January 10th, 2024

Another beautiful day in California. We have been to Santa Barbara but it was years and years ago and it was when we were driving up from San Diego so never by sea. It is a beautiful coastline and they limit the cruise ships to smaller ones and only 50 a year. The environmentalists are trying to cut that number back to 20 per year. We did have to tender in and the ride was a little bumpy but not a long ride. We did the included tour which was a drive around Santa Barbara, up to the Mission, to the Courthouse and to State Street. It was cool, in the low 60s and blue skies with no clouds.

View from our balcony

Santa Barbara is also where all the celebrities live. You have Harry & Meghan, Oprah, Ellen DeGeneres and a bunch more. They call it the American Riviera. It is also one of those cities that is very expensive to live in and people that work here can’t afford to live here. Most live a few towns away so they can afford the rent or have multiple jobs. There was no “poor” section of Santa Barbara that we saw.

The Santa Barbara Mission from 1786

This mission is often called the “Queen of the Mission”. It is the 10th mission of what would later become 21 missions in California. We did not actually tour the mission just looked at it from the outside.

After the mission we went to the courthouse which is beautiful and done in the Spanish style. They do over 300 weddings here a year and one was taking place when we were there out on the well manicured lawn with hundreds of birds of paradise.

We left our tour while still in downtown and walked back to the courthouse to hop inside. There is a mural room that tells the story of the building of the court house and also great views from the top of the clock tower.

You can see our boat out in the harbor

We walked around town and they had lots of sculptures and we particularly liked the whale tale bench. We also went into a cool craft store and they had a store dog who was very much at home.

We had passed this house on the bus tour and I wanted to go back to it and get some photos. It is called the Vera Cruz house or the house of 1000 paintings. It is the vision of architect Jeff Shelton and he handed out panels and told artists to paint something from a place the traveled to or the place they grew up. It was left vague on purpose so people could send a city scape or sign from their favorite restaurant. Every single piece is donated. It is a private residence but they do allow photos to be taken from the sidewalk. The one in the middle is their lending library and Kathy’s favorite was the 3 horses. It has paintings on all sides.

We had such at a local panini store and it was great. When we ask for sandwiches on the boat they really have no idea how to make one which is surprising.

We walked along Stearns pier which is a very old pier in Santa Barbara This pelican was hanging out.

We did hear a story about a seal that swam up to the boat, got on the tender dock and made it up the stairs for deck A. The General Manager was called and he instructed the crew to get some fish and throw it out in the water. When they did this the seal jumped back in the water but stayed around the tender pier on the boat all day.

Santa Barbara as we sail away.

We will now have 5 days at sea until we get to Honolulu.