7-29-12

Today we went to Hearst Castle. We went on a tour that seemed very short. We only got to go into 4 of the 115 rooms! I wanted to see more because I love looking at fancy, old houses like that. It was so interesting seeing how they lived back then and wishing I could live there. I told Mom that if I moved in to that house she could live in the smallest of the three cottages in the backyard (it was 8000 square feet).  Here it is: We also found out that our entire house could have fit in the living room of the main house! Also, when Mr. Hearst lived there he had a zoo in his backyard. On his very huge property he had many exotic animals including zebras (they still roam there wild today) and polar bears living there so that his guests (there were always at least 12 guests staying there at a time) could see them as they drove up the long, winding road up to the castle. I thought it was funny that when Mr. Hearst wanted to start building a home he said he just wanted a 7 or 8 room bungalow that would only take two or three years to build. It ended up having 115 rooms and taking 28 years and not even being completely finished (he died). This was one of my favorite parts of the vacation so far but I wish we could have seen more inside the house.  Here are some more pictures:

There was an outdoor pool…

Later, we drove to Aunt Sue’s house. We went down to the pool that was in her neighborhood and had a nice homemade dinner at her house. It was nice to see Aunt Sue and her cats. She has two nice cats named Mulligan and Cody. But, she had a foster kitten that she was just keeping for a few weeks. Link, the kitten, didn’t understand how to use a litter box yet so she had to keep him in the bathroom but we still got to play with him. He was so adorable! Lindsey didn’t like the name Link so she just called him Little Mister. We wanted to take him home with us but of course our parents said no. 😦