Santa Barbara Anniversary Celebration

Matt and I celebrated our five year anniversary in Santa Barbara the last weekend of May. We were supposed to go the beginning of day during our actual anniversary but Matt ended up having to go to New York for a business trip. So while he flew to the Big Apple, I drove down to Thousand Oaks and spent a couple days with one of my best friends, Dawn Stratton, who lives in New York but happened to be visiting her parents for two weeks.

So Matt and I postponed our celebration to the end of May to go back to Santa Barbara - where we had spent a day together back in the summer of 2007 together when we were dating. We were both excited for some sun, sand, rest and relaxation - and not having to drive too long for it - as SB is only four and a half hours from us. 

Read on to see a photo summary and highlights of our trip.

We headed down on a Friday morning and loved driving down Highway 101 enjoying the beautiful California farmland and coastal views. We stopped in Paso Robles for lunch and enjoyed a farm-fresh lunch which made the experience even better.

The first night there, Matt took me on a scenic drive through SB and we found this hillside park with an awesome view of the city and coast. 

It was here that we first noticed a large ship in the harbor. We took a million pictures of it because it was an amazing sight! Even better was the fact that later that night, we passed hundreds of uniform-clad sailors walking around downtown.

This made us even more curious about the ship and we finally discovered that it was the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan - a Navy super carrier. It was stopped in SB for the weekend for its last visit to the city since it leaves for Japan next year, where it will be stationed permanently.

With 3,000 sailors on board, the city was estimating to have between 30,000 and 80,000 people come to Santa Barbara just to see the ship. After hearing this, we expected the town to be crowded but it really never felt like that. I wonder what it would have been like if this wasn't going on at the same time. The town would have probably felt very sleepy to us :)

We tried to get tickets to go on board but they were sold out before we even arrived. It was amazing to see how the town embraced the sailors on the ship and likewise. A local resort housed all of the sailors, the city organized a baseball game for the sailors against local police and fire, including a public barbecue, and then groups of sailors did service projects for various local community organizations.

You can faintly see the ship in the background. 

On our little drive that first night, we came upon the Santa Barbara Mission which was a cool building. Even better, was the sidewalk chalk art displays all over the mission grounds created by local artists. 

the chalk art displays - so detailed and vibrant. I had no idea one could do so much with chalk!

Panoramic view

Entrance to the Mission Santa Barbara

During our first night, we went to this restaurant called Los Agaves that we found on the local paper's "Best of Santa Barbara" restaurants winners. This place was amazing, fresh and relatively cheap! We loved it so much, we went back again on our last night in town. 

I got halibut mango tacos with a mango salad on the side both nights. Matt tried their enchiladas and carne asada burrito. We also had their delicious horchata both nights. 

My tacos again with a little pyramid of rice on the side.

The next couple of days, Matt and I got better pictures of the U.S.S. Reagan while downtown.

Clearly, we were not the only ones curious about this ship. It seemed like every boat in town was out there trying to get a closer look. 

Besides rest and relaxation, the only thing Matt and I had planned ahead of time was to rent the "little choppers" and ride them on the boardwalk. We did this back when we were dating and loved them!

Here we are on our "choppers" in 2007

Here we are seven years later

We decided to try out the double chopper this time, but after ten minutes on these, we turned around and exchanged it for two of our own. The steering on the double chopper was horrible and kept hitting our knees, causing us to come very close to hitting a car.

Here I am on my own chopper now, and wearing Matt's shorts because I realized riding in my skirt wasn't going to work well.

After two hours of riding around and Matt cutting his leg during his crazy stunts, we finally headed back. He liked to ride fast then go up on two wheels to scare people - but sometimes he went too far and ended up toppling over. I laughed my head off watching all of this - until his leg started bleeding and I had to go ask a lifeguard for a Band-Aid. 

Random graffiti around the corner from the bike rental shop

We came upon this little treasure while leaving the boardwalk. I think someone was trying to sell these hammocks and was having people try them out. While pulled over to take this photo, an older couple visiting from Colorado stopped us and asked if we would mind driving them to their hotel down at the south end of the beach. The husband had a bad hip and they had been waiting for the bus for an hour but just realized that the buses had stopped running. We agreed and they were very appreciative. 

After hearing so much about the famous Santa Barbara County Courthouse, we headed over there not expecting to find such a beautiful building. It was massively gorgeous and had amazing grounds as well.

Panoramic view 

The inside courtyard grounds

The clocktower - with clock faces on all four sides

My handsome husband reading the Wikipedia about the building on his phone. 

While sitting on the grounds reveling in the beauty, Matt started playing around with the features on his camera phone. Here is his bird's eye view.

And then he made me pose in like 10 different places to see if Google+ would "Auto Awesome" the photos and put them together, which it did in a funny but kind of creepy way.

Then he tried out a few different lighting features.

And focus features

One of my favorite parts of our trip were my daily runs while Matt was still sleeping. I liked to run in different areas and explore the town. And I stopped often to take photos. I LOVE the Spanish architecture, especially with the bright, tropical plants. Here are a few photos I took:

A view of the beach from Shoreline Park

A massive home and so many colorful plants!

A beautiful boutique hotel with this adorable courtyard. Maybe we'll stay there next time especially since it's across the street from the beach. We were several miles from the beach in the Ramada we chose and had to drive there every time we wanted to visit.

Another view of the hotel

A home that I loved the foliage on

Another home with beautiful landscaping

On our way home Monday on, we stopped in Solvang - a little Danish town founded in the early 1900s by a small group of Danish teachers. Matt has only been here once and that was at night with me on the way back home from Christmas this year. I really wanted him to have the true Solvang experience. We ate dutch pancakes, Belgian waffles and then hit up a bakery for treats to take on the road.

Matt sitting at Paula's Pancake House.

My food - a giant thin pancake, eggs and Danish sausage

Matt outside Mortensen's Danish Bakery

The whole town looks like it was taken right out of Denmark and plopped in the middle of nowhere.

I think we were both sad to leave - and now I want to move to Santa Barbara. How could you not!

It was also really hard for me to not to plan a bunch of things for us to do or plan time to drive down and see our friends and family, but we both really wanted a relaxing vacation for just the two of us. And I think we accomplished that. We relaxed a lot! But we also had fun together exploring the town and spending time doing whatever we wanted, without the normal worries that come from our jobs and church responsibilities.

I'm trying to get Matt to commit to making this a yearly anniversary tradition :)