Where Are We Sleeping Tonight: Days Inn Windmill Buellton, California We drove down to Santa Barbara today to checkout the city where the TV show Psych is set. The city looks just like it does in the show, despite the fact that the film it in Canada! The Mediterranean architecture is quite amazing to see as it almost feels out of place here. After a quick walk around we drove to the nearest Goodwill charity store where we donated all of our camping stuff. It was good to get it out of the car - the car hasn't been this empty since before we started our road trip. After diving all our stuff to Goowill, we had a look through the store where I bought a super 8 camera for $1 - I wonder if it works... As we were about to leave the store, they wheeled in our cooler that we just donate with a $20 price sticker. It was a little sad seeing our cooler for sale - it was OUR cooler just a couple of minutes ago. Fighting the urge to buy it back, we left the store quickly before we broke down into tears. I think that the idea that this trip must come to an end is actually starting to hit us.
Driving down to the coast, we parked the car in a carpark and started walking along the beach. As we did, we encountered a hippy van with a difference - it was covered in toys! If you can think of a toy, it was on this van somewhere. The guy even had various pieces of computer equipment hidden amongst it all. The van was cool but I can imagine it would cause some accidents while it is driving!
Exploring the Snata Barbara Pier, we were a little disappointed that it was nothing like the Santa Monica Pier. We found an expensive gift shop where we bought a couple of things for family back home, including a great tshirt for my brother. We did see a great sign that informs people not to dive off the pier into the sand - they must have some dumb people here if they need that sign! Back on land, we saw a mexican restaurant where we wanted to have lunch. At El Torito we shared a Fiesta platter that was wonderful but made us think of the Mexican Kitchen back home and how we will have to eat there when we get back.
Driving back to our hotel, we drove through the town of Solvang which reminded me a little of Hahndorf in South Australia. We found a shop where we bought a luggage set which should hopefully be enough to enable us to pack everything that we want to take home with us.
We drove around Buellton trying to decide what we were going to have for dinner. We ending up choosing China Panda Restaurant. The food was really nice and the staff were very friendly. The Manager was surprised to find out that we were from Australia. He kept asking if we liked the food and wanted to know how it compared to Chinese food in Australia. I kind of got a feeling that he thought we had more authentic Chinese food back home...
Back at the hotel, we started packing everything we had in our suitcases and carry on bags. We very quickly realised that we still didn't have enough bags so we jumped in the car and went looking for the nearest store that would sell suitcases. The first place we went to didn't have any big suitcases (just carry on size) and then the next place was closed. We ended up finding a 24 hour WalMart about an hours drive from our hotel! We found a mega suitcase but we were concerned as to how much our stuff was going to weigh so we wanted to get some scales as well. The only problem is our allowed baggage weight is in kilograms and all the scales here measure in stones! We bought a cheap cheap set of scales and hoped that we will be able to find a conversion online when we get back to the hotel. We were up late packing all of our stuff but we managed to get it all done. Phew! As for weight, all we know is that we are over but we don't know how much that they will charge us tomorrow...
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