07/01/13 – From Pasadena, up the coast to Santa Barbara
Link to Pasadena and Santa Barbara Facebook Pictures
Today we woke up and planned on heading out around 10:30am. The parking sign on the street that I parked on said “2 hour parking from 9am-6pm”, so I figured 10:30 would give us a good window of time to move the car without getting a ticket. I was wrong.
When I got to my car, there was a ticket underneath the windshield wiper. It said I was being ticketed for “Parking overnight from 2am-6am on the city street”. I looked at the amount: $46.80. I am PISSED. I decided to contest it by going to the city hall and seeing why I had gotten a ticket in the first place. I walked up and down the street several times, reading all of the signs. NONE of them said parking was not allowed overnight.
When I got to the city hall, I had to pay for parking. $1.25 for an hour. They try to take your money any way they can here in California. I paid the $1.25 for parking, then went to the parking office. There was a small sticker posted on the glass pane which read “City-wide ordinance: no parking on city streets from 2am-6am”. I thought that MAYBE if I walked up to the lady and calmly and clearly stated what the situation was (an out-of-state traveler that had no reasonable way of knowing about that rule) that they might be lenient or even nice, and drop the ticket.
I explained the case while the lady just stared back at me with cold, uncaring eyes. When I told her I was from Georgia and had no way of knowing about this rule, she said “It’s posted on the main streets, as well as our city website”. I wanted to retort with something like “Do YOU check the website of every city you are traveling to, bitch?!” But I kept my cool. I decided to fill out a form to contest the ticket, and since I have no way of printing pictures / providing proof of anything, I couldn’t include any pictures or anything else that would help my case. She said the ticket would be put on hold until a decision is made, which will arrive in 6-8 weeks to my address. I’m sure I’ll still have to pay it. I wonder what the penalty for NOT paying it would be?
Needless to say, I was done with Pasadena after that. I guess the person we were staying with didn’t know about the provision either, because she didn’t mention it while we were clearly parked there. We drove around Hollywood Boulevard after that. I wanted to see what all of the hype was about. Honestly, I don’t see what makes it that much different than any other American city, other than the name. It wasn’t anything special to look at, honestly. If you’re thinking about making a special trip to see it – don’t. Spend your money on something with more natural beauty (the redwoods, maybe) without all of the parking tickets, congested traffic, and stress. We drove up and down the boulevard and tried to find Molly some Thai food. I got frustrated at the traffic, so we decided to continue along our way and find something outside of the city.
We set “Santa Barbara” in the GPS and got on the road. We made our way to Highway 1, which runs directly along the coast of California. With the Pacific to our left, the weather perfect, and beautiful scenery around us, the drive wasn’t that bad! It was still congested (as everything in California is) but it was much more enjoyable than the middle of the city.
Molly still wanted Thai food, so we stopped at a small restaurant in a random shopping strip to get some lunch. We ate WELL – I had a pepper garlic chicken plate with a salad, rice, chicken. Molly had a beef curry plate. We both got Thai tea, which is a mixture of tea and condensed milk or regular milk. Surprisingly, it is really good and kind of has a spicy taste to it. For dessert we got a mango-rice thing which consisted of a square of sticky-rice, placed on a banana leaf, with slices of mango to go with it and sweetened coconut milk sauce. Extremely refreshing – I would love to have it again.
We got back on the road and headed toward Santa Barbara. In Santa Barbara, we had heard of a scenic drive on a road called Gibraltar Road. We found the road, and snaked our way through the mountains above Santa Barbara. We were at least a thousand or so feet above the city and sea, and the sights were spectacular. The road was filled with mountain bikers, and every once in a while you’d see a luxury home or two. One was for sale, so we stopped and picked up a brochure. The home was nice, but they wanted $4 million for it!! Insanity.
We wanted to check out the Santa Barbara downtown and surrounding area, so we went on another scenic loop around the city. It is like something out of a movie – green fields and picturesque mountain backdrops everywhere you look, and if you turn around you see the ocean. The temperature was perfect – about 70 degrees or so, if I had to guess. We made our way downtown and found a public parking spot, and walked around for an hour or so before dark. I found a local restaurant on Yelp called Lilly’s Tacos, and made our way there. It was like a taste of home – I ate 3 carne asada tacos. It was a bit different than home, because the tacos just came with the shells and meat, and you put the onions, cilantro, lime, sauce, etc on yourself. At home they come with the onions and cilantro already on them.
After Santa Barbara, it was clear that we wouldn’t be able to find a local place to camp for the night, so we got on the road and headed towards Palo Alto to be closer to San Francisco. Long story short, we ended up sleeping in the car at a local Wal-Mart. We both woke up a good half-dozen times during the night, and emerged in the morning tired, sore, and cranky.