Photo of fog rolling through San Francisco’s Golden Gate
We packed up and left Santa Barbara fairly early, so I didn’t have time to take pictures. But I deeply appreciated Santa Barbara’s parting gift of FOG!
I especially enjoying heading inland and looking back over the completely socked-in coast, while ahead of us were patches of blue as the sun came breaking through. That was my daily reality for decades in San Francisco and it was like a piece of my heart went, “Ahh…that’s what I’ve been missing!”
So, now we’re home; very happy we went and even happier to be back.
This is a photo of the sweet Airbnb cottage in Santa Barbara that we’ve rented for five nights starting this Sunday.
Except we just learned there’s a fire about 26 miles from Santa Barbara, which could very likely affect the air quality!
What a bummer to drive all that way and not be able to spend as much time as we want outside. On the other hand, I really don’t want to cancel our vacation!
One’s approach to taking a vacation is different when you and your spouse hail from different continents.
Starting in 2004, at least 90% of our “vacations” have been international flights to visit family and friends. And of course, between the long flight and time spent trying to see everybody, those trips usually aren’t all that relaxing,
The other 10% of our vacations have been occasional jaunts, usually after an especially intense period of work or activity. Like the 3-4 nights in Ashland after the Oratorio one year.
The longest purely vacation time we’ve ever spent was 5 nights in Rimini (Italy) in 2005 — no commitments, no obligations, no people we had to see. Of course, it was super crowded but still relaxing.
Since we weren’t able to go to Europe again this year, we’ve known we needed to schedule in a real break of some sort, but week after week was passing by without us making any decisions. Until we realized that if we didn’t book something immediately the holiday season would be upon us and we would miss our window of opportunity!
So, I’m happy to report that after much searching, we found what looks like a lovely and surprisingly affordable spot in Santa Barbara, where we’ll spend 5 nights next month. And now that it’s booked we can’t wait to go!
