Weekend Getaway

Ryan whisked me off to a mystery destination this past weekend. He planned it all out, had his mother fly in to watch the kids, picked the area, booked the hotel, and planned things to do. It was great!

Oh! Where did we go? Well, he took me to Santa Barbara!

Most of Friday night was spent in the car traveling to our destination, but that was fine with me. I was not complaining about a long car ride with no whining, endless questions, fussiness etc. I enjoyed the peace and occasional conversation.

Our hotel was actually in a small town called Buellton, which is about 30 minutes North of Santa Barbara. There is a small community of towns up there and we spent most of Saturday walking the quaint streets of Solvang, a Danish town with yummy food and cute shops. After having a leisurely morning of sleeping in, we had breakfast then checked out the stores, walked around, had lunch, talked, bought some art for our barren walls, sat on a bench and watched people wander by. It was great!

Sunday we stopped at a casino on the way to Santa Barbara. I had a coin purse full of change so we decided to play a few slots. The casino slots are all computerize now. Gone are the One Armed Bandits of yesterday. You can't even put a quarter in and play a game. The slots now take bills and cash cards that you can purchase or load up at the cashiers desk. So we stood in line to turn my bundle of quarters into bills. It was funny, the people in front of us had quite a wad of cash (Ryan guessed they had about a thousand dollars by the way the guy was fanning his bills). I can only imagine the cashier waiting on them then dealing with my piddly coins! We played our slots then left. No big win or cash out. Oh well, at least we didn't blow a thousand bucks! After our brief stop over at the casino we headed to downtown Santa Barbara where we walked the shops and had another leisurely lunch before heading home.

Overall it was a fabulous weekend! I loved spending time with Ryan and having uninterrupted conversation. We just don't have much of that these days and it was great to experience it again. Mostly I love that Ryan thought to do all that planning and made it happen. He's never really done that before, and I love him all the more for it!