From Madrid, we flew to San Francisco for my biannual family visit. After a rest day, we got in the car with my sister on a road trip, mission: pick up nephew Ian from his school in Ventura County. Since it is virtually virgin territory for us; that is, between Santa Cruz and San Diego, we chose to give Santa Barbara a look on the way.
The one tourist attraction we chose to check out, Santa Barbara County Courthouse, happened to be having a guided tour, so we had a rather thorough visit. The Spanish Moorish architecture of the courthouse made it seem like a continuation of our Spain trip. Afterwards we walked to the water; the palm tree-lined beach again reminded us of Spain.
First thing the next morning, we showed up at Ian's dorm for pick up. Ian just finished the first year at Thacher where each freshman is paired with a horse for the whole school year. Naturally we had certain expectations for such a posh school. Of course, none of those turned out to be true. Everything and everyone we saw was very chill. All my previous concerns all went by the wayside.
Several shots of the Santa Barbara County Courthouse; interior and exterior. Here, the courthouse with clock tower is at center-right, and the jail left.
The highlight of the guided tour was watching the clock (actually 4 clocks; one on each side of the clock tower) strike 3 PM
Stairwell with Moorish ceiling.
View from clock tower to the mountains.
Sun-Ling and her sister on the Santa Barbara Pier.
Sun-Ling and John have been traveling the earth since 2008 while blogging, eating vegetarian and vegan, and riding public transportation. We love uphill day hikes, 20th-century architecture, Roman ruins, all bodies of water, local markets, shopping for groceries, aqueducts, miradors, trip planning, blablacar, and more.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Most Recent Post
Uzbekistan: Khiva
Khiva is really the first stop on our upstream tour of the Silk Road. An important post on the Silk Road, Khiva was razed and rebuilt many t...
Most Popular Posts of Last 30 Days
-
Last week we hauled our canoe and tent over to Merchants Millpond State Park and enjoyed some very fine camping and paddling. One day we p...
-
Everything happened smoothly with our Galapagos trip. We had really good weather, two full days of sun and a couple of partly cloudy day in...
-
Dubai, the most populated city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is an enigma for us. Dubai is now among the top 5 most visited cities in t...
-
Tashkent, Uzbekistan is our entry into Central Asia. The Silk Road had been a destination for us for decades. Besides the usual concerns for...
-
The day before Easter we took the regional FSE train from Martina Franca to Bari, the 2nd largest city in southern Italy (after Naples) with...
-
From TashKent, we took a flight west to Nukus, located in Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region of Uzbekistan. Nukus itself is a city establi...
-
Khiva is really the first stop on our upstream tour of the Silk Road. An important post on the Silk Road, Khiva was razed and rebuilt many t...
4 comments:
Great to see you guys back to USA. What a journey! Have some rest and plan for the next year.
Welcome back to the USA. Glad to see you returned safely. Will see you soon.
Welcome back to the US. Hope to see you soon.
Thanks for the "welcome home" comments! Glad to be sleeping in our own bed.
Post a Comment