Ty Warner Sea Center, Santa Barbara

Ty Warner Sea Center

Ty Warner Sea Center

Stearns Wharf

Santa Barbara

If I were to win the lottery, along with doing a lot of traveling, I would consider moving to the hills above Santa Barbara. Not Montecito, but the hills above the city, because I like Santa Barbara and all of the things that you can do there.

Still, my Mid-Town Ventura location means that Santa Barbara is only half an hour away, so I still find a way to skip up there on a regular basis. It's far enough to seem like an adventure, but not too far away to make the drive when tired. In fact, the drive up the coast from Ventura to Santa Barbara and back is actually rather invigorating. Sometimes, it's just a beautiful trip.

The ceiling whales

It's Spring Break for me and the kiddies. Last year, we were able to swing a trip to Kona, Hawaii. This year, we can't do anything like that. But to get into the Hawaiian spirit, I threw on a Hawaiian shirt and drove the family to Santa Barbara, for an afternoon at the Ty Warner Sea Center and lunch at Lilly's Taqueria, (See my very brief Oct. 2011 post. Looking at Lilly's website now, I beat the rush).

Shark Petting Zoo

If you have a family of 4 or more, and you live close enough where going twice to this place in the same year is reasonable possibility, I always recommend becoming a member, (over the years, my family has been members of the Santa Barbara Zoo, The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The Aquarium of the Pacific and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, though not all at the same time). The Ty Warner Sea Center is part of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, also a nice day trip, and membership to the museum is a tax deduction.

Upstairs

The Ty Warner Sea Center has a shark petting tank, a small underwater exhibit, some research type facilities and generally some traveling exhibit. This time, they had a small exhibit with live jellyfish, which was kind of cool. For a first time visitor, set aside maybe 90 minutes. We've been there so much, an hour seems to do it.

Sign on Stearns Wharf

I got lucky on parking, and was able to find a spot on the street at the end of Stearns Wharf. There is parking on Stearns Wharf, too, which is free for 90 minutes with validation. There are restaurants and gift shops on Stearns Wharf, but they can be a bit pricey, and Lilly's Tacos is cheap. Plus the idea was to burn some of the kids' energy off, so walking to Lilly's was part of the plan. It took half an hour or so to make the walk, where we powered down a ton of tacos.

We strolled State Street to do some window shopping. A side note, Santa Barbara has an electric shuttle for a quarter running up and down State Street, and another running the length of the water front.

It took the edge off the kids energy, which was the goal, and was a nice day as well.