To Swim, Perchance to Dream #2: Hearst Castle

Some people have a dream car, or a dream house.  But the more I get into swimming, the more I have dream pools.  Places I'd like to swim, or wish I could swim every day.

When I was 9 years old, my family spent part of winter vacation driving the California coast from San Francisco to San Diego so that my brother could look at colleges.  We don't really talk about this trip much because some of the most prominent memories include car sickness, a bird getting stuck in the front fender of the rental car, and me being so tired of being in such close quarters with my family that I hung out in a hotel room closet for a couple of hours (seriously).

There were a lot of fun parts of that trip.  Visiting Alcatraz, playing tennis, beautiful weather in Santa Barbara. And when I started to think about dream pools for swimming, another place came to mind: Hearst Castle! 

Heart Castle was built by the newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst (on land he inherited from his father) in San Simeon, California.  Today it's a state monument and it is absolutely bonkers!  It also has two extraordinary pools that would be a dream to swim in--one outdoor, one indoor.

Neptune Pool, Hearst Castle

Roman Pool, Hearst Castle

While you can take a tour of the Castle, and see the pools, you can't swim in them. Which is a real shame.  Alas, to swim, perchance to dream!

Have a suggestion for a future post of "To Swim, Perchance to Dream?"  Email me or tweet me with the hashtag #dreampool.