Nick awoke punctually at 5 AM to an absolutely spectacular clear sunny morning, the nicest of our trip.

After breakfast, our first stop was a visit to Old Mission Santa Barbara, “The Queen of the Missions”. (Each mission has a “something” of the missions tagline.) Since it was a working monastery long after the mission at San Juan Capistrano, it felt more 19th century than 17th & 18th. We enjoyed the visit, especially the actual artifacts used by the friars and the natives. Much of the original living quarters were on display.

We went to a favorite lunch spot of Harold and Judy's, Jeannine's. Eating outside, Barbara and I shared a salad with mesquite smoked chicken and a turkey sandwich with cranberries. Both were exceptionally moist and delicious, since the meats were cooked on the premises. As we waited for our lunch, a perfectly restored car pulled into spot across from us. It was a 1940 Mercury that once belonged to Clark Gable. The car attracted much attention from us as well as every passerby who sauntered down the sidewalk.

From there, it was off to an appointment with a docent at Lotusland, the personal gardens of Ganna Walska an opera star and socialite who accumulated six husbands and great fortune as well. She used it to build an botanical garden of unparalleled beauty for her own use and well as a gift to the public. It consists of a number of individual gardens, each devoted to a plant order—often with mass plantings of hundreds of the same species. This created vast vistas of texture and color overwhelming the eye. The collection of cycads, is second largest collection in the world. Other sections were devoted to "blue" plants, bromeliads, agaves, and two cactus gardens. The formal gardens included Japanese, topiary, roses, and others. None of us had seen such a lush rose garden anywhere—an unparalleled mass of blooms, grown without commercial fertilizers.

In the evening we headed off to Santa Barbara proper to Ca'Dario, a first class Italian restaurant. The food was excellent all around. Nick had grouper with lemon, garlic and capers, Barbara, seafood risotto cooked to perfection, Harold had bronzino, with complex spices, and Judy, seafood in brodo. For desert we shared berries in puff pastry. All the sauces were outstanding.

Back at Harold's, we watched a movie titled Margaret, about a really mixed up teenager.