My Birthday in Santa Barbara
Hello and welcome back to The Leslie Life! This past weekend, I turned 24 and boy was it a busy one! I decided to do a little day trip with some of my closest friends to Santa Barbara.
Why Santa Barbara? First, I had not gone in years, second, I find that it merges different types of scenery I love into one place including the beach, mountains, old architecture, and greenery.
I’ve also had an incredible amount of wanderlust but people, I’m on a budget, and let’s not forget about COVID-19! Nonetheless, I got a rental for the day and headed out to the Central Coast, about 2.5 hours away from where I live.
Greenery in someone’s front yard!
I honestly wish we had more than one day to spend in Santa Barbara. It’s beautiful and there are several beaches nearby. It also takes a while to get there from LA. So what did my friends and I do here? Let me break it down!
Food:
Our first stop was to get some lunch. Last summer, when I went to Santa Cruz, I tried Pizza My Heart, a pizza restaurant that’s yummy and affordable. The only location that is “near” me is their Isla Vista location and so, that is where we headed to. Unfortunately, though their website and Google said it was open, they were closed!
Luckily, there was another Pizza spot across from it called Woodstock’s Pizza. It was quite good and overall, we ended up having a good lunch. They also had outside seating and there weren’t too many people. In the end, I am thankful we decided to eat outside of Santa Barbara because once we did enter the general downtown area, it ended up being incredibly busy with very little people wearing masks (sigh).
Rose garden at Mission Park
Though Mission Santa Barbara is currently closed, the rose garden adjacent to it isn't! In last week’s post, I mentioned I love flowers. Well, I especially love roses and had to see the famous garden. And wow, it was stunning!
Much to my surprise (and dismay), the garden was incredibly packed. So much so that I was actually shocked. People were having parties with drinks and beer kegs. I snapped some photos and left for the next stop. The cover photo for this post is actually Mission Santa Barbara.
A house across from the rose garden.
Downtown
After the rose garden, we headed to Downtown Santa Barbara! As I mentioned, the restaurants were crowded and busy leaving me stunned. However, we decided to walk around and head out of the general busy area.
We ended up at Paseo Nuevo, an outdoor shopping center. There, we got refreshments and strolled around. Most things were not open but we enjoyed it nonetheless. The walk to and from was especially nice.
A Cactus spotted on our walk.
The beach
To end the day, we headed to the beach. The beach located in the downtown area is called East Beach. If we’re being completely honest, East Beach is definitely a tourist trap. But since we were running out of time, it had to do. Nonetheless, the views are beautiful and the breeze felt nice after a long day of driving and walking.
Dessert
Before going back to LA, we decided to get something sweet. We stopped at Montecito to get some gelato and sorbet at Scoops, a local favorite that was SO good. I’d make the drive back just for their berry sorbet.
