Day 11: Santa Maria to Oxnard, CA

Today, we woke up promptly to catch a commuter bus to Santa Barbara. I looked out of the hotel window for the last time at the tiny planes at the Santa Maria Public Airport, brushed my teeth, and set out.

Ducks walking around near a stream

City of Santa Maria

We waited in a completely unmarked parking lot right next to a baseball stadium, with a ton of commuters heading to Goleta and Santa Barbara. Epic Transit Journeys tells us to take the Goleta bus, then take another bus to Santa Barbara, but we have decided to just take the direct route.

Clean Air Express bus

The bus dropped us off at a small, (again) unmarked bus stop in Santa Barbara. We were immediately greeted with a combination of a jungle and a city, with exotic trees and plants growing in areas of the wide sidewalk.

But before exploring the city, we went straight to the fanciest IHOP restaurant I have ever visited. There was a wooden IHOP sign in the front, and inside there were glass roofs and huge windows, but most impressive of all was the gigantic tree growing right in the middle of the ring-shaped restaurant! Yep, that picture above is not from the street, but from the inside of the restaurant! The service was very quick, and the food was good.  

After breakfast we headed straight to the beach on the Waterfront Electric Shuttle, a tiny little electric bus not unlike the San Francisco cable cars in size and openness. We got off at the beautiful Santa Barbara beach.

There were a lot of garbage/recycling bins on the beach, probably from a recent party. We relaxed on the beach on the cloudy day, happy that we have all this spare time.
Eventually, we made our way off the beach and to the Metropolous Fine Foods Market. It was kind of like an upscale grocery store/deli, and they made very good soups. The most memorable part of the store was that they called their brownies "Super Fudgy Moist Brownies". Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures of it.
We took the electric shuttle back up to Downtown, and hung around Nordstrom until it was time to catch the (second) Coastal Express to Ventura. The wait for the bus was short, at a thankfully marked bus stop on the sidewalk. A crazy lady was trying to get someone to give her five dollars, so I was glad when the bus came. It was a brand-new Greyhound style MCI J4500, and I soon fell asleep in the soft, large seat. To get to our next hotel, we had to make an unexpected transfer at the Ventura TC, but the Gold Coast Transit route 6 was waiting for us.

Gold Coast Transit New Flyer C40LFR

The bus took us straight to the hotel, the Courtyard Marriott Oxnard. It was undergoing renovation, but still it was one of the more memorable hotels for me. The carpet was a bright blue color, with more brightly colored patterns on it.

The room. Notice the bright colors, soon to be taken away by the renovation.
Photo courtesy of mhnsaves.com

Our day finished with a walk along a busy highway/arterial street to a Topper's Pizza. The building was interesting, with brick walls and random street signs saying pizza related things. Topper's pizza was decent, but not one of my favorites. On the way back from Topper's, we took the (much nicer) residential route back to the hotel. After this, there was only one more day to go.