All Aboard!

I was having such a good time in San Francisco I decided I'd just live there ... Ha! April Fools! I wouldn't do that (yet ...) but anyway, the journey continues.

An overnight stay in Palo Alto led to a 9am visit to the Palo Alto train station. Opportunity was nigh.



The first train I caught was the Caltrain commuter service, southbound. It was right on time.



That led to a quick stopover at the San Jose train station, a pretty place to sit down for a while.



Then my real ride arrived – the Coast Starlight service from Amtrak. I was a little startled when it arrived on time, since it had started in Seattle, but I guess it's a pretty reliable train (at least compared to those out east). I got a reserved coach seat on the top deck.



The Coast Starlight is the very comfortable, very affordable, and extremely scenic way to travel the west coast. I'd highly recommend it if you have some vacation time coming and a little time to travel. It goes from Seattle to L.A., but I was only taking the eight-hour leg from San Jose to Santa Barbara.



(Note that the train route doesn't follow the Google route – Google doesn't seem to acknowledge the existence of rail, yet.)

I saw the Salinas Valley (which I visited two years ago), Paso Robles, the Mission San Miguel Arcangel, San Luis Obispo, a men's penal colony, some mountains, and of course, the Pacific coast, in many areas following El Camino Real, the "royal road" connecting the original Spanish colonial missions. Instead of going on and on about it, I'll just let you look.













































Only a little late (due to an unexplained medical emergency on the train) I disembarked in Santa Barbara.



Around downtown Santa Barbara are these CALM banners. I'm not sure what they're supposed to mean, but I certainly felt calm being there.



Hungry from the journey, after getting picked up at the train station I and my new gracious host made a stop at Lilly's Tacos, a well-known joint tucked into a corner not too far from the station. Lilly's serves tacos for $1.35 each, with a meat selection of beef, pork, steamed beef, head, cheek, lip, tongue, and eye. Not much in the way of fixings, but they have sauces ranging from hot to very hot to please kill me now.



It was beautiful when I arrived, and optimistic that trend would continue, I was looking forward to the next few days exploring Santa Barbara.