A Birthday in Santa Barbara

 March 16, 2015

What does it mean when you spend your birthday in the same place two years in a row? Am I destined to move here?

This morning we got ready to head out to Santa Barbara. When we opened the room door we saw that they had put birthday balloons and a sign on the outside of our door that said “Happy Birthday”. I thought that was a nice touch! 

This morning we had breakfast at the International Cafe instead of the Buffet. It was much tastier, and they brought us a whole pot of tea!

Santa Barbara is the only port we had to tender in to, which went relatively smoothly. We just went and sat in the dining room and waited for them to call our ticket number to get off the boat. I would say it was around a 1/2 hour wait. Once ashore you can easily walk to State Street which is the main street of Santa Barbara. They did offer a trolley for 50 cents, but I wouldn’t bother taking it unless you really can’t walk far at all.

This is how Santa Barbara looks from the water!

When we arrived on State Street the shops were just opening up. We did a bit of window shopping, picked up the real estate magazines (for when we win the lottery) and walked all the way up and down the street several times. Once again we ran into Handsome and his group 😁

Santa Barbar is a beautiful clean town

Later as we were walking, something got stuck to my shoe. It was making noise, so Steve made me stop to take it off. When I bent down to pull it off I realized it was a gold sticker that said Santa Barbara Sheriff.

Photographic evidence of my dad's birthday card

It would mean nothing to most people, but my dad used to really like Sheriff’s Badges. I think he was sending me a birthday message 😍

Happy Birthday to me!

Then we decided to do a lunch stop. We chose a restaurant called Neo Chase and sat out on their sunny patio to eat. The food was surprisingly quite delicious and not expensive at all.

Pretty pedestrian alley

Next we headed for a foot massage at the “Relaxation Station”. You can get an hour foot massage for $35. Certainly not the bargain prices of Asia, but definitely cheap for North America. Steve and I both enjoyed our foot massage.

We found these cute little turtles on our walk

Next we were going to go for a wine tasting at one of the many tasting rooms in Santa Barbara, but I was tired from the sun and the walking so we just headed back to the ship. I’m glad we did, because the tender line was incredibly long, and apparently got even longer later on. We waited close to an hour in the line, but heard others who waited upwards of 2 1/2 hours in the line. Princess did have water and cool towels available which was a nice touch.

At one point, this lady comes and interrupts a conversation we are having with one of the staff flashing her “Elite Status” card. This means I can cut to the front of the line she tells her. The staff member explains that this is not true for a tender line, she will need to go to the back of the line. Oh well I’ll just get in line here, she says, and stands in front of us (there were hundreds of people in line behind us!!). I couldn’t believe it… and everybody all around us was eye-rolling and eyebrow-raising, but nobody took her on. Clearly the rest of us were far more polite than she was.

At least if you have to wait forever to get back to the ship, you get to enjoy this beautiful view!

When we got back on the ship we had a little nap and then went in search of the hot tub again. This time we found the one from the first day again (purely lucky!) and had some interesting conversations with people we met in the hot tub.

On our way to dinner we stopped and listened to a guy playing the piano. He was quite amazing! For some reason we couldn’t find him again for the rest of the trip 🙁 Dinner was lovely as usual. They brought me a little cake at the end and sang happy birthday to me.

After dinner we watched the show, which was an impressionist. No comment.

Finally we headed up for my birthday dancing. Some of our tablemates joined us this evening… and of course we ran into Handsome dancing up a storm again. This was a very good birthday day!