Santa Barbara Travel Diary

I’m calling this our Santa Barbara travel diary because I want to share with you what we did!

You will notice that I am not calling this a travel guide because we didn’t plan anything out. Hey, I’m just being honest LOL.

We booked our room at 4pm on Friday evening and arrived in Santa Barbara that night! It was extremely last minute and before Santa Barbara we were going to road trip to the Grand Canyon, before that it was San Francisco. So yeah, we literally went with the flow the whole weekend and loved the suggestions so many of you sent to me via Instagram stories!!

Also, this was our anniversary weekend and I didn’t get as much content because I was living in the moment. At first I was worried, but I thought, not every trip is meant to be heavily documented and you guys will completely understand. So enjoy the pictures that I did manage to snap and hopefully this is useful in some way!

Now onto our Santa Barbara Travel Diary …

Our Hotel:

We stayed at the Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort! It was a very nice resort and the valet service was awesome. I literally felt like a queen and like we had been planning this trip for months. We have done valet several times guys and in comparison these guys were just so nice, friendly, and helpful. Customer service is probably the most important thing to me and I feel like it enhances the experiences 10 fold. My husband picked this hotel pretty quickly as it was booked really last minute. I’m pretty sure it was the first one that came up LOL.

The hotel was close to basically everything and we could either walk or us being lazy take a 5 minute Uber trip. The hotel has a small bar and was open until 12am.

While in Santa Barbara:

We spent one full day in Santa Barbara and we did so much walking! Someone suggested we go to Shoreline Beach Cafe for lunch and that is exactly what we did! It was a pretty cool spot right on the beach and the food was good!

After we ate lunch we walked to Stearns Wharf and checked out the view from the Santa Barbara museum on the 4th floor. We didn’t go to the actual museum because it seemed a little outdated. After that we walked to the Pier and had some fish & chips at the Moby Dick Restaurant.

In my opinion, I didn’t enjoy it and maybe I was craving beer battered fish & chips. We later walked all the way to Paseo Nuevo, shopping center. I say all the way because it was hot and it literally seemed like forever!

I went to Sephora to buy somethings I ran out out of and went to Cotton on to buy the dress I wore on Sunday.

For dinner we went to Convivo, and it was an italian inspired restaurant. Convivo is perfect for special occasions, like our anniversary, and we were served pink champagne to celebrate, SCORE!  I honestly couldn’t understand the menu and tried to look everything up on yelp to get an idea of what things looked like. The food was really good though and the dessert was the best!

We went to 3 different bars at night and would recommend all of them: Sharkeez, Sand Bar, and O’Malleys.

Sharkeez is definitely a place to start the night and there are so many bars on State street that you can take your pick!

Los Olivos:

We went to Los Olivos on Sunday and let me tell you, the best time, EVER. If you have to choose, go to Los Olivos and I guarantee you will not regret it! I’m pretty glad our Uber driver talked us into it or I don’t think we would have gone!

It’s a small little town with restaurants, wineries, breweries, tastings, and local shops. You park in one place and you just walk everywhere because it’s all close together.

The lunch spot we went to was amazing and I would highly recommend, its called Sides Hardware and Shoes. I had pork belly tacos, bacon mac n cheese, and cesar had a pastrami sandwich. We shared the mac n cheese people, it was an appetizer by the way!

 

I’ve never done Olive Oil tasting but we did that too! You pay $5 for a loaf of bread and you get to choose different oils/balsamic vinegar’s to try. If you end up buying a bottle your tasting is FREE.

We also went to a brewery called, Figueroa Mountain Brewing and I loved this place. We ordered a flight, the beer tasted great and they had live music!

 

Across the street was the cutest garden shop where everything is handmade and was seriously succulent heaven!

There are so many wineries where you can just walk in and pay for a tasting so we didn’t choose any specific ones. Well I lied, we did choose one specifically because one of the shop owners said its wine & CUPCAKE tasting.

So naturally we went there and this place was called, SAAR LOOS + Sons. 

Some places did have a sign that you needed to make an appointment if you had more than 6 people. However, every place we went was pretty empty when we got there. People are not spending a ton of time at each place and basically  are just winery hoppin’.

Overall, Los Olivos was my absolute favorite and for me, you must go! 

You can download a map of the town, HERE. 

 

Solvang: 

Solvang is a small village with danish style architecture and is definitely a tourist gem.  Now I want to be honest with you, it was just OK. Maybe because we had this amazing time at Los Olivos and it just felt a little boring.

We did a 25 minute horse carriage ride where the guy talked about the history of the village and CESAR really enjoyed that. We walked around and went into a couple of stores and they have pretty interesting looking items. Later, we spent some time at a Beer & Sausage garden and that was pretty fun.

I think if we had done some winery hoppin’ that probably would be cool but we were over the wine. Everything closes pretty early like right around 7pm and the village starts to get really empty. Of course, that is perfect for bloggers who want to get some great pictures LOL.

I really do apologize if you absolutely loved Solvang and are heartbroken by my honest opinion.

Overall, Solvang is a village you only spend a couple hours at and either on the way to Los Olivos or on the way back to Santa Barbara.

 

I went ahead and linked an article HERE, and they have a whole list of things if you want to plan out your trip more in advanced.

As always, thank you for stopping by and I hope that this helped in planning your next trip to Santa Barbara.

SHOP MY OUTFIT

 

XOXO,

Liz-Laugh-Love