Trippin' Mallets: Santa Barbara downtown and trolley tour

We arrived in the Ocean Mesa RV resort in El Capitan (about 20 mins north of Santa Barbara) on Monday afternoon. The weather was super nice, so even though it was getting a bit late after settling in, Vince and I decided to drive down to Santa Barbara to begin our exploration. (We usually end up not doing much on "moving day" because it's a full day of packing, driving, unpacking, and soothing the terrified kitties.) We walked around on State Street and went down all the way to the Stearns Wharf. There we spent some time reading all the tourist plaques to learn more about the beach and the wharf, and then we watched the many fishermen fishing for mackerels. We saw a guy catch five at a time! Another guy in a boat caught two halibuts and was super excited, and he should be--those fish cost $25 a pound! The funny thing about the Santa Barbara coast is that it faces the south rather than the west, so we caught the beautiful sunset at the beach, but it wasn't over the water. 😛

The next day we went back downtown to take the trolley tour, which departs every hour on the hour from 10am to 3pm. It stops by many of the famous destinations in Santa Barbara, with the driver giving brief introductions of each. The idea is to give the tourists a bit of information on each stop so that they can go back to visit it further if they're interested. The most memorable factoids for us were 1. the fact that The Coral Casino Beach and Cabana Club costs an initiation fee of $300,000(!), 2. the fact that the reclusive heiress Huguette Clark of the Clark Estate spent the last 20 years of her life living in a hospital voluntarily, leaving many of her expensive mansions empty (when she passed away, she left behind $300M!), and 3. while Santa Barbara enjoys about 300 days of sunshine a year, it's typical to have a cold fog covering the area around this time of year--that's why it's quite cold today--"May gray, June gloom", he said.

When the trolley tour finished, we came upon the farmers market on State Street, so of course we had to go. Wow! We tasted and bought so many super yummy fruits! We also found these "Gaviota strawberries" that tasted so much like the type that we loved grown by Vince's parents' neighbor farmer! We binged on them right on the street after we bought a bunch. 😝

For dinner we went to Arigato Sushi recommended by our neighbor, who's a Santa Barbara native. It was super good! The seafood was top notch and the creative items were really tasty as well. We wished our stomach could actually fit more. According to the trolley driver/ guide, there are more than 400 restaurants in Santa Barbara, and according to Yelp, there are a ton of good ones! Three and a half days is definitely not going to be enough time for us (we have to make it to LA for Mother's Day weekend)--we'll have to come back!

A drone shot of our current RV park. Our RV is in the bottom left corner.