Before heading up into the mountains I spent the morning walking around Santa Barbara’s Spanish era buildings on the Red Tile walking tour. As I went I played the classical tourist self-quiz ‘What’s a reconstruction?’. (Favourite example: the Pantheon in Rome. Incredibly it’s not a reconstruction and it’s not even clear that we actually know how to build domes that big any more.) Buildings were very fine and I even managed to fall into the ‘1819? Wow that’s really old!’ rhythm.
On the way up the hill to the Mission I came across the setup for the Earth Day festival and was interrogated by a pair of earnest teenagers about how I had arrived that day. They were delighted to hear that I had walked. I tactfully omitted to mention the Mustang in the hostel carpark.