Last night Steve and I took the tour of Christmas lights in the Santa Barbara area. Every night at 6:30, a trolley company provides several of their trolleys to take a 90 minute tour of the lights. This sounded like a neat idea, so Steve agreed he would take me. What I failed to realize is that you must buy the tickets in advance! The next available slots were the 24th-26th—times where both of us would be out of town!

This was, of course, an unacceptable option, so Steve took matters into his own hands. He decided that if we couldn’t go on the trolley, we would do the next best thing—FOLLOW THE TROLLEY! He mentioned it a few days before, and I dismissed it as a ridiculous proposition. But now that we were refused admittance and were already in the area, it sounded great! So we popped in some Chrismas tunes and caught all the sights without the hassle of being cold or kicked by someone’s kid.

Apparently we weren’t the only ones with this idea, as we led a little caravan of cars doing the exact same thing—including a convertible full of old people in santa hats!

We wound all around the town, to places I didn’t even know existed. I also learned that on the whole, Santa Barbara doesn’t have A LOT of people who go all out decorating, and that some of the best decorations are found in the poorest neighborhoods. Those rich people should take a lesson from those of more modest incomes.

Along the tour route, many families came out of their houses to wave at the trolleys (some even waved at us! I waved at everyone, trying to see who would give me a reaction), parents decorated their kids with lights and made them stand there, there were several people dressed like santa, one of whom even gave out a ton of mini candy canes; and there was also a family that created a mini live nativity.

Overall, it was neat. It was fun to follow the trolley—even though it tried to lose us by going around the Milpas loop 8 times! It must have been a sight to see the trolley going around the loop multiple times, tailed by several cars chasing it in its circular path. It was also cool to see the houses that DID go all out, as well as see the people so happy to wave at the procession.

Below you will find blurry photos of one of the most decorated houses, as well as the people dressed for the nativity scene. In the second picture, if you look carefully, you can see Santa putting on some sort of concert!

Posted at 9:40 AM |