Santa Barbara Week One

Arizona is face-meltingly hot this time of year, so we made a hasty escape to Santa Barbara for a few weeks. We got an Airbnb rental in an area that would be walkable to Stearns Wharf, restaurants, shops, and bars.

Upon arrival the apartment needed a good cleaning (and a thorough spray of Raid to evict some ants), but other than that it is pretty great. Kevin will have a great view of Mission Creek (and a sliver of a view of the ocean) while working at the desk upstairs. The duplex doesn't have air conditioning, but it's not really needed since temps are in the 70's and there is usually a breeze. One drawback is that we are near two (!!) construction sites, a busy hotel, and the train station so there is a lot of traffic and noise on our street. But we could see the construction in the listing photos (see below), so it wasn't really a huge surprise.

Another drawback is that there are no dedicated parking spaces with this rental -- just street parking. We spent a good amount of time puzzling over the many different parking signs in the area. We *think* we have it figured out - we will just need to move the car around a couple times a week to avoid being in the street sweeping zone.

But we love that we are just a block from the beach, and the cool weather here is perfect for taking a nice long walk every morning. We are getting way more than 10,000 steps each day that's for sure!

It's good that we're getting plenty of exercise, because one of the first things we did in town was to take a walking/food tour, which was a great way to get our bearings. There are tons of restaurants in this town. I doubt we will have time to hit them all, but we will certainly do our best!

The food tour included stops at several downtown area restaurants and a couple wine tasting rooms: Grassini Vineyards and Cebada.

We have also discovered that Santa Barbara is a great place to get a pint -- there are tons of pubs and brewhouses within a couple-block radius of us. So far one of our favorite places has been a spot aptly named "The Brewhouse". Cheers!