Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara has a great deal of money and keeps quiet about where it comes from. Over two October nights we watched people play golf and drink the local wine with no working day in sight, and never found out what any of them did. Part of the answer is wine, farming, tourism and the university. The rest is a long list of people who could live anywhere and chose here, which is the part we would like to copy.

The town sits on a narrow shelf of coast between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific. The earthquake of 1925 brought down much of downtown, and the rebuild went up in white stucco and red tile, arcades and wrought iron, under a Spanish Colonial Revival code that is still enforced. The height limits are the cleverest part. Nothing is allowed to get tall enough to matter, so from the clock tower of the County Courthouse, free to climb, the view runs clear over the red roofs to the sea.

We went in late October, the last stop after Los Angeles and Palm Springs, and autumn is the time: September to November is the warmest, driest stretch, and summer's crowds and prices are easing off. January and February bring the rain. Summer is dry and dear, and from late July into early August Old Spanish Days Fiesta fills the city.

We stayed in The Funk Zone, and it made a very good base: a few blocks of old warehouses between Downtown and the harbour, now more than twenty tasting rooms and taprooms, which keeps the walk between drinks short.

We hired bikes and rode the flat path along Cabrillo Boulevard, a few miles down the coast to Montecito. It is one of the most expensive places to live in the country, and from the road its houses are mostly hedge. The coffee was easier to get at, and good. For a longer day, the vineyards of the Santa Ynez Valley are about an hour inland.

We ate very well wherever we went, from seafood to Indian. One night it was dinner at the far end of Stearns Wharf, the wooden pier at the foot of State Street, built in 1872 and still holding up the seafood counters. In The Funk Zone we had Mexican at one of a few local places, and by all accounts most of them are good, which leaves the choice to whichever is nearest the last taproom.