if you follow along on instagram and read my post friday, then you'll know i went on a little day trip up the coast on thursday. amtrak offered to send me on any trip i'd like in exchange for participating in a fun contest they were hosting. so i was given the opportunity to spend the day in a fabulous beach town and all i had to do was share my trip on instagram. probably would have done that anyways, so there was no question if i was in! you can see all those peeks into my trip here on insta, but today i wanted to show you what we did while we were there!

ryan and i had visited once already to tour the tasting rooms they have here, so we already new our way around. this time we rented some bikes and did a similar tour stopping to stroll on the pier and take a walk to see all the little details along pch... oh, and eat, eat, eat.

must have one day: aqua door with lush surroundings. so pretty!

we visited and tasted wine at 3 of the tasting rooms. i so wish we had something like this closer to us! if you've done this, you know that the tasting rooms are not on the actual vineyard. those are miles away and these little spots in town allow wine lovers to taste without making the drive out to wherever the brands vineyard may be. of course all of it (ok, most of it) was delicious. and we even found some that we couldn't part with and had a case delivered here to our home. pretty excited for that to arrive.

everything is just so darn cute here i couldn't help but stop and capture all of the cool signage, architecture and landscaping.

it's safe to say we are going to plan more trips up this way. we even scouted out some cute little bed and breakfasts on the beach that we'll look into for our next getaway. the ride up in the train is 4 hours, which i initially thought was going to take forever. but between taking in the sights, chatting with ryan and grabbing mimosas in the cafe car, it really didn't seem that long and it was nice to get to relax rather than driving.

so have you visited santa barbara? would love to hear what you do while you are in town!

[transportation costs were covered by amtrak in trade for me participating in the instagram contest. this post was not mandatory and just something i wanted to share. opinions are always my own. all images for and by a fabulous fete]