Sailing into Santa Barbara, California on Princess Cruises

by Janis on November 15, 2014

I took a Princess Cruises 7-Day California Coastal cruise on the Star Princess last month, sailing round-trip from San Francisco.

I enjoyed all of the ports, but Santa Barbara, California was my favorite, despite the fact that it is a tender port, and there was about a 45-minute wait to get into a tender. HINT: if you cruise to Santa Barbara, go ashore early, between 8-9 am. Everyone wants to go into port between 9:30 -11:30 am.

I had three goals for my day in Santa Barbara:

1) Walk at least 5 miles.

2) Find the library or other location with free Wi-Fi so I could get some work done on my laptop.

3) Locate the great wine bar on State Street that Mr. Jones and I enjoyed on a prior visit.

The tenders drop cruise ship passengers off along West Cabrillo Blvd. There is a shuttle that takes you to State Street, or you can walk along the waterfront. There were a number of helpful volunteers; one told me that the library was just one block off of State Street, but quite a walk. Despite carrying my computer bag, I was up for the hike.

I took a different route away from the waterfront, and passed by the Santa Barbara Amtrak train station.

I also passed by the beautiful Santa Barbara Court House.

Eventually, I made it to the Public Library on Anapamu Street.

Before I went into the library, I had to check out this artwork on the side of the building. It is a tympanum over the original an entrance, with Plato and Aristotle flanking the City of Santa Barbara’s Coat-of-Arms.

The wood carving also includes the shields of four famous libraries: The University of Bologna, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, The University of Salamanca and the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.

You can’t go in this entrance but a sign explains the tympanum.

Inside the library I found a spacious table and free high-speed Wi-Fi. I worked a couple of hours until my computer battery went dead.

Enough work, time to enjoy State Street and find some wine. This art museum looked interesting, but I decided I didn’t have enough time for art and wine. I did pop into the museum’s very nice gift shop, however.

State Street is the perfect place to walk on a sunny day: shopping, cafes, restaurants of all kinds, and the Wine Bistro that I was looking for.

I ordered the chicken club with avocado on grilled sourdough with a side salad. Now this made me miss living in California more than anything on my trip. Crisp fresh lettuce, ripe tomatoes, creamy slices of avocado – yum!

And, this is the white wine flight at the Wine Bistro (not 3 full glasses of wine, like it appears.) The Wine Bistro, I learned from my friendly bartender, has been owned by the owner of the Santa Barbara Winery, but has recently been sold and will be re-opening under new ownership soon.

After all of that food and wine, I started worrying about making the last tender, so I headed down State Street, and made the walk along the waterfront to the tender port.

One last look at Santa Barbara, California, from the tender to back to the Star Princess.

Have you visited Santa Barbara by cruise ship? If so, please share how you spent your day ashore in comments below.

Check out these other posts on my recent California Coastal Cruise on the Star Princess:

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