Hearst Castle

After the road begins to flatten out, watch for Hearst Castle impressively crowning the coastal hills. In 1919, William Randolph Hearst commissioned California’s famous architect Julia Morgan to design a simple vacation home atop a hill on his estate overlooking the California coastline. Twenty-eight years and $10,000,000 later, he moved to Los Angeles and left his 100-room retreat, La Cuesta Encantada (the enchanted hill), which has never been completed. Hearst Castle continues to delight its millions of visitors: next to Disneyland, Hearst Castle is the most popular visitor attraction in California. The number of visitors allowed on the hill during any one day is limited, so it is essential that you make reservations in advance. Hearst Castle is open every day except Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. Several different one-hour and forty-five-minute tours are available. Also from September through December, Hearst Castle offers at weekends a magical evening tour and program with a holiday theme. The castle is decorated for Christmas and the staff, dressed in appropriate and wonderful costumes, play the roles of William Hearst and his entourage of friends as they bring history alive. The evening tours are tremendously popular and must be booked well in advance. If traveling with children, inquire also about the special summer children’s programs. Tickets for all tours are available for purchase up to eight weeks in advance. (800-444-4445, www.hearstcastle.org) Plan on arriving at the visitors’ center at the foot of the hill at least half an hour before your scheduled departure, as the tours leave with clockwork-like precision and do not wait for stragglers. If you arrive early, you can browse through the small museum located next to the departure depot where groups assemble by number for their turn to be taken up the hill by bus. Here you also find an IMAX Theater which shows a special documentary of Hearst Castle. Of the daily tour programs, Tour 1, the overview of the castle, is the one recommended for first-time visitors. You walk through the gardens to the main house, La Casa Grande, to tour the rooms on the lower level. The sheer size and elaborate decor of the assembly room where Hearst gathered with his guests before dinner sets the opulent mood of this elegant establishment. In the adjoining refectory Hearst and his guests dined in a re-created medieval banquet hall—the bottles of Hearst’s favorite ketchup on the table seem rather out of place. In the theater a short home movie of Hearst and some of his celebrity friends gives you an idea of life at the castle during the 1930s. A feeling for the opulence of the guest accommodation is given as you tour the guesthouse, Casa del Sol. Tour 2 views suites of bedrooms, the kitchen, and the swimming pools. The indoor Roman pool has over half a million Italian mosaic tiles, vast amounts of gold leaf, and took over five years to complete. Tour 3 visits the guest wing of the castle, a guesthouse, and the pools. Tour 4, offered only in summer, does not go into the main house, but focuses on the estate’s gardens.