Travel Journals: Santa Barbara - International Film Festival (and more)

Mission Santa Barbara
Established in 1786 by Franciscan priest, Fermin Lasuén

Santa Barbara Bay, near Downtown

(A double click on any photo enlarges it to full screen.)

We have one week under our belts in our new home in Santa Barbara, a short twenty-minute walk (and even shorter bicycle ride) to downtown shops and restaurants. A few blocks past downtown - the Pacific Ocean. We've moved to a city twice as large as San Luis Obispo, more of a tourist attraction and clearly more pricey. We talked about how we could sell our Minneapolis home and buy a modest home in San Luis Obispo. Well, we could sell our Minneapolis home and maybe rent a small place here in Santa Barbara. Maybe.

Our Santa Barbara Home, 1901 Bath Street

Settled in our new home-away-from-home

We arrived in the midst of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Carol had given me four movie passes in my Christmas stocking, and our landlady gave us four additional passes upon our arrival. So we were off and running, our first film festival ever. We saw four exceptional films - "Wadjda" from Saudi Arabia, "One Way Ticket to the Moon" from Poland, "Fifteen Years and One Day" from Spain and "Barefoot," a US film. If you get a chance to see any of these, grab the opportunity. "Wadjda" and "Fifteen Years and One Day" were my favorites. "Wadjda" is a story of an independent-minded teenage girl in a repressive society; it was directed by a woman! (Saudi Arabia rushes boldly into the 20th century.)

Big Doings in Santa Barbara

Part of the film festival was the celebrity events held each evening, talks/interviews with celebs in a large theater downtown that drew huge crowds. We were oblivious to the existence of these until we walked downtown for our first restaurant dinner midweek. We turned the corner onto State Street, a half block from our restaurant and ran smack dab into a crowd of hundreds of people, bright lights, cordons, security staff. A volunteer informed us how to get to our restaurant and added that the night's event featured Oprah! As we walked by the cordoned off area, a shiny black SUV pulled up, the buzz of the crowd rose to a roar, a car door opened, and there she was! I admit that I found myself like hundreds of others, holding my cellphone high and snapping photos blindly.

OMG! Oprah! Over here! Over here!

The next night the evening event featured Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio. We again found ourselves walking by, since it was First Thursday, a downtown arts promotion. I hope Oprah wasn't there to see the crowd, which had to be four times larger than her crowd.

Santa Barbara has a nice farmer's market on Tuesday afternoons. It's not as big or as flashy as the San Luis Obispo nighttime affair which includes street entertainers and booths touting everything from Atheism to Zen, but it's a chance to stock up on fresh produce for the week in a beautiful outdoor setting.

Downtown Farmers' Market

We've been on our bicycles a lot, learning the lay of the land. We've cycled the neighborhood, downtown and along the coast (after climbing a monster hill as steep as any Tuscan hill town). We drove out to the University of California Santa Barbara campus and were unimpressed by a rather drab-looking place. It is, however, right on the Pacific Ocean. It also has a pretty nice food coop. We took our first hike yesterday, a rugged climb up into Santa Ynez Mountains that yielded spectacular views of the entire city and the Channel Islands.

Santa Cruz Island seen from high on a hiking trail in the Santa Ynez Mountains

Aidan el Plano and Flat Stanley with Carol on the Pacific coast at UCSB

Santa Ynez Mountains as seen from Downtown

My new MacBook's FaceTime feature has been a positive improvement to our California experience. We've chatted face-to-face with Ellen and Paul and our grandsons each week, a real treat for us. I've met regularly with my writers' group and have not missed one weekly Beer Hour with my good friend, John.