Jeff and I flew down to San Francisco for the weekend and met up with Mark & Alli. We had the most fun time! Our first stop was in San Jose at the Winchester Mansion. This house was so crazy! Sarah Winchester who was the wife of William Winchester, the president of Winchester rifles, purchased the house when they were married. They had one baby, a daughter named Sarah. She had an intolerance to milk and had an protein problem to where she couldn't digest protein or something. She basically starved to death by the age of 6 weeks. Six months later, the husband passed away from tuberculous. Sarah, went a little crazy I think. And anyone would with 2 major tragedies so close. She went to Boston and saw a psychic. This psychic told her that these bad things were happening to her because it was all the ghosts of those who had been killed by a Winchester rifle haunting her. The psychic told her that she needed to go home and remodel/build on to her home 24 hours a day and to NEVER stop the construction. So, that's what she did. Construction started in 1884 and didn't stop until the day of her death in 1922. 38 years of building! The original home sat on 8 acres. The home now takes up 6 of those acres! It has 160 rooms. Its the most bazaar house I have ever seen. She had no plan, she just came up with stuff and had it built. She built a house for her foreman on her property so that he could always be there to oversee the project. He raised his family there too.
The original home was 7 stories tall. They lost the top 3 floors in the great San Francisco earthquake. She thought that the spirits had caused the earthquake because the were mad at her. So they never rebuilt the top floors.
It is so quirky. She did this to try to confuse the ghosts. She built average size doors and tiny doors. Doors that lead to no where and doors that had walls behind them. Cabinets that had a wall behind them and some closets had one sided door handles. That way, if a ghost came into the room, she could escape through a cabinet or door and without a door handle on the other side, they wouldn't be able to get to her. WEIRD!
She had stairs that lead to the ceiling....
And teeny, tiny narrow staircases.
We walked through 110 rooms of the 160. Our tour lasted 65 minutes. When it was all done, the tour guide said that we had walked one mile through the house. He also said that the San Jose fire department came in and put in a sprinkling system. He said that they used 17 MILES of pipe in the house!
It was seriously the strangest house I've ever seen!
Then we went over to the Castro District - which is the gay district in San Francisco.
Rainbows EVERYWHERE! Even in the cross walks!
We drove through China Town. We had some crazy good food!
We drove over the Golden Gate Bridge and up the mountain to get a full view of the bridge.
We went down to Fisherman's Wharf a few times. We had the most delicious food. We googled the places that food network had featured. We ate until we were sick!
We went to Golden Gate Park and to ****** ???? We hiked around there and saw some amazing, huge, beautiful redwood trees.
We went to see the Painted Ladies.
We drove down the famous Lombard Street.
And our last stop of the trip was up to Oakland to the temple. It was a great trip.
Delicious food, fantastic company, and great memories made!
This house was just one we drove by and we had to take a picture of it! They were ALL DECKED out for Christmas!
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