The reason we stayed at San Simeon was mainly to visit Hearst Castle, the famous home of publishing millionaire William Randolph Hearst. It was built between 1919 and 1947, on the top of a hill overlooking the pacific. No expense was spared, and as Hearst was obsessed by European art and architecture, the result was a bit like a Footballer's house on steroids! The guide kept saying 'this piece is 600 years old, and it's from Europe', but it's bloody ugly, and it doesn't fit in! 'But it cost millions of dollars! It's from Europe! It's really old!' We enjoyed our visit, but it was a strange experience! The zebras we'd seen earlier were originally in Hearst's private zoo, and had escaped into the wild, just to freak out passing British tourists!
We stopped at the beach to look for sea otters, again, and got talking to a couple of American women, as we were looking out to sea, we saw a whale swimming out in the bay, we watched it for ages, all the while congratulating ourselves for spotting it. After about ten minutes, we realised it hadn't actually moved, it was a bloody rock, d'oh!
We did see huge elephant seals on a different beach, however, and they definitely weren't rocks, we could actually see them fighting. No sea otters, though, sadly! Another interesting 'sea otter' fact, they anchor themselves whilst sleeping in the sea, by wrapping kelp around their body, so they stay floating in the same place, simples!