Spain continued in Southern California

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.