Santa Barbara surprise

We left home Sunday morning without a particular plan, but with the picnic suitcase in the back. We were vaguely thinking about a nice beach, or Ventura, but ended up in Santa Barbara. The drive up there is beautiful, especially the part between Ventura and SB along the ocean. By the time we got to SB we were quite hungry. We went to the Rocky Nook park to have lunch. It’s a pretty little park close to the mission, with picnic tables and barbeques. It was very comfortable in the dappled shade under the oak trees.

After lunch we stopped at the mission, which always makes such a pretty picture against the background of the mountains. The rose garden in front is completely cut back at the moment, so there wasn’t much to see there. I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary to cut back roses in southern California. If you don’t they just keep on producing flowers. However, official rose gardens always do cut back their roses, even if at home I still have flowers on my rosebush.

Our next stop was the Alice Keck garden, a beautifully designed garden on appropriately named Garden Street. It has streams, a pond with turtles, an island, and many more garden features. Gorgeous unusual plants, many in flower. It being Sunday and nice weather, it was very busy. People with picnics and lots of children.  A great place to go on a weekday!

After driving around it a few times to find a parking space we went to the courthouse. It’s a beautiful building that looks very old, but is actually from 1929.  there is a beautiful view on top of the tower of all of SB, 360 degrees. It’s even more obvious here SB is hemmed in by the mountains on one side and by the Pacific Ocean at the other. The city has very stringent building codes, therefore most buildings have the beautiful terra-cotta roof tiles.

Later we spent some time in the garden of the courthouse. It has a nice lawn with palm trees and is a very pleasant place to spend part of an afternoon.