University of California at Santa Barbara
With the hotel debacle of the night before behind us, we at least had a short drive to the University in the morning. We ate breakfast at the hotel and drove to campus. We were early and took a walk to the bookstore. Rebecca wasn't sure what she thought of all the bike paths on campus as bikes seemed to have right of way over pedestrians but she grew to like the campus more as we spent more time there. We sat through the information session, which wasn't very good as the person giving it was doing it for her first time as was reading off index cards. But our campus tour was really good. Our guide was a political science major who interned in D.C., which is something Rebecca is interested in, so it made her more interested in UCSB. Following the tour, we went into Isla Vista, the little community near UCSB, to get Rebecca some lunch. A lot of students live in this area so it was good for Rebecca to see it. Then we dropped her off at Tropicana Gardens, her apartment for the next few days. We were not impressed with this place, which is a student apartment complex, and neither was she.
Downtown Disney
Our drive back to Anaheim was long and boring. What should have been a trip of a few hours took nearly five. We stopped in Ventura for lunch at Barrelhouse 101, which was very good and then began the long drive. I-5 in L. A. was completely stalled due to construction and we moved less than a few miles in an hour. But we finally made it to Anaheim and checked in at the Paradise Pier hotel. We took a quick walk through Downtown Disney before going to Napa Rose for dinner.
Napa Rose
We sat at the bar for about an hour and had a few drinks and talked. Janie wanted an apple martini and the bartender talked her into his specialty, which she enjoyed a lot. Dinner was good but we felt very rushed by our waitress. She didn't give us a lot of time to look at the drink menu after being seated and quickly came back to take our orders. Things got worse after dinner, as our charging privileges did not work from the hotel. She gave us a couple of excuses, none of which made sense. Luckily J. R. had brought a credit card with him. When we got back to the hotel, the front desk first said everything was correct with our card and it must be our card being declined. J. R. called the credit card company in front of them and the card company said no charges had been sent through and the hotel backtracked and said it looked like the card had been set up as a debit card. The manager did comp the drinks from Napa Rose as compensation, which was nice.
