Santa Barbara and Spencer

Friday we headed to sunny Santa Barbara where our nephew (and Sue's grandson) has lived for the last few years. We met Spencer at the house where he rents a room and shares a bathroom and kitchen with the landlords. A great house with a fabulous hillside garden that could only happen in California (or maybe Italy). Spencer has always been a great kid but what we found in California was an ever better young man. He is a sommelier and manager of an upscale Indian restaurant -Bibi Ji (means Grandmother in Indian--prophetic?) in a fashionable district of the downtown--we will eat dinner at his restaurant. First though, we lunched at Brophy's waterfront seafood restaurant. After some oysters we had a variety of seafood dishes and a beautiful view of the harbor. Spencer has truly become a California Dude and had lots of tips and tricks for our trip. We sent him off to get ready for work while we visited Santa Barbara's Franciscan Mission, the Courthouse and did a little sightseeing. The real highlight was dinner! Spencer made this a real special meal with great wines (starting with a sparkling Lambrusco, then Sue had a nice white and Terry and I shared a cabernet franc--yum), sauces with wonderful black bean chips, fried cauliflower (this converted Terry), butter chicken, salmon and my favorite-- beet salad. Rice pudding and a yogurt/papaya milkshake finished us off. What a wonderful treat. It was a great way to finish off our time with Sue and we really enjoyed our day with Spencer. We HAVE to come back now.

Grandma was so happy to see our fella!

Spencer's house had a gorgeous hillside garden

At Brophy's we had a perfect outside corner table, oysters and seafood

We overlooked a beautiful harbor

The Santa Barbara Mission was beautiful

The County Courthouse had an observation deck with a spectacular 360 view.

At the botanical gardens there was a neighborhood that had the mushroom houses like we saw in MI

Spencer was a great host at Bibi Ji's

Our yummy appetizer--after this we got too caught up with the restaurant, Spencer's
co-workers (who all loved him) and the food to take pictures

We lost our traveling buddy on Saturday--what fun we had. 
We hope Sue will come join us more often.