This fountain was typical of others around the grounds, the statue at the top of this is David (from the bible) with his foot on Goliath's head. Most of these are made of light coloured marble. The blue border is mosaic tile. Behind the fountain is one of the two very impressive guest houses, furnished with 400 year old antique furniture. It's amazing to think that someone actually used to live here for part of the year!

This photo shows the 'Neptune Pool' that you catch a glimpse of in the top photo. It was really beautiful, the bottom of the pool is tiled, and surrounded by very graceful statues.

We toured one of the guest houses, basically a house with bedrooms, bathrooms and dressing rooms - all the dining and entertaining took place in the main house ...

The furniture was lovely, and each room had very ornate carved and painted ceilings similar to the detail on the mantlepeice in the photo, persian rugs, etc, etc, etc!

This pic looks up at the front of the main house, 'La Casa Grande'. The facade is all marble and very,very big... The carved frieze across the front entrance is the height of the ballroom ceiling inside, at a guess, about 30 feet high.

This is the main entrance to La Casa Grande, you get some idea here of the height of the ceilings. To the right of the doorway you can see the edge of a tapestry, about half a dozen lined the upper walls in here, we couldn't use the camera's flash inside the buildings so these pics are the best we could do! You also get a glimpse of the suspended wooden ceiling.

This show a bit more detail of the tapestry and some more of the ceiling.

Next door to the ballroom is the dining room which contains one VERY long table. The candlesticks were impressive, about 3-4 feet high. To the right of the photo near the end of the table was a massive fireplace, big enough for most people to walk in and out of without bumping their head... especially those of us under 6 feet tall! Along the windows were antiques flags. This room had a very medieval feel to it. After dinner the guests would play billiards for a while then go watch a movie in the inhouse theatre.

Even more impressive than the Neptune Pool is this indoor Roman Pool. It is big enough to fit two tennis courts on top of it, with room to spare. Yes, the walls, floor and pool are all decorated with mosaic tiles and the yellow tiles are actually topped with gold leaf, the lampstands are made of alabaster... it really was stunning.

Did we mention this pool was also kept heated....

The sign at the entrance to the factory where they make the jelly beans. It takes about a week to make them as they go through many processes to get to the final product. This company makes gourmet jelly beans in 50 flavours!

Jelly Belly has a dedicated artist that creates pictures out of the many different colours of jelly beans. These are some of the pictures.

A close-up of one picture, very patriotic of course...!

The factory cafe, foyer and shop were all decked out for Christmas, and included two giant nut-cracker statues by the doors. We had jelly bean shaped pizza for lunch.

The owners of the factory must know Apu...! It was well worth a visit, you got to wear a paper hat. This was a sight to behold on the members of the black leather clad Harley riding group on our tour...