Day 6: The Winchester Mystery House

Cathy has wanted to go to the Winchester Mystery House ever since she saw something on TV about it years ago.  It is in San Jose, so we planned a trip for today. Yay!

We've traveled in many different cities and countries, and we've never been as confused about a subway system as we were about the BART.  BART was both confusing and expensive.  We spent a futile fifteen minutes attempting to buy tickets at the vending machine.  Kirk's card kept getting rejected for some reason, which we took as a sign that we should not spend two hours on an expensive subway train.  Kirk had some promotional credit on his account, so we hit up Lyft.  It was more expensive than BART- but not by an insane amount. (Thank you, Lyft calculator!) The car was clean and the driver was very pleasant.

We got to the house, bought our tickets, and waited for our turn.  There were about 20 people on each hour long tour, and tours were booked back to back.  It was a busy place!

The house was HUGE.  There are 160 rooms.  The house was worked on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year while Mrs. Winchester was alive.  She was crazy rich.  When her husband died, she inherited 20 million dollars AND stock in her husband's company that earned her about $1000 a DAY.  Plus she earned extra money by growing and drying fruit from the orchards she planted on her property.  

The house was weird- stairs going nowhere, giant cabinets that had half an inch of "storage" space, a seance room that had one entrance but three exits, doors that opened to 8 feet drops, windows everywhere (including the floors) and references to spider webs and the number 13 in lots of things.  Many of the doors were very low- Mrs. Winchester was only 4 feet 11 inches tall.  She also had arthritis, and had "easy riser" stairs installed.  Those would be useful today! There were also three elevators.  New servants had to use a map to get through the house.  She seemed like a difficult person to work for- she liked to spy on her servants to make sure they were not talking about her, and set up parts of the house so she could do so undetected. However, she paid her servants 3 dollars a day, which was twice the going rate, and their servant quarters were very comfortable. She also added thoughtful touches to make their work easier.  For example, the laundry room had hot and cold running water AND built in scrubbing boards in the sinks.   There was also removable flooring it the conservatory.  Under the wood, there was zinc, which is rust resistant, and a drains. There was also running water in the conservatories so the servants could water the plants with minimal work. 

She was an extremely private person, and did not really have guests.  Her niece lived with her as her companion.  The niece inherited most of the money when Mrs. Winchester died.  She also got her furniture.  She took what she wanted, and auctioned off the rest.  While all of the furniture is period specific, none of it was original.  Only 1/3 of the house had furniture in it, but it took the moving men six weeks of eight hour days to remove the contents. 

It was a fascinating tour.  We were not allowed to take pictures inside, but we got a few shots outside.

Modeling the house

Cathy was taken by these lemons.

The house

We stopped for coffee, then grabbed a Lyft back.  We called the guy who drove us in, but he was too far away to pick us up, so we used the app.  The woman who showed up happened to be his wife!  She called him and we all laughed together.  It was a good ride- Carol was really nice, and her car was super clean.

After a quick break at the hotel, we popped by Lombard Street.  It lived up to its crooked name.  It was also extremely steep. We walked down it.  The houses were beautiful, but if we were going to spend 5 million dollars on a house, we would not want a billion tourists walking by our windows every day.

Cathy is basically standing in someone's yard here.

It was our last dinner, so we had seafood on the wharf.  Kirk had swordfish, and Cathy had seafood risotto.

We can't believe that it was our last day here!  This week has FLOWN by.  We are hoping for an easy trip back, but we're preparing to be stranded in Dallas, as the weather is going to be awful in a lot of places.  We will let you know how it turns out!