Walking Tours – Retirementally Challenged

Last week, my husband and I drove a couple of hundred miles up the California coast to the seaside city of Santa Barbara. We were looking forward to spending a few days exploring the area and celebrating our 20^th wedding anniversary. Other than having booked a B&B for three nights and making dinner reservations for our anniversary, we had no specific plans… just like we like it.

Santa Barbara is very walkable and, once we parked our car at the Inn, it sat there until we headed home. Just about everywhere we walked, the city’s beautiful architecture – ubiquitous red-tile clay roofs, whitewashed walls, ornamental iron work, and colorful tiles – reminded us of our recent trip to Spain. Although Santa Barbara’s Spanish roots can be traced back to 1542, it was after a 6.8 magnitude earthquake reduced much of the city to rubble in 1925, that Santa Barbara was mostly rebuilt in a unified Spanish Colonial Revival style.

(To see the pictures of beautiful Santa Barbara, make sure you scroll through each slideshow.)

The Santa Barbara County Courthouse is one of the most beautiful public buildings I’ve ever seen. Completed in 1929, the courthouse features elaborate hand-painted murals, wrought-iron chandeliers, and a clock tower that offers panoramic views of the city, bookmarked by the nearby mountains and ocean.

A more modern twist to the city’s architecture was introduced by Jeff Shelton, a local architect whose buildings playfully reinterpret the traditional Spanish Colonial design style. Lucky for us, he created a self-guided walking tour that took us by eight of his most noteworthy buildings, all located in a 10-block area of the downtown core.