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Published: November 16th 2014
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The second port was Santa Barbara, California. The ship was running behind schedule and then the port crew was behind, also. They didn't have all of the staff to come inspect the boat and they had no clue where the last guy was. I called Enterprise after breakfast to tell them that we wouldn't be able to pick up the car for another couple hours. We finally got cleared to go ashore, but this was a tender port. Usually what this entails is everyone trying to get their families first in line and get into the little boats as fast as possible. I was pleasantly surprised by how little of this 'rush' there really was. We've done a number of tender ports, but never got to use the lifeboats for it, until now. Sometimes we would see other ships doing it, but never on Carnival. It was pretty efficient and we got to the dock pretty quick. It wasn't a commercial dock, which was nice. Actually, it looked like a sleepy little fishing town.
I always pictured this city as really fancy mansions lining a beach, but I didn't really see that. It was quite residential except on the main
drag by the beach, but no mansions in the dock area. They had tons of information booths set up, which was nice, but we knew just where we needed to go and bypassed all of that stuff. Walking down the street reminded me of being in Hollywood Beach, FL. They had bike/walking paths and the street was lined with palm trees. Really pretty. Also, really getting pretty hot out since we went more south.
Of course the Enterprise guy reminded me that I was overdue for our reservation and they gave our car away. I reminded him that I called ahead of time to inform him of the ship issues. They got us into another car and gave us a discount. Ah, a Jeep Patriot. Ugly as sin, but fine. I will say that it had tons of headroom...
After a quick inspection, we were off. The plan for the day was to head to Solvang, CA. It's supposed to be a cute little town in the wine country that has deep Dutch roots. The road got pretty windy along the way, but nothing like the PCH. The hills were really pretty, but the actual plant life was
depressing looking. You can definitely tell you are in a desert climate, that's for sure. The little Jeep Patriot was having trouble going up and down the hills constantly with its four-cylinder engine, but was managed to not get run over by anyone. We stopped along the way to take pictures at some 'vista points' and even a lake called Cachuma. With the bad drought going on, the lake appeared to be a bit low.
Just before Santa Ynez, we came to a roundabout. Luckily, I had extensive experience with this from the Europe trip a few months back. A bit more driving and more desert scenery, we arrived in Solvang, CA. You could tell immediately this was it because of the architecture and 'windmills' you could see approaching. We found a free parking lot and took a spin around town. It's very touristy and maybe a little cheesy, but it's just something cool to see. On the way back to the car, we decided to stop at Olsen's Bakery and were not disappointed. I got a raspberry danish that was awesome, Terry got Russian tea cookies that were delicious, and Rodney got his second best cinnamon roll he's
ever had (next to the one in Carcross, AK).
The way back was a bit different, but a lot of similar scenery. Once we were getting close to Santa Barbara again, the road took us by the ocean which was really cool. It's weird to see desert across the street from an ocean...it just doesn't seem quite right. The road here was incredibly noisy. As in it was hard to have the radio on and talk amongst ourselves in the car. Once within the city limits we took a spin by the Moreton Bay Fig Tree. It's the largest of its kind in the United States and was brought here from Australia in the 1800's. It's HUGE. I didn't have my wide-angle lens with me so I didn't even get it all in the picture! Five minutes is enough to see the tree so we pushed on to the mission.
Not everyone was into the idea of the tour, so Kristi and I just walked around a bit outside and snapped some pictures. Founded in the late 1700's, the mission is a large pink-ish building you can't miss. From what I understand Saint Barbara was decapitated by her
Roundabout
Good thing we have experience with these! father for becoming a Christian. Yikes.
We took the in-laws back to the dock area so they didn't have to walk back from Enterprise. After we dropped the car off, we did a bit of shopping on the main drag and then headed back towards the beach. There is also a really cool pier with stores and restaurants that cars can drive out on. Our magnet, pen, and ornament search didn't go so well in town so we did some shopping on this pier. The restaurants sounded really good, but we didn't want the ship to leave without us.
The line to get on back on the Crown was long and hot. It seemed like everyone was in a bad mood which was only exacerbated by a bunch of crew members budging in front of all of us passengers. A cool port patrol lady was all like "I don't think so, buddy. You wait in line like everybody else and I don't care if you're late." I thought the Russian guy in front of me was going to knock some heads, too.
One we got back to the ship we met up with everyone for dinner at
the buffet. Every night they showed something on the big screen up on the top deck. A couple nights it was football but tonight was Maleficent. Or, you know, Melissafent, as Rodney says. We had popcorn, Swedish fish, sour watermelons, and hot chocolate...it was awesome. The movie was pretty good too!
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