Santa Barbara Weekend -- Wine & Lotuses

LotusLand is worth the effort of arranging a visit. Visit their website for reservation info.

Santa Barbara beaches are perfect for strolling along.

Shop State Street -- large variety of stores and boutiques.

Head over the mountains into the Santa Ynez valley for a wine-tasting tour.

Quick Tips:

Sites to visit:

General Santa Barbara Info

Santa Ynez/ Wineries

Bed & Breakfasts

Best Way To Get Around:

Although parking can be a hassle, it's best to have a car, especially if you're planning trips from Santa Barbara to LotusLand or Santa Ynez.

If you want to explore downtown, park in one of the city parking lots (follow the signs) and walk from there. Take the trolley if you want to get quickly from one end of State Street to the other.

My husband and I enjoy staying at B&Bs – we like meeting our hosts and the other guests, the rooms are comfy & unique, and the food usually is excellent and hearty. A week or so before our trip to Lotusland, we decided to make it a weekend winery, garden, and B&B trip from our home in Los Angeles.

Santa Barbara is a lovely city, small and upscale, with gorgeous beaches, mountains, shopping, and people – that said, it is NOT cheap to visit. Bed-and-Breakfasts here are costly as well. A previous visit included a stay at the disappointing Old Yacht Club Inn, so we were on the lookout for another reasonably priced B&B. We don’t really like frilly, over-the-top Victorian decorations, so we try to stay away from establishments with that style of decor. The Secret Garden (http://www.secretgarden.com/) seemed to fit – simply decorated rooms, reasonable price, AND availability that accommodated our close to the last-minute decision.

The room itself, Mockingbird, was simply decorated but cosy, with a queen-size bed, wooden floors, faux-finished walls, and a claw-foot tub. The gardens were lush but not flowering at the time of our visit. Parking was easy – the inn has a parking lot accessible through an alley behind the property. The neighborhood is residential, quiet, and safe.

Wine and snacks were available in the afternoon.

We drove from Los Angeles to Santa Ynez and visited some of our favorite wineries, then we headed back south to Santa Barbara and the Secret Garden. Our tour of Lotusland was scheduled for 11am the next morning.

When we went to get breakfast at the appointed time… there was none.

Nobody except other hungry guests.

I couldn’t believe this. After about an hour and a half, after we tried calling the various numbers for the inn, hoping to reach the proprietor, hoping one of those numbers was a cell phone number – the proprietor finally showed up. She offered no explanation and little apology. Dave and I had to leave for our tour – luckily we found a place just off the freeway exit on the way to Lotusland where we were able to gulp down some sandwiches.

We negotiated a rate deduction on our room and did get breakfast the next day, but I'm very hesitant to recommend this bed-and-breakfast.

The Santa Ynez wine region, tucked away off the 101 just north of Santa Barbara, is an idyllic quilt of rolling hills, vineyards, winding roads, and oak trees. (Jarring side note: Michael Jackson’s Neverland is off of one of these roads!)

Dave (husband) and I have several favorites that we try to visit each time we visit (which we try to do at least yearly).

Curtis (http://www.curtiswinery.com/) features Rhone-style wines, a change of pace from Chardonnay and Cabernet. Firestone (http://www.firestonewine.com/), with the same owners, is a more typical, very Republican (photos of prominent Republican politicians abound) winery, featuring nice wines and lots of wine-related and other products (olive oils, mustards, etc., also available for snacking).

Zaca Mesa (http://www.zacamesa.com), farther down on the wine trail, has excellent wines and a short hiking trail from which you get a nice vista of the rolling hills.

Winery maps are available in some of the various stores in Los Olivos, a small town nestled in the middle of the valley. Guided tours are also apparently available, but we've always gone on our own.

Lotusland (www.lotusland.org) is one of those tucked-away attractions about which you get occasional tantalizing hints. The place itself is hidden in that you can’t just go up, buy your ticket, and go in – the address and location are only released once you’ve made advance reservations via the phone (no email available). Tours are available on specific days only and limited in the number of visitors. Weekends get booked well in advance.

Is it worth the hassle?

Yes!

Even my husband (who got dragged along on this) really enjoyed the docent-led, several-hour tour, which included the majority of the grounds and a history of Ganna Walska as well as the expected botanical tidbits.

Each section of the garden has specific themes (ex. the blue garden, the Australian garden, etc.) and a host of unusual and rare plants (some of which are now endangered). The majority of the gardens feature plants that are architecturally striking with interesting foliage – Ganna Walska did not particularly like flowers, especially as a garden focus.

Our docent was extremely knowledgeable – his love of the gardens was apparent. The pace was slow enough to enjoy the serenity of each area, take pictures, and ask questions, but not so slow that it became tedious or boring.