postcard from america

Palms along the Santa Barbara seashore

“We were a little nervous staying in a motel in Santa Barbara, but it was the cheapest option and far enough away from the station which is no place to walk by at night. Apparently. Finding ourselves on a ground floor didn’t ease the mind, but it also didn’t entice us to stay indoors. We made our way to the harbour and had a pleasant walk along the shore in the twilight and finally went for dinner in a lovely steak house at the marina where we had our best meal in California so far. Along with a couple of delightful Mai Tai cocktails. Americans do make fantastic cocktails.” 

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Heyjude

I have lived in the UK for most of my life, but when young I definitely had wanderlust and even ended up living in South Africa for several years which was a wonderful experience. I now look forward to a long and leisurely retirement doing what I like most - gardening, photography, walking and travelling.

25 thoughts on “postcard from america”

  1. Looks as if you keep a travel journal. It must extend to volumes! Warnings about safety are often exaggerated I think. Cower in your apartment and you miss palm trees at sunset – and cocktails.

    1. Wish I kept a rec ord of my travels in writing…I just have my photos…so some nuggets are missed

    2. In the land of the free who have the right to bear arms it is wise to be cautious. On the other hand it really was a dismal room. I just kept a few notes about places and wrote a road trip about this journey so memories are not lost.

      1. We were lucky on our recent trip: all the places we stayed at were in “good” neighbourhoods. We could even leave our bicycles outside with the car on the bicycle rack. We didn’t go out and walk around in the evenings, though. But that more out of sheer laziness.
        Thanks for all your “postcards” from abroad.
        With me it’s the same as with you: memories fo travels are mainly from pictures. My blogs don’t reach far enough back. But my wife has quite a few travel diaries, from way back. It’s so much fun to read them again. They’re real treasures.

        1. One of these days I will get around to writing about older trips. Not so many photos from that time though.

        2. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to write about odler trips. I can barely keep up with the recent ones, and with all that is going on here, especially with the deer and the fawns in the yard.

        4. Well, for me it’s about twice a year usually, and lately in the US only. My wife travels some more: last year, e.g., she was in China. But that, as a package tour, wasn’t that much to my liking. We’ll see if anything turns up later this year.

        5. We have been considering tours, but not sure it is us either. On the one hand there is the fact that everything is organised, on the other hand there is the fact that everything is organised!!

        6. That sums it up in a nutshell. 😉 Soemthing else: My wife and I did such a tour [river cruising in Germany – with some bus excursions] once and we found they had crammed too much into every dau.

        7. We have considered river cruising too, but again, we like to amble around places at our own pace. A day trip is fine, but a whole week? Maybe not.

  2. I think that Torquay was the first place I ever saw a palm tree. Luckily, I have managed to see them in many other places since, and they are always evocative of foreign holidays now.
    Best wishes, Pete. x

    1. In general I would agree with you, but in the USA I think you do need to be aware of places that are ‘no go’ areas, especially at night. Having been mugged once in broad daylight (not in the US) has made me more cautious.

      1. I rememeber a time, long ago, when I visited with my sister- and brother-in-law, who, at that time, were living in Chicago, that my brother-in-law took us on some sightseeing through downtown Chicago in his car and he said, “There are neighboourhoods I wouldn’t walk through in daylight, and there are neighbourhoods I wouldn’t even drive through in broad daylight.”

    1. I wouldn’t say it was an amazing meal Carol, just a very good steak and the best we ate in California. For some reason I find their food very salty, which is strange because I actually like salt on my food. I wonder if they season food differently. Anyway, we would have missed out on the cocktails and that room really was not one you’d want to spend a lot of time in!

      1. Sometimes the quality of a meal is dependent on how hungry you are too. I’ve only been to Hawaii and I can’t remember the food being particularly salty but we did cater for ourselves quite a lot too.

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