When I was a sophomore in high school, my English teacher made us watch a lot of old movies. We were 14 years old and we didn't really care much about old black and white movies with silly actors and subtitles. One day he showed us Citizen Kane, the classic film thought by many to be the best of all time. For some reason this one stuck with me. The moral of the story is "Money can't buy happiness."
The movie was inspired by the life of William Randolph Hearst, newspaper mogul and wealthiest man of his time. Hearst built and lived on his private ranch castle in central California, known as the Hearst Castle. It was a sprawling estate of around 250 square miles, taking up 10 miles of the California coastline.
The Hearst Castle was nearly self sufficient, with livestock herds, gardens, water supply, etc. Hearst had the largest private zoo in the world, with over 60 types of herd animals roaming free - including kangaroos, zebra, reindeer, etc. 30 types of carniverous animals were kept in cages - lions, bears, leopards, etc.
He built a separate town - San Simeon - to house the maintenence crews and workers. To get there, guests normally took trains from San Francisco or Los Angeles, but there were two airstrips on the premises.
The castle itself was set several miles inland atop a tall hill. It was ringed by 3 huge guest houses. The view from the top was pretty great.
When I was 10, my parents took me to the hobby shop where I could spend my allowance money on baseball cards. When Hearst was 10, his parents took him to the finest museums and art collections around the world and let him buy whatever he wanted. The Neptune statue atop the pool is several hundred years old, and the columns below are preserved from the Roman Empire.
Here's the castle itself. Pretty fancy.
The inside was nice too, but difficult to take pictures of because it was dark and flashes weren't allowed, since the walls were more or less covered in priceless artifacts.
And here's the indoor swimming pool.
Then it was back to San Simeon to get some writing done and camp for the night. It was a full moon.
