CALIFORNIA TRIP (part1)

HEY! I'm back, and I have vacation stories!!

For the past 5 days, (starting from the ninth) I've been in California for a last hurrah family vacation. Since I have time, a reliable computer, and something to talk about, I decided to (finally) update! The first day, we woke up at 4:45am to catch a 7:20 flight to San Francisco. When we came in, we were greeted by my aunt, Carol and my favorite little cousin, Rumela. (oh, and before you ask, will update with pictures when I get back after the 19th. We obtained our rental Ford Expedition (from my uncle Zul), and headed toward our first stop, Hearst Mansion.

We started this trip by heading down Highway 1 along the pacific coast. BEAUTIFUL drive, there were so many views of mountains, rock islands, white beaches. Of course, the drive was on top of a 300ft cliff directly outlining the coast which made things SCARY AS HELL. Beautiful and scary as it was, the most stunning thing about this drive was the how quickly the landscape was changing.

However, we made it to Hearst Mansion just in time for our tour to start. We learned all about who William Hearst was, how he became successful, and how long it took to build his palatial mansion, and legenday village on top of a mountain. Apparently, Hearst's father was a gold miner who struck it rich by hitting a silver vein. Using this money, the young William and his mother went to Europe and he was captivated by the architecture, particularly of the Mediterranean area. Years later, after becoming a successful businessman by starting up the San Francisco Chronicle, he decided to build a small villa on top of the hill where he and his family went camping during the summer. A small villa with a 40 room mansion, 3 guest houses, a zoo, two pools, a movie theatre, and 70 acres of surrounding land. Yeah, I kinda hated the guy near the end of the tour too. However, he began building his mansion when he was 50 years old!

And that was only the FIRST day, there are a lot more adventures to tell you about later, its getting late!

Stay Classy,
Matt