The California Trip, Part Four: Santa Barbara

We spent the first night of our trip in Santa Barbara. Guy found a nice hotel near the wharf.



What's missing on the wharf?



Do you see something missing?



There's no railing! Yikes!





Santa Barbara has many of the same landscape plants as San Francisco.



But I've never seen a 15 foot Strelitzia outside of Hawaii.



And we don't use Solandra much in the landscape.



I saw quite a bit of it just near our hotel; it was a little thrill for me--those flowers are a good six inches from base to apex. This plant grows vigorously in San Francisco; one is currently smothering a 60-foot-tall redwood tree in Golden Gate Park. Maybe that's why it's not used. But the gardeners here have brought it to heel and I feel inspired to try it someplace in my garden.



Someone however is having a harder time getting Bougainvillea to climb a palm. Surely this must be California gardening's most common error--bougainvillea does not climb without adequate support.



Better results from the trumpet vine.



Gardeners here quickly become expert with this plant; it's everywhere.



We were just talking about San Francisco's farmer's market--how nice to stumble upon one here in Santa Barbara. Every Tuesday on State Street we're told.















I bought blackberry spun honey for $6 (Not being a foodie, I have no idea what that is.)



And some apricots.



More jacarandas here.



And live music.





This rat on a cat on a dog freakshow kind of grossed me out. They were on the news last night too. Apparently this attraction is gaining some notoriety. I feel certain people would not stand for this in San Francisco--police would issue a citation and Animal Care and Control would seize these animals. Whatever.



We got drinks at O'Malleys and enjoyed the excellent people watching.



I didn't quite have the nerve/balls to take pictures of everyone who walked by.



You'll have to trust me that the parade was excellent.





We had dinner here and this was seriously the best Thai food I've ever had. Guy said it was as good as the best places in Seattle where there is a lot of Thai food to be had.



I liked this wall hanging made of retired sunglasses.



View from the hotel balcony.



It seems America's first (and last?) Sambo's Restaurant opened in Santa Barbara. Who knew.

"Tasting the Bounty"

The New York Times wrote about San Francisco's farmer's markets today:

Nearly every day year-round, there is a farmers’ market to check out, offering not only plenty to taste and buy, but sights, sounds and people-watching. Even if it’s not practical to construct a perfect salad back at the hotel room or tote heirloom tomatoes home on an airplane, the markets of San Francisco are worth visiting as a spectacle in themselves.

The markets come into their full glory starting in May, with the arrival of stone fruits like cherries, peaches and pluots — a juicy cross between a plum and an apricot — adding to seasonal vegetables and the year-round fare of olive oil, organic honey, goat and cow’s milk cheese, greens, walnuts, beef and more.

Did you not know what a pluot is?

I find the nicest farmer's markets to be a little too crowded for me, and the not-so-nice ones to be a inferior to my corner market. But they really are all over town--including the one downtown (mentioned later in the article), where my friend Emma's son sells artisan bread. And I just learned my current employer, UC San Francisco, has a farmer's market on campus every Wednesday. So I will have to check that out for for you. I mean me. I mean us.

I was esp. gratified to see farmer's market in my neighborhood mentioned--where, as the article leaves unmentioned, you can buy live chickens for your own home slaughtering:

At 7:30 a.m. on a spring Saturday, clusters of Chinese shoppers were already jostling for the freshest bok choy and choy sum at the market on Alemany Boulevard. Others headed for Maria del Carmen Flores’s grilled pupusas, a tasty El Salvadoran corn cake filled with beans and cheese. Danny Grossman, a shopper, discussed his morning finds — a bouquet of rainbow-stemmed chard for $1, organic strawberries for $3 a pint.

If the Ferry Plaza is the prince of the city’s markets, displaying its produce like buffed jewels, Alemany is its down-home uncle — a place where a panoply of fresh food and flowers are sold in a bustling parking lot. “No porcini ravioli here,” Mr. Grossman said. “There’s still dirt on the leaves.”

The scene is San Francisco eclectic. As sweatpants-clad shoppers mingled, the Prairie Rose Band, its lead singer dressed in cow-pattered fake fur chaps, twanged bluegrass tunes on a banjo and fiddle. Patrons in knit caps joined impromptu drum circles. Asian grandmothers stared at a tattooed man with a giant iguana on his bicycle handlebars. Hand-painted murals of produce, flowers and the Buddha adorned the selling stalls.

As much as I enjoy reading about San Francisco--and Bernal Heights--in the New York Times, I want to say the most amazing farmer's market that I have ever been to was not in San Francisco, but in Portland, Oregon at the state university. What a sight that was!