Car-Free and Carefree - Part Two

Are you caught up?  Part One is here.

When last I blogged, Chris and I had turned in for the night in our room at the Franciscan Inn near the bay in Santa Barbara.  Sunday morning (our second day there) found me waking up early and getting ready to head out for a run.  See, I was still training for the Long Beach Marathon during our trip, so I knew I would have a long run while we were gone; thankfully, Santa Barbara is very pedestrian friendly, and a well paved bike path was at my disposal.  Off I went, leaving Chris in bed but starting to stir.  I did 10 miles total, first heading west/south along the coast, then turning around and heading east/north up a hill and into a very posh residential area along the bluffs.  I snapped a few selfies along the way:

Selfie master.

I mean, obviously.

After I made it back and cleaned up, Chris and I headed out for caffeine and a small spot of second breakfast.  We ended up at the Santa Barbara Roasters and both our drinks and snacks were quite good.

 Caffeine realness right here.

After sitting and relaxing at the Roasters for a bit, we slowly wandered back into downtown, heading for the Courthouse once more.  We were hoping the clock tower would be open now, and indeed, it was!  Time for copious amounts of pictures of the Courthouse:

Ooh, panos!

Yoga class on the Courthouse grounds.

That rotunda is the Hall of Records -
this really is a functioning Courthouse.

The engineer checks out the bell in the tower

Part of the court

Seriously, this place is totally incredible.  If you visit Santa Barbara, go there and wander around for awhile, taking in all of the totally free (well, unless you're a citizen of Santa Barbara - then it's your tax dollars at work!) loveliness.  We weren't quite ready for lunch, so we strolled the streets a bit more, ending up at the Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens.  This is really just a city green space, but it's got a lovely little pond with tons of ducks and turtles, and it was a nice visual break from the city views.

Watch out!  There are also sharks.
The whale behind us seems amused at this tragic turn of events.

Ready for foods, we headed to our lunch destination, Finch & Fork where we had a noon reservation.  Located inside the gorgeous Canary Hotel, the place was bigger than we imagined, and our table felt just like home, mainly because when we sat down, we found the same throw pillow we use on our own couch:

Yes, really.

Just a slightly different color.

The food at Finch & Fork was outstanding, and the drinks were good too.  For brunch, they had a mimosa special where the first one was $11 with refills being only $1 each.  I quickly realized that if I ordered 12 mimosas, each one would only cost pennies on the dollar...and that I'd have alcohol poisoning.  Oh well, two $6 mimosas it would be, then!  Unfortunately, the service here wasn't stellar; it took forever for the waiter to come and find us and this continued to be our experience throughout the meal, despite the seeming abundance of waitstaff and a restaurant not packed to full capacity.  I don't know if they were training new folks or what, but it was a little excessive.  But back to the good stuff - here's our deviled egg appetizer:

So pretty and so good!

After lunch, we headed off the main drag into the side streets of Santa Barbara to a newer brewing company in the area, Pure Order Brewing.  The folks there were lovely, and we picked up two tasters, so we could sample the full range of their offerings.  The brewery had limited seating inside (really, just 4-5 stools at the bar), but they had a great outdoor area with bocce ball and an area for live music.

Made in the shade!

We had quite our choice of seating options...

... as we were really the only customers.  As we were finishing up, another two couples headed in, and a live band started setting up, so we may have just been on the earlier side of things, which is pretty common for us.  I hope Pure Order pulls in more folks and on a regular basis, because they really were great; by far the best beer we had on this particular voyage.

Keeping in our beer theme, we next wandered back in the general direction of the hotel, stopping by Lama Dog, a tap room and bottle shop; while they don't make their own beer, they have 20+ taps of amazing selections, and around 300 bottles/cans of other delights.  

Also inside is Nook, a small kitchen run out of an old shipping container.  Both the drinks and eats were great (pork.belly.quesadilla), but the real prize came when Chris spotted an unmarked bottle of beer in the far left, upper corner of the shelving unit used to hold their bottled selections.  Upon investigation, it proved to be a bottle of Westvleteren 12, commonly considered one of the best beers in the world and also one of the rarest; allegedly, the monks at the Belgian abbey where it's brewed only make so much each year, and it doesn't generally get distribution far and wide like most beers.  Suffice to say that we needed to grab this bottle before someone else discovered what was lurking on the shelf.

The holy grail.

It's aging in our wine fridge,
and we think we'll probably enjoy it for Thanksgiving.

After we tapped out at Lama Dog (ha! Brewing humor!), it was back to the hotel to safely store our Precious (see above) and take a nap.  When we woke up, it was high time for dinner, so we put our shoes back on and wandered down to the harbor to eat at Brophy Bros, a highly recommended but casual seafood house.  We had to wait for just a bit, so we wandered the harbor, finding this sign in the process:

Do they have a problem with people waterboarding
sea lions around here?

Eventually, our table was ready and we enjoyed our dinner, seated on the balcony overlooking the wharf and harbor.  While it wasn't the best meal we had during our time in Santa Barbara, all of the food was fresh, and the seafood in particular was great.  We headed back to the hotel happy and full, and we made it into the room on the first try this time, keeping all of our keys in one piece.

Coming up on the final installment of the trip posts, I finally pet a shark (a live one, anyway)!

Later,

Amy