The Big Sur coast, in California, runs roughly from San Francisco to somewhere north of LA.
You need a car, which was fine as we hired one in SF and cruised down the highway to Big Sur.
The views are spectacular and as always, there are some class bridges to keep me happy!
I suppose it's reasonably similar to the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, but perhaps bigger and better hyped.
It is a great place to drive though, with sweeping views down the coast and out to sea.
We also went through the towns of Santa Cruz, San Luis Obispo and Carmel, where Clint Eastwood lives. We didn't see him though and in fact, it was very windy when we were in Carmel with sand being blown every which way, so we trundled on.
One of the highlights of our whole trip was to be discovered at a place called San Simeon.
Samantha had mentioned that she wanted to visit Hearst Castle. I was unconvinced but it wasn't a big ask to do something that Samantha wanted to do, so off we went after spending a night in San Simeon, essentially a town with only motels for the Hearst Castle.
By the way, just outside San Simeon, on the drive down, we stopped at a beach and saw hundreds of sealions (I think...sorry if you are a marine expert!). Man, they stunk! Was pretty cool though to see so many close up and they also made a real racket. But well cool.
Anyways, back to Hearst Castle.
As I mentioned, no expectations from me, but when we went up there, and wandered around on the tour, it was seriously cool.
William Randolph Hearst had travelled throughout Europe as a youngster and this clearly influenced him to build this massive mansion and he adorned it with loads of amazing items from around the world.
It truly is brilliant and I would recommend to everyone to visit at least once.
