Life List: Visit the Winchester House

You may remember the life list that posted a few months ago. I've (slowly) been working my way through it, and one of my new year's resolutions was to tackle a few of the things on the list. One of the things on the list was a visit to the Winchester Mansion in San Jose, CA, and, with the help of my dear friends, I'm able to scratch that off this week. If you're not familiar with the Winchester house, it was built (and built, and built) by Sarah Winchester in the 38 years following the deaths of her daughter and husband. She believed that she was being haunted by the spirits of the people who'd been killed by Winchester rifles, and to appease them, she could never stop construction on the house. (Spirits have strange demands.) There are 160 rooms in the house, many of which contain freaky little things, like doors that open into walls, and staircases that go to the ceiling (and nowhere else.) The house itself, in spite of the weird additions, is truly beautiful, and it's almost a shame that it's not being used for anything other than tourism. I kind of want to live there. They wouldn't let us take cameras inside, so I don't have any pictures. but their website has plenty to give you an idea of what it was like. As an added bonus, San Jose was a fun town, and we had a good dinner and really amazing desserts after the tour.

All together my trip was great, it was -really- good to see my friends, and for the first time I realize how awesome it is to be able to use 3 vacation days and get a full 11 days off. Excellent .