---

First off sorry there aren't many pictures. (only 1) I left the camera at the hotel.

So.. Today we left Carmel and embarked on the 5 hour drive to Santa Barbara. We drove along the Pacific Coast Highway which was pretty cool. I made feeble attempts at taking pictures while Jamie drove. The drive was pretty nice and drama free, until we arrived at our hotel.

When we arrived at the State Street hotel we quickly understood why this hotel was so cheap. First off, we were warned that the hotel had shared bathrooms. We thought this would be ok, and that it would be a bed and breakfast type of setup. We were wrong, very wrong. The place looked like a dorm, or a glorified hostel. Our room wasn't that bad- it was small, had a full sized bed and a small sink in it, but the bathrooms were pretty gross. What pushed me over the edge was seeing a guy walking around the halls in just a towel- not how I wanted to remember my time in Santa Barbara. Anyway we made an attempt to cancel the room and get our money back but the lady working the counter wasn't willing to do that. So Jamie just told her that we are going to call american express and have them cancel any charges. The woman still didn't budge so we left planning our next move.

The first move was to get another hotel room which we found at the Hotel Santa Barbara just 2 blocks away. It was much nicer and not much more money then the Hostel. We would definitely recommend this hotel to anyone coming to santa barbara. So anyway...we went back to the first hotel and made our second attempt to get out of paying. For some reason the woman there was more willing to negotiate and offered to charge us a $20 cancellation fee to which Jamie said NO. So the woman left to get her husband to deal with us. The husband comes out and doesn't even say a word and just started checking us out for no charge. So the problem was solved but the woman was still behind the counter yapping away. we just kept silent and walked away when the husband was done. Crisis averted.

So basically all we did in santa barbara was walk up and down State St, eat and drink and eat more. We had mexican, italian and then McDonald's in the morning. Our Friend Kara drove up from LA to spend the night with us and we had a nice italian dinner at Palazzio. We had a great time and were glad Kara hung out with us. It was a nice preview of what our time in L.A would possibly be like...

---