e5$srsl6$1@fido.engr.sgi.com>...
> "Simon Belmont" <123@abc.xyz> said..
> >"Allan Schaffer" <allan@southpark.engr.sgi.com> wrote in message
> >> Plan stops in San Simeon/Hearst Castle
> >
> >I've heard a number of recommendations here to visit Hearst Castle.
> >I always thought it was a tourist trap made even more tourist trappy
> >by Awnuld's state park fee hike. It's just a big estate right? 
> 
Before I went to Hearst Castle in my mid 30s, I'd toured Europe more
than once, lived in Cairo, and lived in NYC long enough to get very
familiar with many of the treasures of the Metropolitan Museum and the
Cloisters. I'm no art historian but I have a decent eye for Islamic
and ancient Egyptian art. Also I'd been to the Vanderbilt pile in NC a
couple of times.

What impressed me about Hearst Castle was not the quality of the loot
the old man brought home from Europe - although he had nice stuff. You
might have seen better tapestries or Isfahan tiles somewhere else,
maybe. It's the site that amazes - the aerie up in the sky above the
Pacific. I can't get over that living room with the view west. And
yes, the pool is wonderful. You feel like you're up on top of Olympus.

Don't bother doing this on your one day trip. But if you come back to
California and drive up route 1, do try and get up the hill to the
castle. Again, it's not the architecture and the loot, it's the
setting and the total package.

Regarding food - this still doesn't fit your agenda, but the Thursday
evening farmers market in SLO is a street party and a smorgasbord all
in one. Great fun and good eats. We bought lovely strawberries from
the Cal Poly ag students farm stand last spring. I'd have to google my
trip report but I still remember plenty of barbecue, designer beer,
wine tastings, a brass band, a flamenco guitar duo, and more than a
few farm stands full of early spring produce and flowers.

L