Morrro Bay

We had a wonderful 2 days and 2 nights in Morro Bay with Will's family.  Dedushka and Grammalene treated us to an AMAZING ocean front house with stunning views of the coast, wildlife and Morro Rock.  It was an incredible weekend and worth the 5 hour drive!

Our first stop in Morro Bay was lunch in town.  The girls are posing at our lunch spot...pretty awesome view! :-)

Kate was glued to Auntie Megan all weekend long.  She just absolutely adores Auntie Megan!

While in town for lunch, we decided to rent a boat.  Dedushka was our captain and he took us around the harbor for the beautiful boat ride.

We saw a lot of seals, all lounging around on a their platform.

And we saw otters!!!  Super cool!

 This is the view from the house we stayed in...so amazing!

This is inside the main living area of the house.

Kate saw 2 deer from the kitchen nook window!  If you look close enough you can see a deer on the left and right of Kate.

Our beach by the house...sandy, huge and very quiet!

Kate spent most of her time digging holes in the beach in hopes to dig to China. :-)

Maggie preferred to do her dance shows on the beach

 We had a cold a foggy day on the beach and then a beautifully sunny and warm day on the beach. It was gorgeous!

We also went for a little drive to the town of Avila for our second afternoon.  We stopped at an ocean-front restaurant to grab some amazing lunch.

Then we lazily toured the quaint town of Avila.

Dedushka and Maggie were best buds on our walk around Avila...you can barely make out them, but they are holding hands on the pier.

Avila had a cute little park that Maggie especiall enjoyed.

Dominoes with Grammalene and Dedushka

Gorgeous sunset on our last night

Before we headed home, Dedushka and Grammalene took the girls shopping for special Morro Bay mermaid shirts.

Thanks Dedushka and Grammalene for a wonderful trip!  We had such a fantastic time!

San Simeon: Hearst Castle

 We just got back from an extended weekend on the California Coast.  Our first stop was San Simeon to tour the amazing Hearst Castle.  Immediately after checking in to our hotel we toured the beach and admired the sunset.

 Will and the girls enjoyed chasing the seagulls away.

 

We took our tour of Hearst Castle the next morning.  We chose to do the "upstairs" tour since Will and I had already seen the "grand room" tour before.  The tour was quite amazing with all the beautiful bedrooms to see.  Each bed had their own private bathroom, even if there were 2 beds in a room.  Hearst especially had a fancy for ceilings and each room had unique historical ceilings that had been imported from all over the world and customized to fit into each room.

Another ceiling

 A library

 This vase is over 2000 years old and is in "almost perfect" condition!

 Here is the ceiling in the library.

This is Hearst's own personal bed.  I guess he only slept 4 hours a night so he didn't use this bed too much.

Here is Hearst's personal office...AMAZING!

 The weather during our tour was picture perfect!  Unfortunately there was a lot of scaffolding surrounding the house since they were making repairs but the grandness was still quite breathtaking.

One of the many coastal views from the castle.

Lounging by the pool

Unfortunately the pool was drained for leakage repairs but it did allowed us to appreciate how huge and deep the pool was.  

This is one of the many "cottages" located around the castle

Kate did a pretty good job taking this picture of Will and me.

 Here is the the indoor pool that contains gold encrusted tiles.

 It is hard to tell in this picture, but the bridge that connects the front pool to the back pool is actually a diving platform!

Our next stop on our coastal weekend was Morro Bay with Will's family.  Hopefully I will have the pictures posted in the next few days!  It was an amazing trip!