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Santa Barbara and Laguna Beach, CA

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We left Solvang on Tuesday morning after breakfast for the short drive to Santa Barbara. Once again it was a scorcher of a day, with temperatures near the one hundred mark! We drove down to the coast and stopped at the beach in Goleta.
We reached Santa Barbara in time for lunch. Santa B is often described as the Californian Riviera. 
Many of the buildings are whitewashed with Spanish red-tiled roofs and its main street, State Street, leads down to a beautiful beach. 

Santa Barbara Courthouse 
View from Courthouse tower



The harbour and wharf areas have some great fish restaurants and we enjoyed some lovely meals there. 

We rented bicycles and biked along the coast early on Thursday morning before the temperature got too high. 


While walking in the harbour later in the day, we were very lucky to see a school of dolphins swimming close by. 
We also saw many of the brown pelicans for which Santa Barbara is 
famous. 

                              



Friday morning saw us start our drive along the coast to Laguna Beach, our final destination on this trip. For a number of miles, a heavy marine layer fog came in from the coast and partially covered the highway. 


We stopped at Malibu beach where there are some amazing beach houses.

How the other half live!


After a break for lunch in Santa Monica we drove south through Los Angeles to get back on the Pacific Coast Highway and continue our journey to Laguna Beach.

We are very lucky to be staying right on the beach with the sound of the waves breaking on the sand just below our balcony
. 




Unfortunately the weather changed and we didn’t see the beautiful red sunsets for which this part of California is famous. However on our last evening we did have a lovely view from our hotel. 

 


This has been a wonderful trip and thank you for reading our blog.

Comments

  1. Phil2 November 2017 at 09:30

    Great photos ladies. Back to the good old Irish weather now. Enough time to get ready for the next trip.

    ReplyDelete

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