One of my family’s favorite day trips is to Santa Barbara. While there, we explore both the Santa Barbara Zoo and the beach which is right across the street. We try to plan our day so we arrive at the zoo a couple hours before lunch time. Then we explore the zoo before taking a lunch break and head to the beach after lunch.

The Santa Barbara Zoo is fairly small compared to other zoos like the Los Angeles Zoo and the San Diego Zoo, which means that it’s a great size for little kids to see everything before nap time. It’s also very walkable and you don’t really need a stroller; although, we still bring one so that we can use it to hold our water bottles and cardboard for the hill on the playground. More on that later.

When you enter the zoo, the first animal you will see is a black swan. The zoo has two Australian black swans. Then, to your left, there is a gift shop. We usually wait until the end of our visit to shop.

After the gift shop, to your right, there is a quick service restaurant called Ridley Tree-House. All of the seating is outdoors, but there are plenty of tables and chairs. We usually scan the QR code for the menu when we arrive. That way we can look over the menu and place our order as we’re walking back towards the front of the zoo at the end of our visit. Sometimes it can take 20 minutes for our order to be ready. If we forget to scan the QR code, we usually look around the gift shop while we’re waiting for our food.

Now it’s time to see the rest of the animals at the zoo! There are otters, two types of leopards, gibbons, alligators, tortoises, penguins and flamingos, just to name a few of our favorites.

There’s also a new Australian habitat that has kangaroos and wallabies. Watch the video below for a tour of the Australian Walkabout section of the Santa Barbara Zoo.

At the back of the zoo, there are also big animals like lions, giraffes and gorillas. There’s even a barnyard area with sheep, goats, bunnies and more!

Just above the Australian area there are picnic tables that overlook the outback. Sometimes we sit here to eat lunch instead of sitting near the restaurant so that we can watch kangaroos while we eat.

The Santa Barbara Zoo also has a play area just past the Australia area. There are eggs to hide in, instruments that make music, a tunnel, and a web to crawl on, but my kids’ favorite part is the hill. This is why we bring cardboard. Kids sit or stand on cardboard and slide down the hill.

The Buzz coffee cart located inside the play area caters to parents watching their children play. It mainly serves beverages like coffee and lemonade, but it has a small selection of food items as well. There are benches and tables so parents can rest while their kids play.

The playground is a great place to let kids play while you wait for the train that goes all the way around the zoo. Watch the video below to see a full POV train ride video.

Want a different perspective of the same train ride? This video offers a POV ride from the back seat of the train which faces backwards!

After riding the train, we finish exploring the video and order lunch at Ridley Treehouse. We’ve tried several of the zoo’s food items before. My current favorite is the large quesadilla with chicken pesto. My daughter and I usually share one of these. The smashburgers are also really good and come with fries. My kids also love the dessert items like the frozen chocolate dipped banana and the dippin dots.

Our last stop before leaving the zoo is usually the gift shop. We usually let our kids each pick one souvenir to bring home. There’s a wide selection of hats, toys, books, cups and my personal favorite, fudge made right at the zoo. We always bring home some fudge. This last trip we got chocolate mint and raspberry cheesecake flavors.

After the zoo, it’s only a short drive over to the beach. It literally takes about one minute to drive there. As you exit the zoo, turn left and when you get to the stop light, cross the street and go straight into the parking lot.

One thing that’s great about the beach here is that there is a playground right on the sand. My kids love climbing and going down the slides and on the swings. Then we head down to the water to build sand castles and get our feet wet.

If you want to have dinner in Santa Barbara or eat lunch at the beach, there is a restaurant right next to the playground. We haven’t eaten there yet, but the menu looks good. There are also restrooms right outside the restaurant, and they’re pretty clean for beach restrooms.

Watch the video below to see a full tour of the Santa Barbara Zoo and the see how close the zoo really is to the beach!