Santa Barbara

We're back in beautiful Santa Barbara. Yay - it's warm. We can wear Tshirts instead of hiking boots, thick socks and big coats with fur hoods. Because we've stayed at the Oceana Motel before, they upgraded us to a 'partial' sea view room. Last time we were here we had a ground floor room with a small courtyard and a 'full' sea view. But, 'partial' is good. The motel provides bicycles for guests at no charge so this morning we rode along the beach as far as Montecito (Oprah lives there). We were going to visit but it's rude not to call first and we don't have her phone number. We then rode back to the other end to the harbour but there's a 2 hour limit so had to take the bikes back. There were huge bush fires there a couple of years ago and you can still see a distinct line in the hills where the limit of the fire was. Walked up town - the architecture is Spanish - all white walls and terra cotta roofs. The median house price here is $1.5million or it was last time we were here. Beautiful gardens everywhere both in peoples yards and in the streets. This is the last real day of our trip - bus to LA tomorrow which will take up most of the day then the following day we fly out. All there is to do now is to go for a walk out along the pier and the harbour wall and have dinner.