Monday, May 2, 2011

The Lady of Mystery and Peggy Sue's

I saw a cool shirt at the Winchester Mystery House that said "The Lady of Mystery" . . . but it was really expensive!  If you haven't guessed yet, we went to the Winchester Mystery House yesterday evening.  But first we went out to eat.

One street to the right of the Hilton (right if you're walking out the front and left if you're walking into the building) is a little 50s diner called Peggy Sue's.  Dad and I looked into a bunch of other restaurants and they were like really expensive and some websites didn't even post the prices so that scared us a bit!  I don't really like fancy restaurants anyways and I much prefer places like Peggy Sue's.  My dad had a really spicy burger and I had a chicken burger with blue cheese!  Here are some pix of Peggy Sue's:

 This is the sidewalk on the way to Peggy Sue's--I thought it was gorgeous.

Here's dad at Peggy Sue's

And here's me with with my french fries . . . yum

Last, but not least, is the front of Peggy Sue's.  It's funny because it was practically sandwiched in between several huge expensive restaurants.  So, it looked really tiny.  Actually it was tiny inside, but I really liked it.  And, I'm so going back for a milkshake sometimes this week!

 So later that evening we went to the Winchester Mystery House which is only like 3 miles from the hotel.  The house is MASSIVE!!! . . . and weird.  Mrs. Winchester supposed built it to appease and/or confuse the spirits of the dead who were killed by the Winchester rifle.  Mrs. Winchester's daughter died and so did her husband.  When she went to a psychic she was told that the spirits of those who were killed by the Winchester rifle were haunting her.  So, she needed to build a house and never stop building it to appease them.  Construction started in 1884 and continued 24/7/365 until she died in 1922.  No joke, they NEVER stopped working on that house--not during a holiday, not during the night, not ever until she died.  The house itself is really kooky.  There's a seance room in the house and it's said she would contact the spirits to see what how they wanted her to build the house and that's where she supposedly got the plans (which sort of explains the strangeness of the house).  She was obsessed with spiderwebs, the number 13, and daisies.  Like I said, the house is really strange.  It's full of doors that open to nowhere, staircases that go right up into the ceiling, a cabinet with only a half inch of space on the inside, bathrooms with glass doors (seriously it's like the toilet was on display), windows in the floor, a room with only one entrance but three exits, and a four story tall chimney that stops one foot short of the roof (so all connecting fireplaces won't function), stairs that are 2 inches tall but two feet wide (for her arthritis--at least that has an explanation), stairs that are two feet tall but only two inches wide, and a bell tower with no way to get to it.  And there was no photography allowed indoors :(  but I got a few pictures of the behind the scenes tour (photography was allowed on that tour).

Here's dad with his hardhat on--we went into the basement and there were lots of low pipes so we were required to wear the hardhats.

Here's me with my hardhat on.  Now an interesting story about how this picture was taken.  I handed dad the camera so he could take a picture and he had his finger right in front of the lens.  So, of course, I said "wait don't take the picture, your finger's right in front of the lens."  But, as he moved his finger out of the way, somehow he ended up throwing my phone into the gravel . . . and now there's a huge dent in the casing.  Thankfully it didn't scratch the screen though.  We were both laughing because I've had the phone for years and here he has it just to take a picture and manages to do more damage in 30 seconds than I did in two years lol.  I did actually let him touch my phone again so here's the picture of me in my awesome hardhat.

I actually don't know why I took a picture of this . . . I think it's because everyone else in the tour group did and I just automatically took a picture of it as well.

The sun was behind the house so in the camera the front of the house looked black--here's probably the best pic I got of the front.  There are 160 rooms total in this house.

Here's a turret.

And here's the side of the house when I finally (stupid me) figured out that I just needed to play with the white balance . . .

That's it for now!  Oh, and I don't have any pictures of it, but after the Winchester House, we wanted to stop and get some water (and some Advil for our headaches) so even through there were little drugstores everywhere, we couldn't find a parking spot.  Lol, we drove around in circles for like an hour trying to find somewhere.  Finally we found some dinky corner store like a few miles out of the downtown area . . . and it had parking!  It's just funny how long it took us to find it . . .

5 comments:

  1. AWESOME House!!! I want that as a vacation home or something,cause that house is well...awesome.

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  2. I know! Isn't it the coolest house ever! The only thing that creeps me out is the reason she built it . . . that's just freaky. But, other than that, I want to live there :p

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  3. That is a cool house, lots of detail on the out side:) Did you walk through the house?

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  4. What a great time with Dad! Thanks for sharing all the pictures and stories.

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  5. @Onceuponatime - Yup, we walked through 110 of the 160 rooms. I'm just mad I couldn't take any pictures :( There was one amazingly beautiful window that cost 1,500 dollars.

    @Debbie - Nice to hear from you :) Hopefully there will be more up tonight or tomorrow!

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