After settling in and various people having showers and things we all finally met on the sun terrace where we opened a bottle of bubbly and said a very big cheers! We’d eyed up a restaurant a few days earlier and went there for dinner. The company and food were great but everyone was starting to flag a little due to the time difference and the fact that they had all been up since around 5 a.m. English time, so we headed back to hotel for a very welcome early night.

We were up fairly handy and met Cath and Andy in the local organic coffee shop. We headed down to the beach to drink our coffees before heading back to the motel to see if Sue and Eddie were up. We met them in the coffee shop next to the motel and all ordered breakfast. After this we packed the mini-van, checked out and drove off in the general direction of the coast. The drive up to Santa Barbara isn’t the best part of the coast

but it’s still pleasant and was great just being with everybody. We had a brief stop en-route then got to Santa Barbara around lunch time. We couldn’t check in immediately so thought we’d try out the hotel’s restaurant, again fantastic food and everyone seemed happy with our choice of hotel! The first thing on everyone’s agenda after checking in was to go for a swim in the very inviting looking hotel pool and hot-tub!

After a lovely cooling swim and hot tub the next part of the plan was to head into Santa Barbara. We caught the bus into town and after walking down the main street we headed down towards the pier and beach. It was a lovely sunny day and everyone was in good spirits. We heard lots of stories of Cath’s exploits from when she was here with Paddy! Cath offered to buy everyone an ice-cream and I think this is where it hit Andy, Sue and Eddie how big the American portions