Why Spanish town, we are in America, aren’t we? That’s what we thought as well, but it makes sense (be aware, we want to sound smart now). On the one hand, California is a famous place for Mexican immigrants (who earlier days made friends with Spanish people, as we all know). Secondly, in the beginning of the 20th century (1908 or so), Santa Barbara burned down completely after an earthquake and had to be rebuilt. That’s why a few artists thought, why not rebuilding the city in a Spanish way? Indeed, they were successful with their suggestion and the result can be seen today. Cute white houses with blue doors and windows, a pretty city hall with a tower (which was unfortunately closed due to renovation) and a mission church. In addition a beautiful beach walkway with pier. Unfortunately, we thought that the water was quite dirty, but probably we are quite spoiled now, because the locals were not afraid of swimming there.
We planned to stay for 2 nights and organized two different couchsurfers for one night each. The first one was Nina, an east Ukrainian emigrant with her mother and 5-year old son. Nina is in the States since around 5 years and her mother joined her 18 months ago. We didn’t want to put our foot in our mouth, why we didn’t ask, but it was obviously that her mother came to America due to the crisis in the Ukraine. Nina was busy that evening, which was a pity, but on the other hand it allowed us to go early to bed and get a bit more sleep. The next day, we did a bit of sightseeing of the above described highlights and additionally hiked on a vista point (Inspiration Point). We had a great weather, but clouds hang over city and sea, so the view was a bit destroyed.
In the evening, we met our second hosts, a married couple in their mid-forties, and went to a local brewery around the corner for a beer. We were a bit helpless because of the many choices, why the nice waitress just gave us a taste of all different beers they had (You may have recognized that we got pretty excited about the hospitality of the Americans!!!). Back at Lisa’s and Michael’s place, we got a huge (!!!) American Steak! In addition, both of them helped us planning our route through America, as they travelled a lot, which later on drove us to change our plan completely. A great evening that was crowned by an Italian espresso in the morning. What a shame that we could only stay for one night!
We made our way quite early in order to drive the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco. If on purpose or not, everyone heard something of that highway. It is probably one of the most famous coastal highways in the world, which is pretty distinct with cliffs, golden beaches and water falls. Most of it in the area of the Big Sur, a 150km long part of the coast. There, we could also observe a beach full of sea elephants! During our last stop in Santa Cruz, we were able to observe two huge otters while collecting oysters. Really fascinating! As oysters sticked at the piles of the pier, the otters dive and come up with an oyster and a stone. Afterwards they swim on their back on the surface of the water. The stone is put on their belly and they smash the oyster against the stone until the shell is broken and the oyster can be eaten. What nature is doing sometimes!
That was our last stop and afterwards we continued our trip to Orinda, a suburb of San Francisco, and to Judy, our hostess. But again, this is another story…