Santa Barbara — SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA freeways make my mother hyperventilate. So when Santa Barbara assembled a package of discounts for visitors arriving by train, it seemed the perfect outing for Mom's annual visit from Ohio.
Train travel occupies a sweet spot between let's-jump-in-the-car spontaneity and the toiletries-in-a-Ziploc hassle that now accompanies flying. Anyone can board a train and a conductor will sell you a ticket. To get the Santa Barbara Car Free 20% discount, though, I had to reserve my tickets three days ahead, which was easy. I had started planning a month before Mom arrived, trying to get a weekend hotel room just as students were returning to UC Santa Barbara in September.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday December 03, 2006 Home Edition Travel Part L Page 3 Features Desk 0 inches; 28 words Type of Material: Correction
Santa Barbara: The address of the Hotel Santa Barbara was listed incorrectly in the Nov. 26 Travel section as 53 State St. The address is 533 State St.
The Car Free program also offered rate reductions up to 20% at 18 hotels in the city, from modest motels to the upscale Fess Parker's DoubleTree Resort. After weeding out the lodgings that limited the deal to weekdays, I quizzed front-desk clerks on locations and chose a hotel close to the beach and three blocks from the station.
I'm a long-standing fan of Amtrak's 325-mile Pacific Surfliner line, which runs from San Diego to San Luis Obispo, but my only experience was riding it south from Los Angeles. The journey from downtown's Union Station to Santa Barbara takes just over 2 1/2 hours, and though a person might argue that one can drive there faster, I would question whether that person had driven the 101 Freeway on a Friday afternoon.
I've been told that the segment north of Santa Barbara, where the Pacific Surfliner traces the coastline around Point Conception and along the edge of Vandenberg Air Force Base, is its most spectacular stretch. But I was gripped by the view of the mostly industrial backyard of Los Angeles. The train passed downtown's corrugated warehouses of recyclables, turned along the Los Angeles River, then cut diagonally across the San Fernando Valley. In North Hollywood, we glided past ironworks and stonecutters, fenced forests of fake movie-studio trees and a giant auto junkyard.
Beyond the Chatsworth tunnel and the cracked-boulder landscape of Simi Valley, I closed my eyes and napped, which I surely could not have done on the freeway.
The next thing I knew, we were in the coastal plains of Camarillo and Oxnard, strawberry fields forever.
When we disembarked in Santa Barbara, the light was pink-orange from the smoke of the massive Day fire, which was still burning in the hills of Ventura County. I tossed my gym bag over my shoulder, Mom pulled her wheeled suiter behind her, and we were in the lobby of the Hotel Oceana quicker than we'd have found a taxi stand at LAX.
We weren't the only people with the train-getaway idea. Four groups from our train were also checking in. Behind me, I heard a woman whisper, "Tell them we took the train."
The clerk, however, was unfamiliar with the discount program, which caused some delay checking in (and again at check-out). The hotel's reservation service also hadn't indicated my need for a room with two queen beds.
Hotel Oceana has 122 rooms in multiple buildings. Some are small hotels, others converted apartment buildings. The result is a spread-out campus effect, and we walked most of it with a bellman looking for a room that might suffice. After we toured the property, there suddenly were two double rooms available -- already empty and cleaned -- because some guest "wasn't coming back."
Mom and I took the edge off our ire -- OK, mostly my ire -- with cocktails at the Santa Barbara FisHouse, a short walk east on Cabrillo Boulevard. Then I was able to enjoy catching up with Mom, at the same time enjoying the Prawn-Ton appetizer (prawns rolled in wonton wrappers), a salad, cioppino (fish stew), and creme brulee. The restaurant, which looked low-slung from the street, had church-like beams inside that reached from the vaulted ceiling to the floor, framing the beach-facing windows. I was sorry we'd missed sunset.
Free breakfast goes fast
THE next morning, the breeze had shifted, and the sky was cloudless. Outside our picture window -- our room had clearly been the living room of a beach-close apartment -- was a lovely pool with rolled towels waiting on every chaise. Several striped cabanas offered shade. Though the day would get warm, it was too brisk for the pool in the morning, and we headed to the cozy room where the Hotel Oceana served its free continental breakfast. But we didn't stay. By 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, there wasn't a crust of toast to be had.
Lucky for us, the Oceana buildings surround Sambo's, the only remaining outlet of a once-massive diner chain from the '60s and '70s. We took available seats at the counter and shortly found before us more eggs and flapjacks than we could possibly eat.
