Last weekend a bunch of college friends and I decided to go to Santa Barbara to celebrate two of our friends' birthdays. We rented out a beautiful Victorian villa for the weekend and everyone started trickling in late into Friday night, coming from as close as LA to as far as SF and even Texas.
Our group (coming from LA) was the first to get there, and we arrived shortly after 10:00 pm. The moment we figured out how to get into the key box and somehow got through the complicated front door lock, we set our bags down and began exploring the beautiful mansion. The villa consisted of 3 stories, 7 or so bedrooms, a cozy kitchen, and plenty of space. The third story was like a 2 bedroom den, and the boys spent the majority of their time up here and we joined them for games and hanging out. The den alone could comfortably fit all 14 of us. Here are a few pictures (stolen from the rental website).
Since the majority of us had work on Friday and were arriving late, we decided to stay-in and have a giant sleepover on Friday night with Taboo, King's Cup, and lots of Tennessee Honey. It had been a while since most of us had seen each other since we're half in LA and half in SF, so Friday was the perfect night to relax and catch up and mess around. We stayed up till 4:00 am with all the games and impromptu photoshoots and finally crashed around 4:30 am.
The next morning, we all woke up at different times, some going to Hot Yoga early in the morning, others hitting up the beach for a morning jog, and most sleeping in. We had a food and wine tour called "Eat This, Shoot That" planned for around two o'clock and it began on the beach, about 2 blocks from our villa, so we started to get ready and make our way out of the house around noon. We walked down State Street, admiring the beautiful views and tons of shops, stopping randomly to grab frozen yogurt, or pizza, or acai bowls. After numerous food and snack stops, we finally made it to the beach and met up with our food tour guides at the Dolphin Fountain.
I won't go into detail about the food tour in this post (stay tuned for a detailed account of all the delicious food and wine and fun eateries in SB from the "Eat This, Shoot That" tour), but just know that it was SO much fun and SO incredibly delicious. We had a lot of fun sampling all the different food and alcohol and our tour guides were full of fun facts about SB and tons of food photography tips. I would highly recommend this tour to all adults visiting Santa Barbara. It's particular great for medium-large groups looking to try a variety of places in a short amount of time.
I wanted to share a few pictures of us from the tour, but the main food and location pictures will be in a separate post!
After our awesome tour, we started making our way back to the villa, walking back up State Street, and looking at all the restaurants for potential dinner places. After much extensive Yelp research, we decided we weren't up to getting ready just yet, and so we ordered Thai take-out from the nearest restaurant. We had a family-style dinner in our beautiful dining room and feasted on pad thai, panang curry, yellow curry, pumpkin curry, sweet basil fried rice, glass noodles, papaya salad, and tom kha gai soup.
After we finished our scrumptious dinner and put away the leftovers, we slowly started ambling towards the bedrooms and started the process of getting ready to go out. Our plan was to hit up a few bars in State Street and then maybe find a club or something, and so all us girls started getting dolled up as the guys messed around and watched football upstairs.
We left our place around 10:30 and made our way towards Wildcat Lounge, something we had passed earlier and had heard good things about. However, once we got in line outside and heard the 80's music blasting from inside, we decided to check out Tonic Nightclub instead, which was conveniently right across the street. Tonic had a super cheap cover of five bucks and was pumping by the time we got in. The average age of people inside was slightly higher than our groups', but the music was awesome, so we ordered drinks and hit the dance floor. A little later in the night, we had a champagne surprise for the birthday girl, and then headed to the outdoor area of the club to get some air, dance some more, and hit up the moon bounce.
Around 2:30am, the club started to shut down for the night and kicked everyone out, and we all started to make our way back to our house in groups of 2 and 3. Eventually we all made it back, changed into PJs, and after some serious contemplation of going to the beach, we crashed for the night.
The next morning was a struggle. Everyone woke up groggy and tired, and we began getting ready for our impending departure. We started cleaning up the house, packing and showering. We were all dying to try out Finch and Fork for brunch (excellent Yelp reviews) and so we cleaned as quickly as possible and got ready and walked over a block to the infamous restaurant (Finch and Fork Restaurant Review will follow). Brunch was absolutely delicious, and afterwards, we made our way back to the house, stomachs full and dreading the end of such an awesome weekend. Since a few of my friends had to catch flights back, we quickly said our good-byes and made our way to our cars.
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