For years, while driving up or down the California coast, we would stop for a night or two in Santa Barbara.
Usually we would stay at the venerable Hotel Santa Barbara and walk across the street for dinner at Joe’s Café, with its red-checkered tablecloths, wooden booths, and no-nonsense servers who’d been there for decades and knew their way around a menu filled with honest old-fashioned food and drink.
State Street aesthetically was a delight, with its Spanish-style architecture, brick sidewalks, flags flying in the golden sunlight, lush plantings, and mature trees swaying in the cool and gentle breeze.