We left scenic Ventura earlyish the following morning with the aim to visit Santa Barbara, on our way up to a place called San Luis Obispo where we had booked into the hostel for the night. The weather was lovely and it was an awful lot less smoggy than LA so we cruised(!) with the roof down. The journey was easy - we're getting to be old hands at this navigating our way around the States lark now.

What we've found fascinating about all the places we've visited so far is just how different from one another they've all been. Although Santa Monica seemed laidback when we arrived there from London it suddenly seemed very uptight once we'd been in San Diego (particularly that horrible Banana Bungalow place where they were all completely stoned!) I don't think LA deserves the reputation it has...there were plenty of crazy people there, but we saw very few victims of plastic surgery or obvious wannabe filmstars. Santa Barbara was back to a more Los Angeles feel. The people there were clearly very well off, the shops were expensive, everything was unbelievably clean and they have a lovely beach. We wandered up and down the main street and quickly visited the courthouse and the Mission (because these are the things you say you have seen if you go to Santa Barbara!) On our way back to the car, we were accosted by a man on the street who (despite my protestations) hung a massive snake around my neck and placed a smaller one in Em's hand. The man works as some sort of snake rescuer and had cages of them...they can only come out once it reached a certain temperature (something like 75 Fahrenheit/24 Celsius) so he was obviously taking advantage of the lovely weather as there were loads of people with the things draped over them. I'll try and upload the photo for you to see asap. I've never really decided if I'm scared of snakes, it felt very odd as it moved around though and I have to say that I was quite relieved when it was taken off as I found it all a bit unnerving.

So, we returned to our car and continued on our way to the little college town of San Luis Obispo...x