Central Coast

Central Coast, the bit between LA and San Francisco. We stayed a couple of nights in a fine motel in Cambria called the Blue Dolphin. We were right on the coast, facing the Pacific which blew up a steady gale all the while we were there – very refreshing.

We took a short trip north to Hearst’s Castle, named after William Randolph Hearst, the very wealthy only heir to a mining fortune made by his father in the early 20th century. William went into publishing buying up newspapers and in his spare time spent his dosh buying loadsa stuff and cramming it into a palatial and weird mansion he built on a hill overlooking the family’s immense country ranch. His family bequeathed the estate to California who run it very well as a tourist attraction. It’s a very interesting place. The buildings, comprising a very large main house and 4 separate guesthouses, benefit from the impressive views and strangely gothic / Spanish / church architecture. The rooms are bursting with artifacts and art collected buy Hearst. It’s like a mini British museum but with all the periods and cultures mixed together. So you might have a stuffed owl from the Victorian era, next to an Indian tapestry facing an Egyptian sculpture. Old Willie had a fair amount of influence with his money, and he had a keen interested in films. The main house has a full sized cinema room where we saw a short home movie with Charlie Chaplin playing tennis with Bill Tilden, the first American to win Wimbledon, on the castles’ court. Clark Gable, Bob Hope and Winston Churchill were also guests at one time or other. You have to take one of four guided tours offered to visit, but well worth it.

Unfortunately for us, the Pacific Highway, which runs along the coast to San Francisco, was closed north of Hearst’s castle due to a landslide so we had to drive up to Monterey via the freeway inland. We stayed near Cannery row, where scores of women used to can sardines all day, and is now turned into a tourist strip full of restaurants and souvenir shops.

Near Monterey is the wealthy town of Carmel which we drove through briefly just to make our day on our way to visit the world famous Pebble Beach golf course, scene of Graham McDowell’s US Open triumph in 2010. The course is one of four located in a private suburb surrounded by fuck off villas. You have to pay $10 just to enter and drive around gawping at the rich people. The main course is actually a public course so anyone can play but you have to stump up $500 per round and stay 2 nights in the plush lodge which isn’t cheap either – so that rules out most of the population. (Although that’s about 50 Aussie dollars so c’mon you Aussies get over here.) We went into the lodge anyway, had a look around, took a few snaps and walked around the eighteenth green which runs right along the ocean – gave me a thrill but didn’t do much for Mags.

We continued south along the ‘1’ to the Big Sur which is a stunning scenic drive and had lunch at Nepenthe with majestic views along the coast.

Were now in Yosemite where we awoke to the news that the Americans have finally found Bin Laden. The meeting didn’t go too well for Osama and the Americans have all apparently gone crazy but it’s hard to tell the difference here.