Santa Barbara is the wrong America

PYou can get to Santa Barbara in any way: by plane, by Greyhound bus, by train. The best is by car. Along the very edge of the Pacific Ocean, caring Americans have laid highway 101 for themselves and for you (the best highway in the USA, where the roads are already good). This is the road to travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles and back. Through Santa Barbara. It is 90 miles from Los Angeles and 330 miles from San Francisco. It's not far, especially when you consider that the California coast is a very attractive place.

Santa Barbara: a US city that you can't confuse with another

You will not pass by the treasured town and you will not confuse it with anything. It is true that American townships are somewhat monotonous. But Santa Barbara only looks like itself. And a little bit to Cannes. White or slightly pinkish villas with tiled roofs are drowning in greenery. Everywhere is a sea of flowers.

The old buildings on the waterfront are reminiscent of the Spaniards and Mexicans who once owned the city. Happy idle people walk the streets. And you will instantly feel at home in an amazing way - after all, you know everyone here!

The city must look up. In Paris, Notre Dame looks up, in New York - the Empire State Building, In Santa Barbara, they try not to build high houses, as they are afraid of earthquakes. There is only one spire in the whole city - the bell tower of the Catholic mission, built in the 18th century by the Franciscans from Spain.

For many years the Indians of the Chumash tribe, to whose land the conquistadors came, lived and studied farming, animal husbandry and the rules of coexistence with the Spaniards. Now the Indians sell their handicrafts on the waterfront, and much more enterprising people are engaged in agriculture, more precisely, the famous Californian vineyards.

The land in the area is completely covered with vineyards and oak groves. Oaks are a matter of special pride for local residents who are ready to fight to the death for every giant, even though there is no use from him, except for acorns. There have been no other military actions in the district since the earthquake in 1978.

Then in the blessed Santa Barbara, in the laboratory of the University of California, a terrarium with rattlesnakes broke, and the evil creatures spread throughout the district. But the brave inhabitants of the city formed Sonderkommandos and caught every single one. Nobody bit anyone back then. And now there are no snakes and other dangers in Santa Barbara.

What is there to see in Santa Barbara?

But in the city there is probably the strangest, but functional pier in the world - Stern's pier. It's huge. This is a street that leads directly to the Pacific Ocean. Luxurious cars drive along it, restaurants are lined there, shops selling everything from fishing tackle to frivolous hats with which larger fish are caught.

There is a Marine Center here, where they show the most unseen inhabitants of the ocean, sitting in huge aquariums, and let them hold plankton in their hands. In the market you will be sold those ocean inhabitants that are suitable for food. There is even a shuttle bus along the pier. And the most beautiful yachts in the world are moored around.

This is one of the few piers in California that people have failed to recapture from seals and sea lions. As a rule, the animals are stacked on the pier in a row, and there is no way to drive them out of there. From the Stern pier, you can see the Santa Barbara Islands, which are the same seal haulout.

The most beautiful villas in Santa Barbara are on Monte Sito Hill. Following the example of Charlie Chaplin, who built the Montecito Inn hotel there, and Mary Pickford, Hollywood celebrities have learned to hide here from the excessive bustle of Los Angeles. A respectable audience, consisting of TV and movie stars, famous writers, princes and princesses, settles here.

They go to visit each other and arrange charity balls with euphonious names, such as the Red Feather Ball. “Here are all the most famous, rich and greedy residents of Santa Barbara,” the main villain of the television “Santa Barbara”, Gina, once dropped at one of these social events. By the way, last year residents already collected 2.5 million USD for the poor.

The inhabitants of the city are people of strict morality. Their laws prohibit drinking liquor (including beer) on the street. Beach rules are more liberal, but you still can’t drink from glass bottles. And offending public morality is also impossible.

The owner of a porn shop and the only strip show in the city was terribly offended when he read the word "breasts" on the sign of a breast prosthesis clinic. And the clothes here are also worn without quirks, free, but if you are going to a restaurant in the evening, then do not forget to dress up.

Once in this city, you will immediately feel that Santa Barbara is not a resort, but a lifestyle, a respectable life. Nothing too. The weather here is the same in winter and summer, there is neither terrible heat nor cold. And the entertainment you are offered is also worthy. The city is famous for its golf schools. Parades of vintage cars and carriages are held here.

Those who cannot imagine their life without diving come here (there are patient instructors for beginners in Santa Barbara). And from May to December you will be taken on a ship that goes out into the ocean for the whole day to watch the migration of huge Californian gray whales. A person's ideas about life change after he looks into the wide-spaced eyes of a twenty-meter creature.

If you are still wondering whether to go to Santa Barbara, remember that Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier got married here, and John and Jacqueline Kennedy spent their honeymoon here. And these people really knew how to take the best out of life.