LA -> Cambria

Saturday the 26th of November, and we spent the day travelling from Anaheim to Cambria. After leaving at 7 in the morning, we arrived in Malibu, home of the rich and surfing just North of LA. After a couple of hours of driving through bland, industrial wasteland, we got out to the country, and into the pretty country of the Californian central coast. Santa Barbara, a pretty, spanish style college town was our next port of call. After brunch in a beautiful spot out on the local pier, we headed up to the outskirts of town of the Santa Barbara mission, the oldest mission in California, and a relic of the 16th century when catholic missionaries travelled up this coast and named -everything- after some saint or another. From Santa Barbara, the road veered inland and we travelled through some stunning hilly country toward San Louis Obispo (oh, and Adel, not sure if this'll mean anything, but I was within 2 blocks of being 'on Johnson avenue in San Luis Obispo'... though I wasn't listening to dance music >_> <_<). href="http://www.hearstcastle.com/">Hearst Castle. Check out the website, and you can see that it was built by super-rich early 20th century media tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Anyway, after a short movie on Hearst's life and the castle (I use that term loosely, as it's not exactly a medieval English joint, more Spanish, to be honest) we took a bus ride up the hill to the compound itself (it's a series of buildings). The sun was low and quite yellow when we arrived, making for some brilliant shots of the huge pool and surrounds. Flash photography wasn't allowed inside the castle, and it was quite dark in the interior after the sun went down, so I didn't take many photos there, but believe me, it was incredibly, outrageously lavish and expensive. I did, though, manage to get a couple of picture of the indoor pool, which was one of the most magical places in the gathering dark.
Once we were done at Hearst Castle, we returned to Cambria, a place so insanely cute and small town-esque, it makes you start dreaming of retiring and wandering the friendly, small town streets browsing antique shops and knowing everyone by their first name... or is that just me? either way, dinner was a giant pizza between all five of us (note the hand, included for scale)... these people sure know how to do food.

Anyway, today was absolutely amazing, I saw some of the most stunning sights I'm ever likely to witness, but it's late and everyone else is already in bed, so I'll leave that update for tomorrow. Tomorrow, we'll be travelling on and reaching San Francisco, note sure what the internet situation will be like, but I should be able to at least stay only 1 day behind... Seey'all later.