Hey everyone,
welcome back to my blog! Today I am writing about Santa Barbara, which was the last place I travelled to while in America! I'm sorry this is so old - from 2018 oops! If you have not already read my other posts from this trip to America then you can read them here!
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SANTA BARBARA:
We were staying for four day in Santa Barbara and it was supposed to be our most relaxing section of our holiday as we were not going to be visiting as many museums and historical monuments!
On our first day, my family and I enjoyed walking around the beautiful main street and window shopping for some time. It was immensely busy as the fiesta that ran from the 1st of August to the 5th was there! I took a lot of pictures of people dancing and children throwing flowers. There were even American reporters there to broadcast the event! The fact that the fiesta was happening meant that it was quite difficult for us to do much. We spent some more time shopping and then we headed back to our beach front hotel.
OUR SECOND DAY:
On our second day we got up really early and walked up the busy streets of Santa Barbara to go and eat breakfast at Jeannine's. This café / restaurant was superb and definitely worth the hour walk there as well as the queue to be seated. I would really recommend getting there early as we arrived for brunch at least 12 which is too late for breakfast! The café had a very homely feel with the painted plates and casual set up inside. Also, the food was unbelievably good! My family and I wanted to return again, but it took such a long time to walk there that we were not sure if we would.
From eating our brunch, we continued walking up the steep roads until we found the Mission. This incredibly beautiful pink building was founded in 1786 by the Spanish and today is a center for Franciscans and friars to worship and pray. I really enjoyed looking round the grounds of this building and although we did miss the last tour, walking through it at our own pace and reading all the information was so interesting.
After we had visited the mission we walked back down the hill into the busy city centre where we went and ate lunch at the 'Goat tree' which is a really lovely café near the beach. It serves salads, pasta and much more for lunch. For dinner we ate at 'Le Merchands' which was delicious! And afterwards we watched some fiesta dancing before heading back to our hotel for the evening.
OUR THIRD DAY:
We walked to the beach and spent some time at the yacht club, where we took some amazing views of the incredible Santa Barbara coastline and yachts. I really enjoyed it! Afterwards, we walked along the wall and I enjoyed seeing all the fish swimming by. We even crossed a really narrow path along rocks to get to a small sand spit in the middle of the sea! It was such a scary journey back and forth from the sand pit as the tide would literally soak us from time to time as waves passed over the shallow rocks around us. After some relaxing time on the beach, we then went up to the Court house to listen to some beautiful classical music being performed as part of the fiesta week.
We ate lunch and dinner (not at the same time, I just forgot to include that whoops!) And then we went back to our hotel, taking pictures of the stunning sunset with the palm trees in the evening.
OUR FINAL DAY:
On our final morning in Santa Barbara, we all got up extremely early for a quick before setting off to go and eat breakfast at backyard bowls. The smoothie bowls and granola bowls there were excellent, although there is limited seating, so if you go I would recommend ordering a takeaway.
After we had finished our breakfast, my family and I went a hired a six-person bike which I had never seen before. It was more like a mini car, except there were two steering wheels at the front and each person had a set of peddles to move the vehicle. It was super fun, and very comical as we moved very slowly and reversed into bushes. The paths beside the beach were large and meant that majority of families had hired bikes like the one we were using. After our bike ride finished, it lasted an hour, we went to eat our lunch quickly and then we packed up all our books and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon, relaxing at the beautiful sandy beach.
To end our afternoon, we also went onto the pier and walked around it to take some more pictures of Santa Barbara before it became dark and we ate dinner. Then, we all returned to the hotel earlier than usual to pack and depart for the LAX airport the next morning. We got a flight back and in about 11 hours, we returned home.
Thank you for reading this blog! If you enjoyed it then I would really appreciate It If you like, comment or share this blog post. If you would like to read my previous travel blogs then please click on the underlined places to read about each one, the page is attached to the link.
Thank you once again and have a great day!
Beth Lucy