Hearst Castle

Another nice thing about the Madonna Inn was free WiFi in the restaurant area. This was important to us because Vaiva thought we should visit the Hearst Castle (website here) as we traveled north. How does the WiFi come into the story? You can only get into the Castle by taking a group tour, and you should buy your tickets in advance for that, which can be done at their website. (Otherwise you may have to wait for hours, because the tours sell out regularly.) The tickets are for a specific tour (there are four different ones and an evening tour) and time. So we used the Nuvi to estimate our travel time, which was a couple hours as I recall, and picked our tour.

If you haven't been to the Hearst Castle yet, we strongly suggest you put it on your bucket list. The setting, the buildings, the furnishings are remarkable, our guide was outstanding, the story is beyond fiction. There is a very rich history which the guide skims for the group, pausing to answer in depth any questions that come up.

I took a bunch of photos, but the shots at their website are even better. However, they don't have this one: