Where to stay in Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara occupies a narrow strip between the Pacific and the Santa Ynez Mountains, with a geographical quirk that catches visitors out: the coast here runs east to west, so the sun sets over the ocean while you are looking south. The centre is organised around State Street, the shopping thoroughfare whose lower section has been pedestrianised since 2020; you sleep within walking distance of the restaurants and the courthouse, but rooms on the street side take the brunt of weekend nights. The Funk Zone, between the railway line and the beach, lines up tasting rooms in former warehouses: the liveliest district, and the least quiet. The seafront and East Beach give you the beach and Cabrillo Boulevard, at the cost of a quarter of an hour on foot to the shops. Montecito, five minutes east on the 101, is an unincorporated community of villas and clipped hedges, with no street life but with the most expensive addresses in the county, among them the San Ysidro Ranch. Summerland, three kilometres further on, is the discreet compromise: a few inns, antique dealers, the beach below.

Three caveats. The bill first: the city applies a 12% lodging tax, to which a tourism assessment is added, and parking is rarely included, at 30 to 60 USD a night in the centre. The weather next: May Gray and June Gloom cover the coast in the morning in May and June, sometimes until early afternoon, and September and October remain the clearest months. Finally the natural hazard, which has to be named: on the night of 9 January 2018, after the Thomas Fire, a mudslide devastated Montecito, killing twenty-three people and cutting the 101 for two weeks; the San Ysidro Ranch, which the slide ran through, did not reopen until March 2019. The debris basins have since been enlarged, but episodes of intense rainfall after a fire are still closely monitored, and precautionary evacuation orders are issued every winter in the canyons.