10-11th day

Pacific Coast Highway
Highway No. 1

Higway No.1 is connecting LA with San Francisco. The highway is famous for running along some of the most beautiful coastlines in the USA, leading to its designation as an All-American Road. It s length between the two cities is around 450 miles, which we did in two days.

Santa Monica Pear

 

Leaving LA heading north we drove along well known places, like Santa Monica and Malibu, where the famaous people live and average go to the beach.
The Santa Monica Pier is a large  more than 100 year old pier with an amusent park on it. It offers great views of the ocean and the coastline as well.

1877 Santa Monica

 

2014 Santa Monica

Further north, you drive through Malibu`s 27 miles long scenic coastline, offering several stops. Hollywood stars and billionaires really like this place. The Oracle owner Larry Elison recently bought here 12 homes worth 250 million USD. Read the full article here

We did not have time to buy or even to look at any of the properties on sale and ended up only having a walk and eating a burger for lunch.

Next stop was Santa Barbara, which is already an hour drive away from LA, being more relaxed and quiet.Santa Barbara's climate is often described as Mediterranean, and the city has been promoted as the "American Riviera". Located between steaply rising mountains and the ocean.

We spent the night in Santa Maria, a few miles south from Herst Castle, that we can start our next day there.
The castle was designed by architect Julia Morgan between 1919 and 1947 for newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who died in 1951. Hearst formally named the estate "La Cuesta Encantada" ("The Enchanted Hill"), but usually called it "the ranch", since he several more properties in LA and New York. He also had a bigger ranch in Mexico.

Main entrance

Dining room

 The "ranch" here is 250,000 acres (1,012 km²) and has fourteen miles of coastline. Before the castle was built here it was used as a weekend campsite by the family.


Invitations to Hearst Castle were highly coveted during its heyday in the 1920s and 1930s. The Hollywood and political elite often visited, usually flying into the estate's airfield or taking a private Hearst-owned train car from Los Angeles. Charlie Chaplin, Charles Lindbergh, Joan Crawford, Franklin Roosevelt, Dolores Del Rio, Winston Churchill were among Hearst's A-list guests. Ocasionally Johnny Weissmuller came out to give swimming lessons for the guests.

He also had his own Zoo, with several exotic animals. As the Zoo was not maintained at some point anymore, animals were given to other Zoo s or simply just released. The zebras managed to survive and today they mingle with the cattle around the ranch.

Driving further north, there is big seal colonny close to San Simeon, which village is owned anyway from the first till the last property by the Hearst family.

 Returning to the seals, they stay here from late winter to late spring and are stinking while changing their fur.

For the rest of the day we were just driving direction Monterey. Weather was not so nice, still we stopped a coupe of times to enjoy the view and take photos. At the end of the day we drove the famous "17 mile drive" around Carmel (home to famous golf players) and finished with a sea food platter in Monterey.

For more pics click here