Oh dear oh dear I have gotten behind and now I am not going to be able to REMEMBER
everything that we've done! I think I will have to go back to the beginning to remind
myself.
Sunday - SF in the pouring rain. sister with a cold. dinner at delfina's.
Monday - drive down to big sur, lunch at nepenthe, elephant seals on the beach!, and Hearst castle. oh, that's right. I was going to do some more describing of Hearst Castle. so, yuh, La Cuesta Encantada, a.k.a. Hearst Castle, is a folly built by megamegamegamega bajillionaire W.R.Hearst once he inherited his parents' bajillions on top of his own bajillions. I was expecting a huge tacky over-the-top Hollywood extravaganza, which it kind of is, except for there are bits of it which are not at all tacky (although the over-the-top adjective applies fairly consistently throughout the whole thing). As soon as the guide (an incredibly mellow middle aged lady with navy orthopedic shoes and a ponytail who had been leading tours at the Hearst Castle for over thirty years, and somehow still managed to make it sounds like she a) enjoyed it and b) had never had to repeat herself once in thirty years) told us Julia Morgan's general concept for the place was for the main house to look like a 17th century Spanish cathedral and for the surrounding guest cottages to look like senorial houses around the cathedral, I liked it much better. Somehow it makes it nicer that there was a particular specific architectural look they
were going for, rather than, let's make it as crazy ornate and luxurious as we can and
to hell with the final product. I think I liked the guest houses better than the main house as well - the gist was Mediterranean villas with old tiles and splashy antique fountains, furnished with heavy dark wood antique Spanish furniture and medieval/early Renaissance artwork, my fave my fave. The high tack came mostly in the form of sculpture - he'd bought a few gen-yoo-wine 18th century French & Italian bits and pieces, but several of the reclining marble ladies around the pool were 1920's movie starlets who were supposed to look like 18th century french ladies, and they looked much too doe-eyed and flirty to be convincing. We watched a promotional/descriptional film about W.R.Hearst, which (I love this) had actors acting out the events described in the voiceover but not speaking themselves (W.R.Hearst's father straining with his mule team, grubby and sweaty, over the Sierras, bags laden with mined ingots which turned out to be silver, WRH's mother looking over the prow of the ship, one hand on the shoulder of her little boy, looking meaningfully into the middle distance where Europe was - Europe being a metaphor for 'future taste in art,' I guess - WRH as an fat middle aged man looking meaningfully into the middle distance standing on his property and then pointing with his stick where he wants his house to be, etc.). The other interesting thing about the Hearst Castle was how lowbrow the visitors' center was: no reproductions of some of the gorgeous paintings/tapestries, for instance, nothing British Museumy about it at all, but you can buy sweatshirts with "Hearst Castle Athletic Team" block printed in a million different colours, shot glasses with a silhouette of the castle, DVD's of the hokey promotional video, etc. Anyway. My only regret is that we couldn't wander freely on our own and (for instance) sit and draw in the gardens) but instead had to keep marching on the official tour. They do several official tours, one which is apparently a little more free-form of the gardens etc. and that might be nice.
That evening we drove down to Morro Bay, where we spent night at the Twin Dolphin Inn -
while I have no trouble staying at tatty motels, it is surprising how difficult it has been to persuade la mama to at least stay at independently owned tatty motels rather than
chain tatty motels...
On Tuesday morning, we drove to San Luis Obispo, which is one of those places that I have
heard of five million times but completely without context, so I had no idea whether it was
going to be a shitty industrial center or a gorgeous little Spanish architectural gem or
what. Here's my ideal of an American town: somewhere that has a nice town center, like
(for instance) San Luis Obispo (sunshine, bougainvillea, Spanishy architecture, nice
pedestrian streets), but that is _not_ surrounded by miles of car dealerships and
Burger Kings. I have yet to see that. The other depressing fact is how ubiquitous so many
of the shops are: it really reinforces the message that it is becoming less and less worth-
while to travel, at least within the US, because everywhere there is a Starbucks, a Wal-Mart,
a Barnes & Noble, a 7-11, a Whole Foods, etc. But I digress. We spent the morning at the
SLO mission, drawring in the sunshine in the garden (la mama did a very pretty drawring
of a fountain, palm trees etc and I did one of a petit fleur) and then we took ourselves
off for lunch at an outdoor cafe next to the creek which was tres jolie and our waiter
flirted with la mama about his love of landscape painting.
oh dear almost time to go i will finish this later.
love to all.
No comments:
Post a Comment