Beautiful, Breathtaking Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara)

Member Name: Whizz11

Product:	Santa Barbara
Date:	15/04/08 (20 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautiful coastline, beach town, sightseeing

Disadvantages: None

Beautiful, breathtaking Santa Barbara!

Santa Barbara is a Southern California coastal city located approximately 80 or so miles up the coast from Los Angeles. In my opinion it is one of the most beautiful locations in the world. It is often called the "American Riviera" because of its beautiful year round Mediterranean climate. It is generally always sunny, hot without being too hot and very enjoyable.

Santa Barbara is accessible from the 101 freeway and the drive up there on the is lovely as you can look out to the coast for a good part of the journey. With lots of bends in the freeway too you can see the coastline sprawled out in front of you for miles and it is gorgeous. Alternatively take the train which also allows beautiful views.

Santa Barbara in my opinion is the quintesential small beach town/community. Unfortunately you need quite a few million dollars to be able to buy there but for the weekend/day trip its fabulous. The architecture is very Spanish colonial, with lots of red brick buildings.

First stop when you get to Santa Barbara must be Stearns Wharf (at the top of State Street with a dolphin statue in front). Moby Dicks restaurant on the wharf does lovely breakfast's until 10:30am I think and if you sit by the window you can see the view all around as the restaurant juts out over the sea. Go for the waffles with strawberries and cream and the neverending coffee pot. After breakfast make sure you visit the sweet/candy shop as they do some amazing salt water taffy in a variety of flavours, very addicting. Aparently the story goes that years ago when the old lady was making the taffy she asked her little assistant girl to go and fetch the water to make the taffy but she was too lazy to get clean water so she dipped the bucket in the sea and use the salt water and customers were so impressed with the new flavour that the salt water taffy stuck!

Then take a walk down State street where you will find a great variety of shops, some individual boutiques and the usual Starbuck's etc.

For some culture, visit the Santa Barbara mission. There are 21 mission dotted around the California coast. There were a series of religious outposts established by the Spanish Catholics to introduce the Native Americans to the catholic faith. They are now some of the oldest and most historic buildings in California. The Santa Barbara mission is often called the Queen of the missions and is generally recognised as the best. It's a beautiful old building and the little museum inside the mission really teaches you about the history and story of all the California Missions.

The beaches are lovely too. They are sandy, not pebbley, quite wide and along the front of the coast there are a huge number of little guest houses where you can stay. At different parts of the beach you can find different little companies offering whale watching excursions (Santa Barbara is famed for its whale watching), fishing boat trip, dinner boat trips and bicycles etc for hire.

There are probably a million and one other things I could say about Santa Barbara but I will leave that to you to explore for yourselves!

Summary: A beautiful coastline town with stunning views, beautiful architecture and tourism