With bonkers Las Vegas under our belts and busy San Francisco still to come on our North American holiday, we needed somewhere to charge our batteries. Santa Barbara appealed, with its beach and the promise of summer sunshine, but the weather didn’t play ball.
The sun was shining as we drove into town and stayed out generously for a few hours but then remained stubbornly hidden behind cloud, so all we could do was look enviously at those fine stretches of sand while the wind blew and the showers fell.
But we didn’t leave disappointed because a few days in Santa Barbara gave us good walks, fine food and drink, funky shops and a lively nightlife courtesy of its large student population. Locked between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the ocean north of Los Angeles, it’s an attractive town that’s been home to plenty of celebs over the years, among them Oprah Winfrey and yummy Brad Pitt. Spend a few days exploring and you can understand why they chose it.
We arrived at the local airport on a small and noisy United Airlines Embraer, piloted by a man who insisted on describing every minute of our short hop from LA. Clearly an entrant in that year’s most verbose captain’s PA contest, he made up for the stewardess, who spent the flight chatting to a friend, oblivious to the fact she had passengers on board.
We checked into the Harbour View Inn down by the beach and a quick exploration revealed a seafront lined by tall, elegant palms that swayed gently in the sea breeze. Families and students gathered in large numbers on the seafront in the few hours of sunshine the heavens granted us, and we even managed an hour or two by the pool with our books.
At one end of the beach is a busy harbour and marina with a modest collection of shops and restaurants. But when we visited, the day after our arrival, the wind was gathering force and we had to dodge large waves that crashed over the harbour walls. Further south along the coast, large family homes that most of us can only dream of owning clung to the tops of the rocky cliffs. Stuck in the middle of the beach is the touristy Stearns Wharf with its restaurants, shops and marine museum, the Ty Warner Sea Center. We stopped for a beer in a bar there and nervously watched the pelicans and Embraer-sized seagulls sweeping around us, threatening to unload copious shits in a scene reminiscent of Hitchcock’s The Birds.
State Street is the long, long main drag that runs at right angles to the beach, ending at the wharf and our comfortable hotel. It’s lined with shops, bars and restaurants and ultimately leads into residential areas inland.
On a particularly gloomy day we went a couple of miles inland to visit the Santa Barbara Mission and its delightful gardens. Founded by the Franciscan order in 1786 and known today as the Queen of the Missions, it boasts amazing views of the town, the mountains and the Pacific Ocean. I couldn’t help thinking of the film The Mission, which charts how the Catholic Church went about corrupting the native peoples of South America and brought with it death and destruction. I wonder how destructive this particular mission had been in those early years?
We chose the gentle if fairly long walk back into town through residential streets full to the brim with expensive and well-tended houses.
In the afternoon, we took a quick tour of the town courthouse and climbed the tower for more spectacular views. The building itself is a fine example of Spanish-Moorish architecture, notable for its colourful tiles, mosaics and pretty gardens.
Nearby is The Presidio, which was the base for Spanish military forces back in the early days of the town. It isn’t the greatest of historic sites – much has been lost over the years and imagination is needed to picture it at its height – but it gave us a flavour of what life was like in the area in the earliest days of the Spanish conquest.
The Spaniards would’ve gorged on the bounty of the Pacific and seafood remains big business in Santa Barbara, making up a significant proportion of our lunches and dinners. We had a big meal at the Enterprise Fish Company but also enjoyed eating at Emilio’s – a popular Italian restaurant on the coast.
The bars on State Street were the busiest that we found on the few nights we were in town but, sadly, we never did see Mr Pitt or Ms Winfrey in any of them…