To top off a wonderful summer in San Francisco, Crista and I spent the last weekend of the summer in Santa Barbara for a conference (such hard work). Santa Barbara deserves its reputation as the earthly paradise. The weather is fantastic, the sunsets beautiful, the beach full of life, and volleyball like you've never seen it before. The first thing we did was rent a tandem, which is definitely the best way to get around (though rollerblading seemed to be fun too). Cars are definitely loosers (Highway 101 goes through Santa Barbara at a speed of 2 MPH in the afternoon). Our first surprise was to see that most of the beautiful sandy beach was empty. Everybody had gathered in one spot on one end of the city. Which lead us straight to our second surprise: the finals of a beach volleyball tournament were happening right in front of us! I had never seen volleyball played like that (to think that i once thought Laurent's serves were hard). More surprises ahead: It was Greek weekend in Santa Barbara. Soon we were dancing kalamatianos and clapping to syrtaki.
