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City of Santa Barbara
3 reviews for City of Santa Barbara
I am not a fan of flying...
But, I have to say that this airport (and yes, I am reviewing an airport...) has a special charm about it. Small, quaint, and neatly tucked away next to UCSB and along the coast. Definite style and substance with its "Mediterranean" charm - I believe this is what it reminded me of- and it leads you to believe what you can expect when visiting Santa Barbara.
I am actually writing a review for the City of Santa Barbara -- not the airport as the other 2 reviewers have written.
On our last trip to the Bay Area, we stopped in Santa Barbara for lunch. It was a late lunch and it was hard to find a restaurant open at 3pm, however, with the help of my friend who was behind his computer and was on yelp frantically trying to find us a restaurant to eat at, we headed towards the restaurant, found a spot to park and went to eat our lunch.
When we finished our lunch, we walked to the car which was parked just across the street. When hubby got to the car, he took something off the windshield wipers -- it was a parking ticket. WTF????? We were not there longer than the 70 minutes allotted. Heck, we hadn't even been there an hour.
Then we checked the ticket and the person cited us for parking in the spot at 2.24pm. WTF? We weren't even in Santa Barbara at that time. We were still on the road. We didn't even get to that spot until a few minutes past 3pm since we were looking for a place which was still open after 3pm for lunch. It was at that moment I decided to contest the ticket.
Luckily, the police department was a few blocks away. I walked into the police dept and told the person on duty what happened. She stared at me blankly and asked "so you wish to contest this?" I said yes. She hands me a form to fill out.
While there, a few other people came in to do the same thing -- contest their parking ticket. Man, what is wrong with this city? What is wrong with the traffic person they have on duty giving out tickets to people who weren't even in the city yet? Crazy!!
I finished filling out the form and even gave them a copy of our receipt from the restaurant as evidence. They told me about 6-8 weeks.
So I had already forgotten about this ticket until I got a letter in the mail from the City of Santa Barbara. They decided to accept my contested ticket and hence I didn't have to pay for it, but the thing is if they had hired more efficient employees, this wouldn't even have happened in the first place. But then if I did have to pay for the ticket I would never return to SB ever again and they wouldn't have received that extra star!
One star for saving me from having to drive to LAX.
One star for having two airline check-ins in the same tiny shack-like room.
One star for looking like a mexican restaurant from the exterior.
This place made me laugh both times I'd been here. The whole airport is about 1000 square feet and is 'mission style'. When no one is there, I can just imagine the two check in guys from other companies glaring at each other.
Also once, right after 9/11, I had to pick someone up here. there were more people guarding the airport with automatic rifles than running the entire building.