Alameda Plaza

Today I was happy when Ted woke me up (not!) as we had made plans to visit nearby Santa Barbara today for the first time. I had a simple breakfast of coffee and a croissant before we walked down to the nearby car rental.

After all the formalities, we were surprised by the procedure where you can now pick any car within a certain price range, rather than being assigned one. We thought we would take Coastal Route 1 to drive through Malibu. It was an interesting place - even though it looks slightly run down, it does still have a certain bygone charm to it.

We ended up taking the wrong road later towards Santa Barbara but it wasn't a huge problem because we stopped at a local 99c supermarket for some supplies, as well as having a good meal at a nearby Olive Garden restaurant. When we arrived in Santa Barbara, we were definitely impressed.

I have been wanting to go there for a while and we loved it. SB is a beautiful historic town, with a colonial Spanish influence, art deco style and a seaside view. Our first stop was the beautiful Santa Barbara Country Courthouse which has an impressive view of the city from the Clock Tower observation deck, and colourful panoramas of Santa Barbara’s story in the Mural Room. I think what also made the visit worthwhile was the wonderful weather we had today.

We then headed to the nearby Old Mission, set in beautiful gardens. Whilst the church is extremely modest, to me it represented religion much better than a lot of the grandiose churches we've seen around the world. We then headed down to the Santa Barbara Waterfront which was something of a surprise, because you could drive your car right down the pier and park at no cost. Here we mainly enjoyed the shops and stayed for a beer in the sun.

We decided to visit nearby Solvang, which is promoted as a Danish style town. On the way we drove through nearby Los Padres National Park before arriving. Solvang greeted us with a view of two windmills and its own version of the Little Mermaid. The town was definitely charming with some unique architecture and parks, so I really felt the need to stop in a nearby cafe for coffee and a Danish pastry before returning to Los Angeles.

We called Gretchen and Dallas on the way back, before stopping at Oxnard for dinner at IHOP. The traffic back was moderately busy but it wasn't too late before we returned the car and walked back to our hotel. We were feeling pretty exhausted by this time and went to bed for our (ugh) early start tomorrow!Read more