We recently travelled to Santa Barbara, California in mid-July and brought our toddler along for the fun. We initially thought that a Santa Barbara getaway would best be left for an adults-only trip, we realized we wanted our toddler child to be a part of this memory. We’ve done our fair share of adult traveling and with this new chapter in life, we want to work on developing vacation experiences as a family. So, I quickly got away to researching how to make this a successful family trip, one that included kids. Santa Barbara has a great downtown scene, waterfront, wharf and iconic playground – just a few features that we considered prior to booking our summer family trip.
3 Day Itinerary
We opted to travel Sunday through Tuesday in July. Considering we were taking our toddler we wanted to avoid staying over on a Friday night and Saturday. We also had to consider our work schedules. I would have also considered doing this trip Wednesday – Friday which would have given me a little more time to get back home settle in and recover.
Hotel Accommodations
We stayed at a lovely beachfront and oceanfront hotel, The Mar Monte Hotel. When doing your research know that beachfront means the beach is literally right in front of your hotel. For us that meant just having to cross the street. Oceanfront just means the hotel has a view of the ocean – your room does not guarantee a view of the room. For example, our room was beachfront and oceanfront. When we book our hotel rooms we never care for the type of view because you can always upgrade your room at the time of check in by paying, hotel tier status or redeeming points. We never really upgrade. But here’s an example of what our room view looked like ~ not bad at all! Specifically, we stayed in the Santa Clara Building. The location was perfect. Although we didn’t have a direct ocean view, we were pleased with the location of the hotel (across the beach!) and being on the second floor (great for a visiting family with a toddler).
We arrived and couldn’t immediately locate parking. We knew that we weren’t going to opt for valet parking since we were going to do some city exploring so we parked across the street right in front of the hotel. This is a boutique hotel and not large like your typical resort. We seriously lucked out with parking. We could see our car from our hotel room. Only thing is that you will have to move your car on street sweeping days and during the designated hours. But that wasn’t an issue for us since we explored the city by car a couple of times. Plus, it’s always nice to save a little cash during travel. We would have opted for the self-parking should the need have presented itself. The fee for overnight parking was around $16 a night.
Dinning with Kids
Dinning with a toddler is always a fun experience but in my opinion, it should be planned and calculated. You don’t want an overtired or hungry toddler waiting too long at a restaurant. Here are some of the locations that we decided to eat at.
- The Habit – Healthy fast food with indoor and outdoor seating. A short walk from the hotel.
- Rusty’s Pizza Parlor – Think of a classic pizza parlor with a few arcades for kids to play with. Lots of indoor seating available and some outdoor seating as well.
- Caje – This is artsy little coffee place down State Street. I would recommend only having coffee here and definitely making it a sit down experience to enjoy the ambience. Otherwise, find another to-go coffee place where you can get your coffee on the run.
- Los Agaves – One of my favorite places. It was a small family chain restaurant. There are a few locations, but we opted for the one closest to our hotel. It wasn’t fancy by any means but perfect for families with kids.
- PoolSide Cafe Lido – Did someone say pool side drinks? We opted to have pool side drinks here one evening after the beach and the food service was great. Our little enjoyed a traditional cheeseburger and french fries while we took in the scenery. Just a side tip here – enroll for the Hyatt Passport Rewards card. It’s free and you get points for your in-hotel purchases. After Mila went down to sleep my husband stopped by the onsite restaurant that has a full bar service and asked if he could purchase cocktails to-go for our room. Lucky for us, they came through and met our request. Again with a toddler on this trip we found that we made more use of the hotel and onsite hotel purchases so having the Hyatt Passport Card is helpful if you regularly stay at Hyatt properties and are interested in racking up rewards.
- In-N-Out – If you’re from California, you just know this is a fail-proof food option. We had this before leaving on our drive back home.
Beach Location
Attractions for Kids
- East Beach and Playground
- The Mar Monte Hotel Pool
- State Street – Great for walking, plenty of dining and sweet treat options
- Funk Zone
- Kids World – Kids can spend a great amount of time here. Pack snacks, you can picnic too!
Prepare your Packing List
Part of my research for a trip always includes preparing wisely. Things I took along were packaged cereal bags, bars, chips, crackers, cookies, cheese sticks, fruit snacks plenty of water bottles, milk boxes, liquid IV electrolyte powders and some fresh fruit like apples, bananas and peaches. The Mar Monte Hotel room included a mini fridge so that allowed us to store our food. I also keep some nice farmers market bags and baskets in the car and use those in the hotel room so that our snacks look presentable in the room and keeps things looking tidy. This really saved us time from having to buy overpriced and processed food while on the go and allowed us to keep a routine similar to home. I don’t like spending idle time having to shop for sundries, toiletries, or even last-minute things like sweaters.
A few weeks before the trip I started looking at weather conditions to make sure our outfits were weather friendly. I was glad I tracked the weather two days before because there was an 8 degree drop in weather (From 78 degrees F to 71 degrees F) that prepared me to pack some additional sweaters and pants for Mila as well as for us adults. The weather truly was great, perfect enough to visit the beach and get a tan but definitely cooler at night which allowed for nice walks along the coastal breeze.
This was a great 3 day trip and we can’t look forward to future visits at this family friendly beach destination in Southern California.
xoxo,
The Sun Queen