Back to the road! We did five days of driving every day, then five days in one place.  Now we have seven or so days to get back home.  We’re doing some sightseeing, starting today with Santa Barbara.   We’ve been through, but never stopped.  We found a small (17 rooms) hotel near the beach for a great price.  (hotels.com is awesome.)  State Street is sort-of the main drag downtown and we walked about a half-mile or more of it, and back again of course.  Got dinner, coffee, ice cream and then back to the hotel.  The beach looks pretty nice, but we stuck to the sidewalks.  State Street turns out to have mostly stores we see everywhere plus a few unique surf-related shops.  We ate at a nice Italian restaurant and sat outdoors.  A guitar player sitting on a nearby bench provided pleasant background music.  We tipped him afterward.

The hotel is pretty nice, but no AC so we’re running the ceiling fan at full speed.  They left a great gift basket for us and the room has a full kitchen.  So far we’ve spent seven nights in chain hotels and four nights in boutique hotels.