Day 9- Hearst Castle

Hello Rimu!

Today we went to the Hearst Castle and looked at the history of the Hearst family. It was built on a really big hill and was more than three story’s high! It was made by William Randolph Hearst and he started 1919 and took him 28 years to make it! And yet it still isn’t finished! That would’ve taken soo long to build! He was the man who made the first Newspaper industry and that’s how he got all of his money.

This is one of the main water fountains at the entrance patio. The patio originally was the fountain and path but it was later extended to what you see.

This was one of the tapestry’s that were hung on the walls inside the Great Room for insulation. Only very rich people have them. Usually Kings & Lords have them. He used to invite celebrities and Hollywood’s most famous actors of the time. There was also a fire place so big they could fit up to 3 adults inside of it!

This is the Neptune pool located near the stairways leading to the entrance of the building. This pool wasn’t like any other pool, you had to wear tops on because Hearst didn’t allow open-chested swimming. He did not let open-chested swimming because it was not acceptable to swim showing your skin in the 1940s.

This is he main entrance to the castle

Day 8 - Squirrels 🐿

Hello Rimu!

Before leaving the Fisherman’s Wharf , we spotted some Seals! There were soo many sitting on the piers! Most of them were laying down in the sun, taking a nap. While the rest were playing and pushing each other off the piers. They were so loud that you could hear them from the entrance of the pier!

Later on that day we went to a park in Golden Gate Park and there was a lot of plants from different countries in the world. They had NZ as well! We got Dad to call a squirrel to him and he touched his tail!🐿 Here is the video.

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These were all of the seals on the piers laying in the sun. There were soo many of them.
And they were ver loud too.

Along the way to a special place in the next blog we saw some different kind of seals. I believe it was elephant seals or something like that. They kept flicking sand on themselves for shade. Like an elephant and mud. I guess that’s why they’re called that.

Day 7 - San Francisco

Hello Rimu! Today we went to San Francisco to see he Golden Gate Bridge. Did you know that California’s nickname is the ‘Golden State’, mainly because there was a gold rush in 1848? I think that’s why the Golden Gate Bridge got it’s name.

We went to a old military bunker on the hill that looked over the bridge at sunrise. We climbed over the fence on the cliff and found one of the buildings had cool graffiti on it.

After that we went down to the Fisherman’s Wharf and we toured a submarine from WW2. Then went to an arcade that had really old machines. Some of them were older than my grandfather! There was a chair called the “Throne of Love”, I sat in it and it told me I was sizzling hot! There were a lot of tourist shops. We went through a mirror maze that was really cool, but it didn’t take long to find the end. We didn’t get to go to Alcatraz because they were sold out but we could see it from the binoculars on the pier.