Since my company decided to give everyone an extra day off, I suggested a day trip – Aviva agreed and we decided to go to Santa Barbara.

We dropped Basil off at his sitter’s and then drove out to Santa Barbara.  When we got there it was bright, sunny and in the 70s, a nice change from the valley.  We parked near the ocean and walked to the Stearns Wharf.

A view of the wharf

We decided to have lunch at the Harbor Restaurant.  The food was delicious and the service was quite good.

The view from our table was fantastic!

We walked around the wharf and then went back to the car and drove to downtown.

A tourist trinket I bought at one of the shops, a shell that’s been etched

Be afraid to go upstairs

The Ty Warner Sea Center

Pirate Cruises – we want to go sea lion seeing sometime

A cool float near the wharf

We did some shopping; Aviva found a great ethnic-look clothing, household and musical instrument store, Tienda Ho, and I found a fantastic comic book shop, Metro Entertainment; I got the first collection of the comic series “Air” and the first volume of “Echo”.

Two views of Tienda Ho

Tienda Ho business card

Metro Entertainment card

Then we walked down to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; its a small museum but has a nice collection starting with the impressionists through the symbolists.

The main entrance to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art

A detail of a mural outside the museum

Salome, Odilon Redon, 1910

The Pardon, Jules Breton, 1872

A Roman table leg

We did a little more shopping after the museum, including the museum shop, which carries the origami toilet paper.

Origami toilet paper

We saw some cool Peruvian paintings done in Colonial Spanish style here

We went back to the car and drove to a Thai restaurant, Zen Yai; dinner was great, my Panang curry with chicken, green beans and peppers burned the front of my mouth off!  Good thing I had a glass of Thai iced tea to calm the fire.

We drove back to the valley, picked up Basil and went home.